Hi All,

Long time OBS fan. Back in November of 2015, I picked up my first one, a 95 flare side from the original owner. 3 Weeks later, I was sitting at a red light and got rear ended by a kid in a Hyundai doing 50 who never even stepped on the brakes, and pushed me into the excursion in front of me.

In March, I replaced it with a 1997 F250 Heavy Duty.
As a kid, my father had the same truck only long bed and 7.3l. Mine is a 460 7.5l, which i did not want. There were quite a few 460's for sale right in my area, that i didn't even bother looking at. This one popped up on craigslist in Suffern NY with two terrible pictures and no engine info. I emailed the owner, he told me it was a 351 and i headed up there to check it out. I was pleasantly surprised by the condition, until i Popped the hood of course. He legitimately didn't realize it was a big block. At that I walked away. 2 weeks had gone by and he shot me a text apologizing again for wasting my time, and asking me to just throw out a price that would make me comfortable with buying the truck, I did, and he agreed. So here we are. It came with a nice big western Plow.

Day 1



It needed Ball Joints and a wheel bearing on the front driver's side, so I did that right away.



I've also replaced the shocks with Bilsteins, the fuel pump and sending unit for the front gas tank, and Just threw in a bluetooth panasonic head unit last night.

It currently needs a tune up, a rear main seal, and a Y pipe as it has a nasty exhaust leak right at the exhaust manifold flange.

I mainly use it to haul cars/parts around.







It cleans up quite nicely.

 

Nice ride!

 

Why didn't you want a 7.5L?

 

Thank you.

Now that i've owned one, my reasons were silly. I was strictly thinking of fuel mileage, which wouldn't have been any better with the other options any way.

It would be nice to trade for a long bed Powerstroke, but I do love this truck.

 

Ordered up a Y pipe from Rockauto because its cracked on the passenger side, and the exhaust leak is atrocious.

Here's a video.

I'm going to get the Rear main as well as this y pipe taken care of at the same time. Then i'm looking to do a cat back. Likely either a Flowmaster 50 Delta, or a Magnaflow muffler to dual turndowns at the back corners. but we shall see what I end up with.

I had to move my tool box from my storage unit yesterday, and I was there by myself. Its a bit too big and awkward to lift myself. Luckily, I had a chain long enough in the bed, and an engine hoist in the storage unit.

 

Did some cluster directing today. My truck didn't have a tach, I found a cluster with tach from a 97 on eBay. Took them apart cleaned them up, swapped over my speedometer to keep mileage true, and voila. Working tach. The truck the new cluster came from had over 321,000 miles on it.

 

Had to replace battery terminals today.

 

Nice work. Silly question, but how do you separate the dials on the gauge cluster? Thank you.

Red

 

Did the tach work with existing plugs?

 

They're all individual sections. You simply just pull on them and they release. I believe you have to start with the center and work your way to the outsides but i could have that backwards, once its open you can see which section overlaps which, and what order it obviously has to come apart in.

Yup, plug and play. As long as you get the correct cluster. There are a few different clusters and you pretty much need to get one from the same year as your truck.

 

I'm pretty positive, that i want to swap my TTB with a solid front axle and put the truck at 350 height.

A buddy of mine had done the swap to his truck, and had 3:55's that he was going to be removing to install super duty axles. At which point I was going to buy both front and rear axles and suspension. Then he changed his mind and sold the truck yesterday. Anyone got a dana 60 and f350 suspension blocks laying around?

 

The Y-pipe and rear main seal have been replaced. No more exhaust or oil leaks, and I can turn my heat on without breathing in oil smoke. Also had to replace the o2 sensor, the oil pan, dip stick and dip stick tube. as they were all rusted. Which leads me to my next issue. I think i got either the incorrect dip stick or dipstick tube. The truck has 6 qts of oil in it and its barely touching the dip stick. My old dipstick was broken, so i can't even compare to that. Does anyone have a 460 and able to measure the dipstick length?

 

I'm on the prowl for some F350 Rear leaf spring blocks, and front f350 leaf springs. I want to raise this up to 350 height, and figured that would be the cheapest route and maintaining OEM parts.

 

I was under the impression that the height difference in the front is the Dana 60 solid axle (350) vs the TTB Dana 50 (250) I've heard the TTB springs are actually STIFFER than the F350 springs because of the leverage from the TTB arms.

 

You may very well be correct, and I may be misinformed. I would also love the Dana 60.