1991 F250 7.3 IDI Questions

[burrfree]

Hello, I'm a noob here and am currently considering buying a 91 F250 with 7.3 IDI for towing a 26 foot boat. The boat weighs 6000# dry and is on a steel triple axle trailer. Would this work or should I try to find something newer with a powerstroke? The truck in question has 130K on the clock.

 

[Jake_IN]

I think you will be fine, the last trailer I towed it did just fine with. Yeah its no speed demon but I cruised right a long with everybody else. Reverse is a pain (needs to be a lower gear i think).

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That weight is truck+trailer.

 

[Sycostang67]

You will be fine with the IDI as long as you aren't looking to drag race with the boat in tow. My flatbed weighs 3200lbs empty, then I like to put 8k trucks on it.

 

[fuzzydog]

I have a 1991 F250 7.3IDI 4x4 5 speed and regularly tow a tandem axle car hauler with my jeep cherokee on it. no problems.
Occasionally I tow the trailer/jeep and have a heavy old camper on the truck (scales at 15,800 lbs). no problems.
Mine has 3.55 gears and the hills really slow me down, but I can easily keep up with traffic on the flats (100-110kmh) and mileage is fairly decent.

I did some research before buying a tow rig and I wouldn't want to do this with an automatic equipped truck of that vintage.

I just finished a 2500km trip this past weekend (not towing) and my truck turned over 394,000 kms.

One other thing, I changed all the fluids to Royal Purple when I first got the truck - trans, tcase and diffs. I found in my jeep cherokee with the RP fluids that the temps came way down and that was good enough for me to use them in all my vehicles from now on.

 

[icanfixall]

What trans does this truck have and what gears does it have. Usually if its a dually it will have a set of 4.10 but if its a single rear tire it will have 3.55 gears... If you have a Gear Vendors gear splitter you can tow heavy with the 3.55 gears. If you have a turbo it will haul heavy easier too. The best towing package in my feelings is a 5 speed manual trans and a gear vendors aux trans splitter. The gv gives you double the gear options so you have plenty of gear choices.....

 

[argve]

It will pull it just fine - not going to break any speed laws or set records but will do fine. I have always had a saying that my 7.3 IDI that held true..

Non turbo my truck could pull anything at 45mph.
Turbo'd my truck could pull anything at 55mph.

I based those saying on pulling our 20ft 5k lbs boat/trailer package or our 31ft TT 9500 lbs through the mountains (KY-Tenn). I always got around 11 mpg with the Enterprise (91 CC Dually auto with 4.10 gears) both turbo'd and non turbo'd towing, running highway speeds.