After spending 10 minutes at the McDonald's drive-thru, the 89 F250 (351w) I bought the day before died when I pulled out. Started just fine, then when I got on the gas coming out of the parking lot, it acted like it was running out of gas. I put some gas in it, then it ran fine. Problems with this - tank was more than half full. Heat index was 110. It has cooled off since then, and I have ran the tank down to 1/4 without problem, so I know it wasn't starved for fuel. I have also noticed that when driving thru stop-and-go traffic at any temp above 75, there is a half second delay between throttle and response. Coolant is full, but temp gauge never comes out of the bottom of the arc, so I think the gauge is no good. Any ideas?

If it helps, the engine has 25K on a rebuild, and the tranny only has 2K on it.

 

Welcome to FTE.

And thanks for filling out your Profile so we can see where you're at.

One cannot trust factory gauges, verify the temp with a known-accurate method if in question.

You have a computer-controlled engine, and my approach is to always first ask the computer what it thinks is happening when diagnosing this kind of stuff.

Here's how:

Ford Fuel Injection » How To Run a Self-Test
Ford Ranger/Bronco II EEC-IV Testing