Quite a while back I asked some questions about towing a trailer across the country. I figured I'd post and tell everyone how it went.
Truck:
92 F-150 ext cab, 4x4, 351, auto trans, 3.55 rear. 109K miles before 117K miles after.
Trailer:
24' enclosed with a 87 RX7 turbo inside. Weight on axles was 5700lbs according to the truck scales. Tongue weight was around 600-700lbs I'm guessing.
Towing went smoothly over the ~3900ft Siskyou pass about 30miles from Medford. Kept the truck running day and night until New Mexico where it decided to quit while we were driving, coasted to the road and stopped. Checked fuel pump reset thing, no problem. Switched tanks and it started right up and we were off. Lucky the rear tank was full. Delay was about 5 min.
From NM all the way to Florida we could only use about 5-7 gal out of the front tank, rear worked fine. This gave us about 150 mile range, that sucked, almost ran out of gas on I-10 in Texas at night, 5 gal can in the truck came in handy. We arrived in Pensacola FL 54hrs after leaving Medford OR, stayed the night and hopped on the road to Ormond Beach first thing in the morning. Found Ford dealership about 5 miles from Hotel that night and took the truck in the next morning at 7am. Truck was back a 10am with new check valves in the fuel lines.
I checked the message board while staying at a friends house in Pensacola, found lots of posts about check valves, couldn't post because my computer remembers my password. Oh yeah the truck worked on the front tank fine without the trailer before it was fixed.
Raced above mentioned RX7 in the www.grassrootsmotorsports.com $2002 Challenge and came in 3rd overall out of 59 cars.
Packed up the truck and left Orlando at 3pm on a Sunday, arrive in Medford OR 67hrs later...
The truck got 8.5 mpg for 7200 miles, worst tank was 6.25mpg and we got several in the low 10's while the wind was at our back in Texas.
We could manage about 65-70mph staying in OD for about 50% of the time. Steepest hills slowed us to about 40-45mph.
We had sway bars on the trailer but had them too loose to stop the bouncing over the concrete freeways in So Cal. Tightened them up in Alabama and it made it so much better over those crappy concrete freeways on I-10 there.
The truck drove pretty well, straight and stable going down the road. Towing that much weight again I'd like to have a 4.10 rear, a diesel and a F-250 or better but the F-150 did the job fine. I was happy that nothing went wrong with the truck besides those stupid check valves. 12yr, 150,000mile warranty through Ford, they will fix them for free but only if you complain. Thanks Gary Yeoman Ford in FL for fixing the truck in 3hrs!
>Pretty impressive performance,is that the stock motor in the
>RX7?What mods if any?
>
>Billy
87 RX7 turbo, straight through exhaust 2.25" leading to 3" pipe, cone filter on the stock airflow sensor. Motor is stock with 142K miles on it, no emissions. The car is lightened by about 400lbs, looks totally streetable (carpet, etc still there), it really isn't. Typical bolt-ons for suspension, R-compound tires for autocross and drags.
Best 1/4 mile was 13.425 @ 104.xx mph, it'd be a sleeper if it had a muffler.
>Hmm... May I ask just where the Ford's check valves are?
>Fuel rails or fuel lines? It may be different for my I-6,
>but I'd still like to know.
It seems like the check valves should be in the same place for the I-6 but who knows. Since Ford was willing to replace them for free I didn't really get my head down there and locate them. I'd guess that the check valves are in the fuel lines leading from the fuel pumps. I think was was happening is that the check valve would leak and not allow the fuel pressure to build in the fuel line, when the high low of towing was applied to the motor the pump couldn't keep up with the demand. Without the trailer on it worked fine.
Anyway to finally answer the question, I think the check valves are located in the lines coming from the fuel pumps for the dual tank set-up.
I work at a ford dealership and have installed many of these kits. They include a check valve for the front and the rear tank that are installed between the fuel line and the steel fuel tube coming out of the fuel pump. Depending on the recall that comes up for the 93 truck you may or may not get a new fuel regulator. Depending on application they can be a real to install.
Thanks Ponyracer - nice to have a Ford dealership guy here on the boards.
I guess I won't play with it since, if it connects to the end of the fuel pump, it would surely be a pain to install. I've already dropped the tank once - and I really hope to not do that again. When it comes time to change the fuel pump I hope to have a few buddies help me take the bed off to get at it (beacause then I'll be able to sand and paint parts of the rear frame and bed i can't get to at the moment).
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1999 F-150 XL, Extended Cab, Long bed, 4.6L, 4x4, M5OD (geez, the truck's description is just about as long as the truck itself! )
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. Oh yeah the truck worked on the front tank fine without the trailer before it was fixed.
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to install.
