How long can it sit for?

[dirtbiker]

Hi everyone,

This may be a stupid question... But I'm down at school now and I've got the 6.9 F150 with me, it's running great and got me about 20 mpg on the highway at 55 mph on the way down. Anyway, my question is how long is it alright for me to let the truck sit for without running it? Is a week alright? I usually only need to drive it or have time to drive it once per week (and I'll let take it for a good drive rather than just to the store and killing it), but if you guys think it should be run more I can certainly go and start/run it for a bit in between the times when I can drive it. I'm still new to diesel and am not sure what is the allowable amount of time for a diesel to sit un-started for.

Thanks guys!

 

[lindstromjd]

Pfft... just a week? I let mine sit for 2 months once at my parent's house, went out to fire it up, and she lit off like I had shut it down 10 seconds prior. I've seen plenty of these old things sit for a few months on end and as long as you don't have a battery drain or air intrusion, it'll light off like it's nothing.

 

[JohnZ]

My 7.3 sat in storage for nearly 3 years. charged the batteries and it started right up no problems. I doubt it had to even turn over twice before starting. I had put in a double dose of fuel additive and topped the tanks off to help fight off condensation in the tanks. A few weeks should not affect the truck at all

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk 4

 

[dirtbiker]

Awesome, thanks guys. I most likely won't leave it for more than two weeks though because to be honest, I just love driving it. So it'll probably continue to get run once a week, if not that then at least every two weeks.

Thanks!

 

[kc0stp]

So long as the fuel doesn't go bad these trucks can sit indefinitely without any problems, heck for any vehicle a week or 2 is nothing.

 

[towcat]

this truck was parked from 2005-2012. note the dust. put in two new batteries and she fired right up.
Fordsnguns borrowed the truck and is driving it daily. HASN'T CHANGED THE FUEL FILTER YET. if the fuel isn't contaminated, you have nothing to worry about.

 

[Full Monte]

How about a couple years? The main thing you have to be careful of is the batteries going dead on you. I've had this happen more than once. Installing a battery on/off switch on + side of each battery would help. I just did that.

 

[freebird01]

last year i pulled a truck out of a farm field that sat for 6-7 years...put a set of batteries in it and she fired up without much argument...

 

[SparkandFire]

My truck sat almost four months while I was in Washington.
Got home and had two flat tires, but other than that it fired right up.

 

[GOOSE]

The rust from sitting hurts them more than the engine not being ran, at least around here.

 

[icanfixall]

A long sitting truck developes animals making nests is odd places. Rats in the intake. That can be a mess. Or rats on the heater ducts.. Nothing worse than rat ***** smell heating up. If the fuel system is tight and no return line leaks it will easily handle the 2 weeks sitting. If you find the batterys drain down just remove the grounds because they usually are easy to get too.

 

[rockbender]

The only other thing to consider is to put some sort of fuel conditioner in as winter approaches or make sure that you've got winter blend in your tank before it gets cold. On that note, keeping your tank closer to full rather than empty will help minimize condensation in the tank too.