Opinion on Purchase '97 F350 SRW 7.3L

Aggressive1

Aggressive1

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 19, 2005
Location
Myrtle Beach
I have been looking for a while, but not been in a hurry for a rig to tow the buggy when its done. I have an '01 F150 with 130,000 miles on it now and it does fine, but I really wanted a crew cab long bed +/- 94 - +/- 97 F350 single rear wheel 4x4 with the 7.3L in it. I happened to find one today that is 20 minutes from my house. He's asking $10,595 for it and it looks like its in great shape. XLT with power, cloth, 189,XXX miles. No rust on the body, a little surface on the rear of the frame, class III hitch and it looks like a 5th wheel hitch (with ball down so not sure its complete) in the bed, camper top (could care less), etc. Its pretty much my dream truck although I do wish they made this truck in a short bed....didn't though.

Question is I am stupid about deisels, never had one, this will be a long haul truck only for trips to Tellico (8 hours) Moab in a couple of years, and lots of Uwharrie/DPG/Crozet trips and a little around town on the weekends driving to keep it running. But I don't know what to look for, or what to do when I first buy it for preventative maintenance and what that cost will be. AND does anybody see any negatives about this year and model? I am pretty sure its the way to go because of the 7.3L.

Dave
 
I've had my '97 F-250 for about two years now and love it! I feel that I get just as good mileage as my old Grand Cherokee. Been running on bio fuels so its a tad cheaper than regular diesel, plus feel a little better for running it. bought mine with 18x,xxx and now has about 204,xxx and still runs like a top. it still costs about $95 to fill up and about $60 for an oil change plus the fuel filter every 15k miles. fairly good list of aftermarket goodies. pulls 7000+ lbs. easily. ive beat on it and driven it like a miata and it hasnt let me down yet!
 
It appears to be an automatic. I only saw a shifter for the 4wd on the floor, so unless they had column shift I think its an auto. Haven't gone up to drive it yet or been inside of the truck.
What would a rebuild cost?
 
I have a 96 F350 SRW crew with 289K on it. The PSD has a lot of good things going for it (it's rated for 500K on a medium duty chassis), it's design suits itself well to WVO/SVO conversions, and it's got a ton of aftermarket support. It costs me right at 60 for an oil change but the next change is synthetic so it will go to about 75-85. I am getting the parts together for glow plugs and injectors, if it hasn't been done, that might be in the future, depends on maintence records. Expect 3K to 5K oil changes w/o exception. If it's got the E40D, if it's needs rebuilt it will be about 2K (you pulling it, IMO) for a decent stock rebuild and about 4K-6K for a BTS/Jon woods/etc performance rebuild. The link below has a lot of good info on buying a used PSD, I got 15 Mpg with my XJ (4500#) on a 16' Texas bragg on my last Crozet trip.

powerstrokenation.com
powerstroke.org
thedieselstop.com
oilburners.net
http://pages.prodigy.net/stevebaz/_import/pages.prodigy.net/stevebaz/index3.html
 
Aggressive1 said:
It appears to be an automatic. I only saw a shifter for the 4wd on the floor, so unless they had column shift I think its an auto. Haven't gone up to drive it yet or been inside of the truck.
What would a rebuild cost?
Click to expand...

It really all depends on the shop doing it and what mods you want to make to it. I would say roughly between $2000 and $4000.
 
I bought a 95 F-250 XLT auto, diesel 144k, 4x4, ext cab, long bed, about 2 weeks ago.
I paid $5200 for the truck with the trans burned up. I had a friend rebuild it for a $1000. The previous owner already had new glow plugs installed. The truck runs perfect and I pulled a trailer yesterday with about 7500 lbs of lumber on it and had no problems at all. I set the cruise at 65 mph, and rolled right along with traffic. This is one of 3 ford diesels (7.3) in the family and all of them have been practically flawless.
 
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