I bought a 77 F-250 a few years ago. I didn't know much about it -- it's got a 460 (I think it's from a 70 Continental) and I really only use it to tow my boat ~100 miles/year.

This year, I've run it over to the next town a few times to haul some motorcycles and have burned 3 quarts of oil in ~150 miles. On top of that, top speed is about 60mph and it doesn't rev past ~3000rpms. It makes a lot of noise, burns a lot of oil, and doesn't really go anywhere.

Time for a rebuild?

Advice on what to check before I pull it?

Any other tips/thoughts on best way to rebuild this engine?

 

Oh also -- if I do decide to rebuild, is it worth it to try and find a junkyard EFI engine to use? I'd love to replace the carb with EFI but not sure how involved the swap is?

 

Not sure this helps much, but I just bought an 89 that sounds about like yours (not so much on top end, but the noise and oil). My own had been sitting for years and years and years, and leaked everything you can think of from every place you can think of it and some you couldn't (or I couldn't anyway), thanks to dry rot, etc.--in fact, I thought the rear main was gone, for instance. Anyway, while I'm still in the middle of fixing it, vacuum lines eaten away by squirrels seems to have been the worst issue for me on power and noise (it would not idle down, but stayed revved wide open, for instance), and a new oil pan gasket and timing cover did the trick on the oil. I think you'd need to pull your plugs and see how fouled they are before thinking of a rebuild, and checking compression on each too, maybe, but I'd sure look into the inexpensive before a whole engine job, but especially get under and see how bad you're pouring anything from below. (More info would help though--for instance, are you spewing blue smoke everywhere, is there oil in the overflow, etc.) What I'm learning on my first 460 is that there is a lot of little innocuous, nit-picky things that can contribute to a motor that you'd think is on its last leg, when really it isn't. That's all I got, but I'm a noob (sorry).

 

Thanks for the reply -- the odd part is that it doesn't make much blue smoke and it doesn't really leak. Yet, it seems to be burning oil at a spectacular rate. I agree, compression check is probably the next step. I've been caught up with other projects and since I only use this truck to tow my boat 1 mile at a time, it's pretty low priority.