Hey everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

I'm about to take my 2nd chance with a Ford truck (73 F-350 seized on me the day after I put on a new intake manifold and carb), and have been searching for an 04-06 for the last few weeks.

I was looking at 4.2s and 4.6s initially, until I ran across a FX4 that was at a dealer in my neighborhood and fell in love with it. Now after doing a little more research, I keep finding all sorts of problems owners are having with the 5.4 Triton.

The truck has 56,000 miles on it, so besides the routine 60k service items, are there any other signs I should be looking out for that may cause engine failure or transmission failure in the future?

I'm looking to purchase it from a ma and pop used dealership that offers a 60 day warranty and does a full inspection of the vehicle on site, but was still planning on taking it somewhere for a 3rd party inspection (not planning on taking it to a Ford dealer).Anything I should be asking the mechanic doing the inspection to check for? Any advice?


Thanks for reading. Below is what I'm hoping to soon own!

-Alex

 

You have to let yourself be the judge. Take your time and look it over. My personal philosophy of used car buying is look under it. Look hard. I think it tells all the secrets of a used car. Next I take the vin and go to a dealership. I have them to run the vin and look for anything bad. Lets face it.....if something really bad happened, that trucks warranty would cover the motor and other things. Lastly I do a car fax. If it comes back clean then you are all good to go. If all the door jams line up and you dont see any overspray or anything like that on the truck then you are good.

Remember about the forum.......alot of people come for help with problems. This is a BIG national forum with great people and great help. Not many people get on here and say how their truck is just doing so awesome. People on here are awesome and have a wealth of knowledge on theses trucks.

I hope this helps! By the way.......Ford is the best and that truck your looking at rocks!

 

The biggest problem that I have heard of with the 5.4 is plugs breaking in the heads. The problem is that the plugs in there are a 2-piece design. Often times carbon can build up and when you try to remove the plugs they break in the head. There is a TSB out there for this problem and a removal tool in case they do break in the head. If possible, you could ask the dealer to replace the plugs for you as part of the deal. Other than that, what was said above is great advice.

 

Yeah tollie is right on the money. When I bought mine the sales guy was surprised as **** when I got down and crawled under the truck on my back. If the truck has seen a lot of dirt and mud (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) you will be able to find some still caked under there. I don't care how well someone cleans there truck they won't get it all. This can give you some insight though as to how the truck was driven by the previous owner.

Anyway good luck it looks to be a real beauty if you purchase it you should be very happy with your selection.

 

Does this mean that any plug purchased from the auto parts store will be a 1 piece design to keep this from happening again, or are the replacement plugs the same?


Thanks for all the advice and thoughts on the situation. I'll be crawling around under her tomorrow....

 

Reading on this forum is biased info also, 95% of the posts are from people needing a problem fixed. I'm sure most of these trucks go through life without having any problems. The plug deal is probably the biggest challenge that faces most trucks, but that isn't as bad now that it's figured out how to deal with it.

 

I believe that Champion is the only company that makes a 1 piece plug for the truck. If you do a search on this forum for spark plugs you will have a huge wealth of information all about the spark plugs in these trucks.