Thanks for the tips, will be looking for those soon, although about emissions not so sure, thing is straight piped, the previous owner had his taste, the sound is amazing though, lots of drone @ 80mph is the only con. I thought about replacing my work gasser van with it "06 E150," but after driving it for a bit I might keep it for personal use, god is the 7.3 addicting! I will take it to work when the gasser decides its time, it has 260k miles ford 4.6 still runs solid.

Hahahaha, this is not specific to ford either, my dad bought an 07 savana, supposedly it had 170k miles, he brought it to me for some miscellaneous items, and the sec I took a look over, I knew it had to be over 250k miles. I based this on the inside and paint condition, coupled with the ammount of leak, and goo coming from it. You bet your butt of an LS based engine wont be leaking like that at 170k, neither its hydraulics. Turns out a quick check confirmed my assumptions, it actually had just over 320k miles, sold at 170k for 7k. Had that been known before that would have been like 2k dollar van. Lets just say he got a refund. Oh and that one had a digital odometer.

At least with a digital you wouldn't know you got taken advantage of, or atleast it wouldn't be as obvious. although it at the same time, it might deter people from doing it, as you would need access to a decent computer/software to do it, instead with analog ones, any hack can be adventurous, kind of like in my case, the 1 and 2 in the first digit are in between each other, so its like hmmm, is this 100k or 200k? you know what I mean, whoever did it was a hack that I see you guy's replies. Although if the cluster was replaced with a used one due to the original being faulty, I can kind of see it too, as it seems ford clusters can be finicky, I have to tap mine on the gasser to make it light up, bad solder joints, but its a digital. my 03 v6 was analog, so it was prob changed to digital sometime after 03 for E series.

Yes, I would say its in decent conditions, with the exception of the roof, I dont know why ford never addressed the Roof rusting issues with the E series, after 10 years you start to see the rust start to form on the drip edge seams, if you let it go unchecked you end up with bad rust, on this van it just started, so i can just remove the seam sealer, remove the light rust, prime it, reseal it and paint. Just your typical E series problems. outside of that its pretty nice.

Just to be clear, all of what I've learned about the 7.3 has been from this forum, not even a month ago I didn't know about ford using UVCH's, It took me a while to figure what a "buzz test" was every time i read somebody saying that. The previous owner had the driver side replaced but the pass was original, When I drove it back home 150 miles back, it started to miss and shake 5 miles from home thank fully, parked it, started reading and searching here and it gave me a direction on how to start diagnosing, and how to go about it. skip 3 weeks later and I had it all diagnosed and repaired. Harness was brittle and it was halfway unplugged, I read about the 50cent mod, but come on, harness was brittle and it was time. Just so you guys know a single valve cover gasket and harness will set you down $500 at a diesel shop, I base this number on a receipt the previous owner included, along a $300 for a fuel rebuild. I ended up resealing everything on the top end,from plenums to o-rings and also upgrading some oil/fuel lines and the oil crossover mod,replaced some wiring and bad sensors all with OE motorcraft stuff, from what I got its either motorcraft or go home, so based on that I can easily assume I have over 2.5k in labor including a turbo rebuild, and even then I think am being conservative. You guys I swear diving into a van 7.3 is the most challenging thing I have done to date, I used to complain about little things here and there, but this van has really changed my perspective, god almighty the frustration I went through, even the valve cover in the pass side, it is so hard to get to the lower bolts, you have like 1 inch of travel there for the wrench, and its not a pleasant position to be contorting in. Another little thing I leaned is that, if you drop a socket or any small tool for that matter, the 7.3 monsters will eat said tool. I lost 2 10mm sockets somewhere in there. also, while using a crow's foot wrench to disconnect the EBPS it fell and I couldn't find it for until i reached inside the water pump pulley, god knows how it decided to get there, and it was either get the pump out or waste 3 hours to get it off. I went with the latter and wasted all that time. Its been quite a learning experience, and I know this is not the last of it. I just hope I dont have to go back there anytime soon, because I did all that hoping that would be the case. I'm telling you guys in the van you do things blind unless you undress the entire engine, and it is just not fun. the only easy thing is replacing the turbo. Its right in your face with the doghouse.

 

I love vans but man are they a bitch to work on,
still, Id take a 7.3 one in heart beat and suffer through it,

 

My obs had the odo reset to zero once because at the time I didn't know the odo rolled back to 300k when it hit 400k (obs have digital) I thought it was "glitch" so it can be done I wouldn't recommend it if you plan on selling, I know someone that did 2 years for that offence.

 

I think if you want a 7.3 you really have to plan on wrenching them yourself to afford one. Sounds like you are doing great. I cant imagine tackling 7.3 van first...before a truck. My van leaked at the roof lip and at a window. Easy fixes but after owning gas vans i knew what to expect. Ive bought both high mile and low mile 7.3s. I figure either will need work so it just depends on the $ and the amount of work ill have to do. I bought my e350 based on photos only. Paid 4200 and 1000 to ship it. I picked this one as it had 77k on odometer and gov 1 owner. I never could have imagined pulling off thr valve covers had i not worked on 7.3 trucks first.

 

It sounds like you got a smokin deal even if it does have the higher miles.

That 200k entry might have been a mistake and the miles shown could be correct. Look at the dates/miles leading up to the 200k entry and you might be able to tell if it was an oddly sudden jump up in miles (incorrectly reported) or if it was incremental and actually was at 200K. It's also possible that the mileage had been turned back a bunch of times and never got reported in a way that it showed. I had the mileage on my truck incorrectly input twice in a row by the same emissions test tech so the mileage history on it looks shady wile I know it was legit mistakes.

The tweaked digit on the odometer isn't always an indication of fraud, I've had a few that just became that way on their own. The truck mentioned above had misaligned digits so coupled with the reported history it looked super shady. I told the buyer about it and gave him the screwed up smog test receipts so he could show the reason for the discrepancy in the future if/when he decided to sell it.

 

It is pretty much impossible to mechanically ‘roll back’ the odometer on these trucks. It can be done electronically with the right tools/software, but not likely someone would bother to drop 50k miles.

More likely there was a problem with the cluster and it was replaced or possibly someone ‘upgraded’ to a SuperDuty cluster with tachometer? (E-series don’t have a tach). The E-series did not get digital odometer when the SD’s switched.

 

Let's not ignore the fact that engine mechanics sometimes fat finger odometer readings out of laziness, carelessness, pure accident, etc. I helped one of my sons purchase a Tundra where there were some mileage discrepancies in the history reported on Carfax. I was able to use a combination of seller's receipts and calling the shop where the work was done to figure out what had happened, and it turned out the odometer was correct and that the "oddly noted mileage" was a simple documentation mistake by the shop.

I'm not saying taht the OP is wrong in his assessment.... just that it happens.

 

I bought my '87 F150 in 1991. I have every state inspection since then in the glove box with each year's mileage on it to prove the mileage, in case anyone cares. I'm afraid it will be worn out by the time if and when I decide to sell it, and 130k, 230k or 330k won't make that much difference.