Well, my bike broke down in Spearfish Canyon last week during Sturgis and I ended up calling Maverick Motors in Spearfish in hopes that they would rent me a truck to haul it back to our camper, long story short, I ended up buying the truck. It is a 97 Crew F250 4x4 powerstroke with 204,000 miles. The tranny is new, not sure from where, but I was able to confirm by how spotless the case is, the exhaust has all been replaced, it has an air intake and it came with an Edge Evolution and good 285/75/16's. I paid $7000 for it, I hope that was decent, the dealer was a helluva nice guy. I had to sell my old '84 f150 2wd reg cab with 351w and a bunch of mod's for $1000, loved that truck, but am off to a good start with this one, especially now that me, wife and 3 kids fit. Hope I don't annoy you'all with too many silly questions, but it didn't take long to figure out that this is far from your regular gasser and from the old 6.2 diesel suburban I had. The only thing I see that may need attention is what appears to be a rear main oil leak and I think the first mod I'll make is a set of pillar gauges for boost, egt, and trans temp.

 

Sounds like a good start, but be careful, once you start to mod, its hard to stop. . .

 

Check and see if (hopefully so) they replaced the stock downpipe and put in a good, wide open 3" downpipe. The stock one looks like the head of a cobra. It comes off the back of the turbo and heads down the back of the passenger side of the engine.
It won't be a rear mainseal leak. It will most definitely be either an oil leak in the bottom of your turbo where it seals up against the pedistal or it may be leaking fuel somewhere up top and it makes its way out the drain hole on the back of the valley and looks like a rear mainseal leak. The fuel pumps often leak when they are near the end of their lives.
That is an excellent mod to have, especially if you're running performance chip and/or towing. It's very important to keep your exhaust gas temperatures down and you certainly don't want to burn up your tranny like I did. The tranny temp could save you a lot of money and will also help you to really get to know when you do things that make your truck work harder. It will help you to really feel what and how your truck is doing.

 

BTW it was an excellent price. about half of blue book. i have been looking for a f-350 CC in the south or west (no Rust) int he 10k range and they have that many miles and more on them.

i also echo what f350 hauler said about the oil leak you will find the valley of the engine is wet then just clean it and trace the oil to the source. then let us know where its coming from and we can give you all the info you need

 

Thanks for the info. It is confirmed that the downpipe is 3" also. Do you have any good ideas on cleaning the engine compartment, I'm just a little worried about getting it too wet. If you could check out this link and tell me what you think about this gauge kit and price. Thanks again.
http://www.rpmoutlet.com/powerstw.htm

 

i pressure wash my engine...

i avoid the idm and my intake though.

i also hear from lots of psd owners simple green works wonders. i dont have that kind of time with a 3 year old.

 

i simple green. The first time was a bit more time consuming but since then just every now and then spray with water, then spray the simple green one and set for a while then spray off keeping form the open intake and alternator with too much water. the two times i pressure washed mine i made the ebpv close by itself for a few minutes.

 

Thats tough to have to go through that at sturgis. Hope the rest of your trip wasn't killed ours was a blast. Watch out for RPM outlet. I tried to order gauges from them 2 months ago, got a UPS tracking number and everything but it never shipped. I emailed them after a week and got no response, I started emailing and calling them after 2 weeks with no response and all I got on the phone was an hour long wait talking to a computer. After all that I just got a new card and said to hell with em. Thought I would let you know to watch out for them and if you do a search in this forum you will find other people with the same problems.

 

travisd, check with some of our site sponsors, alot of them carry the gauge kits and are very helpful. Congrats on the purchase.