so what exactly is the fuel pick up tube mod
In their vast wisdom, Ford put a brittle non-fuel-resistant plastic inverted funnel-looking screen onto the ends of the metal draw tubes inside the tanks.
This plastic soon gets snapped off by the sloshing of the fuel and leaves the open end of the draw-tube at about the 1/3-tank level, such that one can no longer suck out the last 1/3-tank of fuel.
To fix, pull the fuel unit out of the tank, do some educated measuring with a wooden dip-stick, decide how much 3/8" rubber line is needed to rest on the tanks bottom PLUS the length that gets slid over the tube, "swallow-tail fork" the end (you old ear-notchers will know what I mean) of the hose such that it cannot suck to the bottom of the tank, and put it all back together.
If you use too short of a hose, it won't suck all of the fuel out.
If you use too long of a hose, it may tend to curl up and not lie on the bottom, thus being no better than a too short hose.
After this fix is done, there will be all kinds of "algae" and
**** get sucked into the fuel-lines, stopping up screens and filters for several months, until all this trash finally gets sucked out.
I highly recommend the installation of either a LUCAS glass-bottom sediment/water-seperator, or a clear housing GoldenRod fuel-filter ahead of any other pump or filter in the system, BEFORE this fix is done.
As cute as it seems, I DO NOT recommend putting any sort of filter at the end of the tube inside the tank.