I am on the fence with getting rid of my 7.3. Here's why.

Whenever I crawl underneath the truck or look under the hood I see all these different oil/fluid leaks. She has less than 200k miles and I use her to tow my boat to go fishing.

Right now I am trying to weigh if the truck is worth keeping or selling and then getting a new/newer truck.

Here are some leaks. One is obviously oil and coming from what I guess is the front main seal. I really don't know.

The other leaks going onto the U-joint look like oil leaking down the axle from the front differential.

I'm growing a business and not sure if I have time to play mechanic. However, everyone I talk to always exclaims, "You got a 7.3?! You luck SOB!" and I am kinda getting the feeling letting her go would be a mistake. FWIW, she is paid off.

Other than a slight wobble in the steering wheel at speed, she runs like a hoss.

 

All my oil, leaks in..dif'rent places....

You ain't got time to wrench, and the shops will bend you over on the repairs.. How much you want fit it and where you located?

 

Man, I thought no one replied to this thread!

I'd sell it for $10k, I'm in Pearl River, Louisiana

 

Could just be a bad timing cover seal, $10 piece at any autoparts store plus the pulley puller which you can rent.

 

A good may oil leaks start in/from the valley and drain down the back side of the engine, causing many folks to think the rear main seal is bad when it is not. The oil cooler O-rings are another favorite and will show up on the diff and then be blown back and cover all kinds of things. There are numerous fittings and sensors in the engine valley that can/do leak. Best approach is to thoroughly clean everything up and start looking from a "fresh" standpoint.

 

Like the others say, clean the engine.... Spray Simple green all over the engine... and spray all the oily mess off. That engine leak could be a simple little fix.

The other is an inner oil seal on the front differential... not a hard fix if mechanical. If not, get someone to replace both oil seals... if you need brakes, get it all done at one time.

Engine leak... we can tell you more when you send us a photo of what is leaking.

Or.... go buy you a new truck.... new trucks run all the way to $100 G's now... plus the interests... I can repair my truck a lot of times for the interest payments !

 

Welcome to the 7.leaker club Devin there is a master seal kit available for the top end that could minimize your time spent overall on leaks to one job vs several. With a little research, patience and tools most people can do the work. Like everyone else said a good cleaning is in order. One of the pics looks like a possible inner axle seal leak check the fluid in the front diff. To start

 

These are all very common leaks on a truck of this age and mileage. While frustrating, fixing those properly would be the fraction of a new truck.

I think some people use the couple small things as an excuse to go buy a newer shinier toy and who could blame you for that?

As much as I want newer and nicer things, I just pulled the motor out of my F350 to reseal the entire thing and give it another 20 years of use. The money saved on buying a new truck can go towards other adventures.

 

this one is equally obvious and unfortunate. your inner axle seals are leaky.
this is not a quick repair

 

Umm, yeah, there is nothing easy about that. The inner axle seals on these are inside the diff, right next to the carrier. What you see on the outside, right at the end of the tube, is just a dust "seal" So, the entire front axle has to come apart. This means removing the hubs to get the axle shafts out, in order to drop the diff out.
So, if you have the stock unit bearing hub assembly setup, along with the stock knuckle seals, you get to deal with that nightmare, which requires several expensive special tools to do right.
Might as well plan on doing the u-joints in the shafts while your there. Might as well do brakes if they are even close to needing it.
Might as well do carrier and pinion bearings/seals too, since its all apart.
At this point, you'd be crazy not to ball joints as well, since the job is 75% done already at this stage.
Now, comes the real fun part.... Actually getting the inner axle seals installed properly, so that you don't put it all together only to have them leak. DON"T cheap out here. Buy the proper tool to do it. Torqueking 4x4 has a good installer tool with a positive depth stop. Those seals are $30/each. It doesn't take many ruined seals from trying to use some alternate method, before you could have just done it right by buying the tool.

As for the knuckle seals and unit bearing assembly....... I permanently eliminated those issues by doing it a SpynTech conversion. Not only does it get rid of the failure prone unit hub bearings ( reverts it back to the old school style serviceable bearings), it also eliminates that whole funky knuckle seal crap. Of course this means you have to use manual locking hubs, as the auto vacuum hubs will no longer work. Actually, they no longer even fit, as the kit comes with longer 35 spline outer stub axles.

 

i just let my dif leak down to where it doesn't leak out anymore. 50,000km later its fine.

i want the dynatrac conversion kit soooo bad but ***** is it expensive!

 

SpynTech is cheaper. The parts are good quality. However, the guy who answers the phone is a jack@ss. The instructions they send are for a Dodge, because "their file for the Ford instructions was corrupted, and its not worth it for them to make a new one". So, the instructions are not clear or correct, but you should be able to figure it out. Also be aware, the 4 studs that mount the spindle to the knuckle are not included, so you would need to buy them at the parts store.

Yes, its a big chunk of change, but if you keep going through unit bearings like I was, then it will pay for itself eventually.

 

A smart business will make customer service a priority.
are you logging or something? how many miles were you getting out of unit bearings?

 

I was going through front bearings/hubs every 3-6 months, not really any unusual miles or anything. Just as a daily driver as well as hauling scrap metal. I'm sure the bombed out pot holed roads I sometimes drive on, when I have to go into cities, didn't help. But, really it was just poorly made parts more then anything else.

I started with Moog, from Advance Auto Parts. They kept failing in the same way. They would all show clear signs of seal failure, with a radial spray pattern of grease on the backside of the wheel mounting flange. There was also clearly a lack of quality control, as you could pull 10 of them off the shelf, and they would all have varying amounts of preload. Some would be very loose. Some would be very tight. Some in between. Some would turn smooth. Some would be rough or have a spot or 2 where they seem to catch. I was bringing so many back under warranty, the manager started accusing me of doing something shady, and/or that my truck was somehow at fault. Low and behold, eventually, one day he told me he had gotten an internal advisory that Moog had found the very problem I had kept pointing out. Failed seals. Along with the big nut on the back loosening and reducing pre-load. Hmmmm. I guess I was right all along. They changed the design slightly, to supposedly fix the issue.
Only, they now created a new problem. They no longer fit. At least the ones I got my hands on. Once installed, the end of the axle shaft was too far recessed into the hub to be able to put the 3 washers and be able to seat the c-clip. The new hubs had a slightly incorrect installed depth.
Soo, at that point, I gave up on Moog. As I had to have something right away, I tried the Driveworks. They also didn't hold up. Same QC issues, with wildly different pre-loads right out of the box, as well as the same seal failures as the Moog.
In the meantime, I looked for something better. OEM Motorcraft was just way too expensive. I settled on SKF , as they have a good reputation. I ordered a pair off ebay. When they showed up, I took one look and put them back in the box, thinking they were counterfeit. The looked nothing like the marketing photos from SKF, lacking desirable features, and the ones I got were covered in shavings from the machining/manufacturing process. After many phone calls to various sellers, local and otherwise, to have them physically check their inventory, I came to the conclusion that either there is massive widespread counterfeiting of SKF parts, or they have lowered their standards considerably, as everybody had the exact same thing I had received. So, SKF off the list.

So, I decided I either had to live with continuous wheel bearing failures, ruined tires, and the aggravation of having to frequently change them, as well as the expense, as Advance was no longer willing to warranty them; or spend the money on the SpynTech.