A friend of mine got so frustrated with his old work truck that he gave it to me. It's a 1999 F250 Super with only the 5.4 auto and 160,000 miles. The body has minimal rust and no "severe" problems. The list of problems is as follows; one or more coil packs are bad, all plugs and wires, left valve cover leak, left exhaust manifold gasket leak, ball joints, all brake pads and all front calipers need to be replaced, tranny leak, and last but not least a abnormally loud "rapping" noise only at start up.
I just tackled the exhaust manifold leak which proved to be very easy only after spending a few dollars with my Snap-On guy. Now that I have every thing filleted open I'll plan on installing the very expensive valve cover gaskets. These gaskets are only made by only one company that I can see. Average price so far is about $50.
My main question is the lack of mode 6 on my MT2500 Snap-On scanner. Some of you guys seem to be much more knowledgeable than I on troubleshooting the coils on this truck. I'd rather replace the fault coils than replacing all of them.Any help would be great.

 

If you are digging in to it so far already why not go through and replace as much as you can - regardless of if it is "bad" or not? You're already at 160,000 miles with it - how much longer will everything last? If you are in there already I think it makes sense to do a bit more work now than what you think so you don't have to re-visit for a long time.

 

$50 is a bit high for the gasket.

Try RockAuto - FEL-PRO Part # VS50481R $27.79.

 

Now would be a good time to do serious upgrades like forged pistons and rods.

Just in case you want to bolt on a supercharger or something.

 

Sounds like a money pit to me.

 

If you do all the work yourself you'll be ok

 

Sounds to me like you have a free 160k miles truck that has had little maintenance.

A tune up, (replace plugs, COPs and boots) will take care of most of the complaints. Loud noise on start up may be piston slap, so just live with it.

Trans leak - dump some transmission sealer into the transmission and see if it seals up.

 

lack of maintance is all that has happened. Once you get it right I'd bet it will be a good truck.