Picked up 96 F250 5 Speed.

So in my quest to obtain a 5 speed swap for my 93' F350 IDI I came across this truck.
It was priced similar to what I am seeing a ZF-5 go for by itself.

The good.
Well it's 4wd.
Seems completeish. (More on that in a bit)
7.3 Powerstroke that does turn over.
New IDM. (Previous owner installed it chasing a no start)
Transmission, at least at rest, seems to shift more smoothly that I would have expected. Could mean nothing. We'll see.
Clutch feels real nice. Smooth strong and consistent engagement and release at least at the pedal.
Has 3 Alcoas in serviceable condition.
Under 200k miles.

The bad.
Previous owner removed injectors while chasing no start. I did get the injectors and they look good. As in stored properly and not dirty or rusty.
Valve covers are in the cab. Not on the engine.
There is some surface rust on the valvetrain.
No idea if there is water in crankcase or not yet. Going to drain the oil and find out.
Been sitting this way for I think 5 years. Yikes.
Really dirty. Needs to be pressure washed.
Truck bed full of garbage.
Drivers cab floor rust.
Bed fender wells rusted out. Fixable I think.
Someone tried to tow it by hooking on to the core support. It is bent very badly at the bottom.
Intake filtration setup completely missing.
Sure there is more bad, but haven't found it yet.

I had to steal one of the tires as I blew a trailer tire while hauling it back so it has one mismatched sized tire on it currently.




Plan is to get it running before I pull the transmission out.
Then swap an E4OD into it and put the 5 speed in the IDI.

That is if it's worth saving.
When my son gets back from deployment it'll go to him. He is constantly sending me ads for OBS trucks for sale and asking which ones are good deals.

After another day of assessing this trucks condition I am not going to scrap it. Unless of course the engine is shot.
I will make a legit attempt to get it running before making that decision. Any parts needed I can either borrow from my other 7.3 Powerstroke, which is getting a new frame currently, or have them as spares for that truck in the event this engine is junk.

Cleaned out the bed of the truck yesterday. It was full of tires, metal, radiator, car parts, drum brakes, 2 kids bikes, garbage and leaves/pine needles.
I have finding and collecting old tires on my property since I bought it in 2019, and it is about time to make another dumps run so I fished through all the debris in the back of the truck and put it in the back of my 93' along with all the tires I have collected. Have 10 of them this time.

Once I was down to just the foliage I parked the skid steer nearby and shoveled all that into the bucket, which I then dumped on my burn pile.
I was shocked at how nice the inside of the bed is. Very little denting, especially in the fender wells, or loss of paint. Only real issue is the front bed rail is pretty beat. Compared to the outside of the bed it makes no sense.

I did manage to find one of the air intake hoses and the Powerstroke engine cover in the debris. Was hoping the find the filter assembly but no luck there.

The hood springs were missing so since I have 2 extra sets of them I installed them. Now the hood stays open by itself.
Rain was coming today so I scrounged around in the cab, found 3 of the valve cover gasket bolts, and got the valve covers in place temporarily.

Last night I ordered 8 injector o-ring kits, and 17 valve cover bolts. I was going to order a set of 25 bolts from Mcmaster-Carr as it was cheaper, but only having to pay shipping once turned out to be overall less expensive.

Guess I'll drop the oil next, as the valve covers have been off for 5ish years, I don't want to push any of that oil/water up into the oil system.

I'll update this once I have some more information on the engines condition.

Theres lots of reasons to have a no-start on a PSD, and hope pulling the injectors wasnt his first move.

My tired '97 ended up needing a hpop and new ipr. Thats after doing all the electrical tests i could manage and a bleed-down test on the hpo system. I did end up doing a cps and lpop first, which were not the culprits. I had a further sneaking suspicion the oil pickup in the pan may have developed a suction leak, but wasnt going to tear into that after it started behaving mostly better.

u2slow said:

Theres lots of reasons to have a no-start on a PSD, and hope pulling the injectors wasnt his first move.

My tired '97 ended up needing a hpop and new ipr. Thats after doing all the electrical tests i could manage and a bleed-down test on the hpo system. I did end up doing a cps and lpop first, which were not the culprits. I had a further sneaking suspicion the oil pickup in the pan may have developed a suction leak, but wasnt going to tear into that after it started behaving mostly better.

Click to expand...

In conversation with the seller he suggested he messed up in his troubleshooting. He at one point thought it was the HPOP as well. He said pulling the injectors was the wrong move as after it was all said and done he found that one of the IPR wires was detached from the IPR plug. Thinks that might have been all it was.

I don't know for sure what is wrong by any means yet, but I will investigate the wiring thoroughly before trying to start it. Then onto standard troubleshooting. I do have Forscan now so I can do a buzz test and read codes at least.

Also, this is a 96', so maybe my OBD scanner will play nice with it. It refuses to talk to my 95'.

Dirtleg said:

Also, this is a 96', so maybe my OBD scanner will play nice with it. It refuses to talk to my 95'.

Click to expand...

I didnt get anywhere with an OBD scanner on my '97. There was no engine check light lit either, to suggest any codes were tripped.

YMMV.

So I have an update.
I dropped the oil yesterday and about 2 1/2 gallons of crystal clear water came out before any oil. None of it was milkshaked.

Great. Oof. I knew this might be a scenario, and it was.

I then pulled the oil filter. Zero water contamination in the oil filter. This is a good sign. Engine may not be toasted.

I am going to put some cheap oil in it, already threw an extra IDI filter on it, and crank it over until oil is coming out the injector oil galleys to flush out the system before re-installing the injectors. I will also pull the wiring harness and go through it pin by pin to verify everything is okay before trying to start it. Also pull out forscan and see if I can do a buzz test during the process. If the IPR is bad, I can pull the one from the dump truck, which is about to have the engine pulled and transplanted in it's new frame. So not needed for a while.