I'm looking at retiring my old 85 Chevy with the 6.2L diesel ... 300,000 miles plus and its finally getting quite tired.

I have been looking at getting a mid 90s ford F250 or F350 with the 7.3L Powerstroke. My neighbor just loves his... plus I like the sound of them... but I know almost nothing about them. So I have some questions....

1) What I can afford is roughly $5000-$6000 ... mostly what is available for that price is trucks with 200K+ miles on them. How reliable are the Powerstroke engines with that amount of miles on them. Whats most likely going to need replacing soon?

2) Again, 200K+ miles, hows the reliability of the 5spd manual transmissions, hows the reliability of the auto trans?

3) What are some of the common problems of the 7.3L Powerstroke? What are some of the common mistakes that un-informed Powerstroke owners do to their engines?

4) any hits or tips of what i should be looking for when Purchasing a Powerstroke ... IE signs of things being messed with or abuse...

Replies can be made on the group list or via e-mail

Thanks

Dave in Kewaskum, WI

 

First of all welcome. I'll try and answer a couple of your questions but reading through the site will answere most of them. I look for overall condition of the vehicle and of course a good set of maintence records. Price is really somthing that I don't much know about. I went from a 6.5 Chebby ( Don't tell anyone) to a PSD and wish that I had never had the other. I did have all kinds of problems, that what caused the change. There are several areas to look at but you will have to know a year. Some of the guys here can give you a really good overall. Just keep checking back.
Again Welcome;

 

The average Number of miles that Ford puts up is 250k for a rebuild but I don't know where they get that # from I have need a few over that but they are tired by that time. The cummins # is 300k miles I think the New ^.0 # is higher than the 7.3 but not sure just what I heard. I think the 6.5 turbo was 200k or so. again all numbers that I have heard so DON'T quote me on them. This is not how long the enight will lats but its a good guess. It all comes down to how they were treated for those 200k or so miles.

Pleas no one think that I'm trolling in any way. I sure if I'm wrong I will be told so

 

dman01 said:
What I've heard is that International designed the Powerstroke with a 300K mile life. I've got 150K on mine so, let's see..... I've still got 1/2 of it's expected life left, and mine gets much more attention to maintenance than average.

 

I did a little checking around with some of the locals that have been running the PSD's and found that most had between 250K and 300K. I did run into one individual that has a 1999 PSD, that does a lot of hot shot pulling 9k or less usually and he has over 450K. Now thats a lot of miles. The only problem that he has run into with his is the Injector pump. He stated that about every 120K he has to replace it.. Thats some serious miliage.