jplinville

My stepson in SoCal gave me his 1997 F150 4X4 with 5.4L Triton because he has had enough fighting to get it to pass Cali SMOG. We're shipping it from SoCal to Western Ohio, where anything of this age is rusted to hell or beat up. Engine has 200K of solid highway miles, which averages to around 9K a year. He is the original owner, and has maintained it well. It's throwing a code that prevents it from passing, and the code points to Lower Bank, which I believe is either a vacuum leak that may be part of the missing vacuum lines for the front locker, or an intake gasket leak. I'm hoping it's a vacuum line, but am willing and capable of doing a couple intake gaskets.

3" lift an rolling on 35" mudders, this thing appears to be a beast. It has the towing package, and the rear springs were beefed up a bit to tow his toys to car shows or off road events...which was the primary use of the vehicle.

I should have it in my driveway in a few weeks, depending on how soon he's back from climing towers for a living and can get the truck prepped for shipment.

Mike

Nothing like adding another member to the fleet.

Get those codes scanned, and we should be able to help you out.

jplinville

It finally made it...

Mike

Love those tires.

IMO, you should have the entire truck stripped down, re-primed and painted. Something about GM and Ford had an issue with the primer back in the 90's that lets the top coat flake off. My 95 Bonneville did the same thing. And I think its something to do with the white paint. I don't remember exactly.

jplinville

The price to do that is likely more than the truck is worth. I'm going to sand the roof down, and prep the rest of it for a bed-on re-spray instead. That's going to eat up most of my $2500 budget I'm working with for updates and upgrades.

F150Style

Nice truck. Thanks for sharing pics.

Ford Ride

Great looking truck and no rust. Well worth restoring.
The stance is perfect, tires awesome!

jplinville

Thanks for the compliments on the truck.

Here is a growing, but manageable list of issues I need to work on this year:

Front diff not locking when put in 4X4...I know it's the front diff, and not the TC

ABS light on and ABS not working. It's fine on dry pavement, but wet roads will cause it to slide.

The roof rust mentioned earlier. I have the tools, just waiting on warmer, drier weather to start...since the truck won't fit in the garage.

Tonneau cover gas shocks need replaced

Need to remove, clean, and powder coat all skid plates. Will be colored red to match the lift parts
Need to determine manufacturer of lift kit. I was underneath to inspect everything and determined that it is a complete kit, professionally installed, with rear load leveling air bags. Only clue thus far is that the parts are red.
Pressure clean the wheels They are Weld, but have been painted black in the past. I'll determine if I'll repaint, or PC them back to black after cleaning them up. I measured the hole , and it's a 4" lift

Need to regear, or drop down to 33" tires. The gearing is 3:55, which is fine for stock tires to tow with, but not good with 35" as far as MPG. Since this will spend 90% or more of it's time on the pavement, dropping down a size would be best. I am rubbing the rear of the fender wells when I hit a bump at full turn. Due to how pristine the metal is, I don't want to hammer the corner of the fender back.

Need to completely clean the interior. It looks as if our son had a soda in the truck, dropped it, and didn't clean it.

Need to remove large sub woofer box, and build a single 10" sub box to fit under rear seat.

Still need to spray the CA sand and dust out of the bed of the truck, The Line-X is in great shape, since it was always covered. I need to figure out how to properly care for it to make sure it lasts many more years. They removed the bed bolts and all screws, masked off everything well, and coated it. The bed bolts still look like new, as do the screw heads. The bed was rarely used to haul anything more than luggage.

Replace CB and CB antenna. Going to go with what I have in my other trucks...Cobra 29LTD classic. I'll add a 5" firestick where the antenna mount is, which is passenger side rear bumper. I'm not pleased with the fact that the bumper was drilled into to mount it, or that they didn't use SS screws. I'll swap out the screws with SS, I may look into replacing the PA horn under the hood with something louder.

Roof console does not match those in pictures I've seen of the same truck. I'm not sure what it came out of. I may replace it

I need to drop the headliner and recover it. That will be an easy job, and the wife can do it, since she recovered the two in our Bricks.

When the skid plates are out for cleaning and powder coating, I'll clean everything up underneath, and paint the center crossmember. It looks as if it has been blasted by CA highway sand.

I still have the CEL issue...pointing to a vacuum leak. I've replaced the PCV elbow, as well as the tube because it was broken. I cleared the code, but it came back within 10 miles of driving. My son drove it this way for the past year, and it runs fine...but I hate dash lights.

I think I may have a small pinhole leak in or around the radiator. Once the skid plate is dropped and the underhood cover is removed, I should be able to see down and around it better to find it. I need a +50 degree day to come first.

I really need to drop tires size. The speedo is off, so I use GPS to determine my speed, or just drive with the flow of traffic.



I've already had the oil changed, air filter cleaned and oiled (K&N CAI kit previously installed), aired up the tires, checked trans fluid, and swapped out the stereo for a Kenwood single DIN with BT. I've put about 200 miles on it so far, and love the driveability of the truck. It handles the potholes around here with ease, and rides as smooth as any truck with these loud tires on. Highway driving is good, and it will hold 65mph at around 1600 rpm...much lower RPM than my other trucks...but MPG is difficult to determine due to the speedo and odo being off. I'll likely start using an app that records miles driven in a given trip to calculate the MPG for now. That's as close as I can get without dropping tire size or re-gearing my VSS to match the tires.

I'll continue this thread with updates and photos as I work on the truck...in hopes that it will eventually help another member with their project.