What work to do myself?

fields_mj

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I've recently acquired a 2000 SRW crew cab 4x4. Its in questionable shape, but I feel the price was right. Not great, but fair for its condition, and it was only 2 miles from the house so I didn't have to drive cross country just to check it out. Has 168K on it and hasn't had ANY maintenance to speak of. Breaks are squishy, Gear shift (automatic) has a lot of play and doesn't want to activate the switch when in park that will allow me to start the truck, ball joints are certainly shot, doesn't like to start in the cold (injector/glowplugs), it has no aux gauges of any kind (EGT, Boost, ???). I'm wondering what projects I should consider doing myself, and which ones I should just pay a mechanic to do (I do have a decent mechanic locally, but he's always booked at least 6 weeks out).

Before I even bother getting plates for it, the breaks need addressed, as do the front ball joints. I feel comfortable with the breaks as I've replace about all of it on my '93 at least once including some break line, as well as several components on the steering system, but I'm a little up in the air on the ball joints. As I understand it, this could end up costing over $1K to have a shop do it, so that gives me a pretty sizeable budget for buying any special tools, refilling the tanks for my torch, ect. Biggest draw back is that I don't have a garage to do the work in, so I'm stuck doing it in my driveway. The up side is that I still have the old truck and its running fine at the moment so I'm not stranded. Is it worth trying to do this repair (ball joints, possibly front U-Joints) on my own, in my driveway, in the winter, or am I asking for a disaster? FWIW, I did help change out a set of ball joints on an '86 F150 2wd, but that was 20 years ago, and I still remember it being a real PITA.

Next on the list is fuel injectors. I will check the glow plugs out first, but at some point I'm going to have to replace some injectors. Especially since I plan to add an aux fuel system and run waste oil in it. How difficult is it to swap out these expensive little suckers, and are there any special tools needed for the job?

Thanks in advance, and sorry for being so long winded.
Mark
 

79jasper

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Nothing special for swapping injectors. Unless you change the cups also.
Ball joints aren't that big a deal either.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk
 

IDIoit

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I did the front ball joints on my 01 F250 4x recently, and I tell you those things were a straight up pain in the 10.5
I even got the ball joint installer tool.
after about an hour of trying to get 1 out, I took the knuckles to my machine shop and used his 5 ton press.
I had them done in 20 minutes. went ahead and did new TRE's and axle u-joints while I was there.

injectors, and glow plugs, do the glow plug while you have an injector out, makes it a bit easier.
pressurizing the coolant system when you do injectors so you can find defective injector cups.
either bring each piston to TDC, or make sure there is no oil in the cylinder before you drop the injector in.
the cylinders will fill up with oil when you pop the injector out.

use only ford parts. especially the glow plug/injector harness and valve cover gaskets.
dormans suck and have a high failure rate(in my experience)

one tool I highly suggest is a 13mm swivel socket. makes things easier to get to the valve cover bolts.

if you plan to keep the truck, I suggest getting a scanner so you can find out what issues come up.


shifter, these are replaceable for pretty cheap. but I think the safety switch is on the 4R100 itself

if you can work on a IDI, you can work on a PSD,
but remember you cant just throw parts at it. and you especially cant throw auto store parts in it.
a scanner will tell you exactly whats wrong.

and ford sells their ICP and CPS for around 200 ea.


FYI dielectric grease every connector!
 

trackspeeder

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Check the two Torx screws at the base of the shift lever. They have a habit of coming loose, making the shift lever very sloppy.
 

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