My mostly-stock, new-to-me '97 F350 dually PSD 73L got it's first towing workout on Saturday. To stave off divorce, I moved two of my three trucks an hour away, out of wife's view, and gave her back several parking spaces. Happy wife, happy truck owner. So I towed the F150 first, then the Chevy 3600. I tried to get a weight on the tilt trailer I rented, but they didn't know, and their guess wasn't very good. Guessing total payload was ~6,000 to 7,000 pounds. Truck was well behaved, and on the primary climb of 1.7 miles, 520 ft elevation gain, 5.3% grade, it held around 45mph when slow beach traffic didn't get in the way. The truck is highly stock, from a performance standpoint. Would you say that 45mph is strong, weak, or average for a 24yo truck with no performance mods? Independent of speed, I watched EGTs (rarely above 600, except in heart of climb, where it hit ~900) and tranny temps, where needle barely lifted, except on downgrade in 2nd, where it moved up maybe 20% of total gauge range. On the flats, no problem hitting 60. Everything stable with that load at that speed.

Welcome any observations from those who know towing with an F350 dually PSD well.


First towing test


Second towing test

 

I would say you did pretty good for a stock truck.

 

Same here. That’s a beautiful Chevy!

 

Thank you both.

 

Sooo... When is the build thread going to start?

 

Well, what's your definition of "build"??? Interesting timing on your message, as I am shopping on Riffraff right now, and was about to ask this forum "What else should I put in my first order?".

Thus far, I've put Hydra, it's dash kit, and Riffraff up pipes in my shopping cart. What about up-pipe collector manifold, bolts, etc? What other likely replacements should I consider "while in there"?

Overall goals are:

• a civilized family ride for Airstream road trips (read quiet, odor free cabin, comfy seats, good nav and sound)
• reliability on such road trips. Breakdown on family vacation a bummer, obviously
• good visibility to real-time performance, towing and otherwise (Torque Pro + existing EGT and tranny gauges). Admitted data geek.
• improved fuel economy and improved carbon footprint (yes, even as a diesel owner)
• reversibility of as many mods as possible. I value stock, and next owner may as well value my keeping all OEM parts and minimal surgery
• improved torque, for pulling 10,000# skid steer on 4,000# dump trailer

BTW, the lumber rack will be here in about a month, and the Alpine flight deck is ready to install. But neither of those projects are truly "wrenching", right?
Oh and the black leather seats from a 2011 F250SD also ready to go in, though I am expecting some custom fab work and/or drilling for that job.

Forum question: keep this all in my original thread, or scatter my questions around, keeping each thread specific to a particular topic?

And apologies to OP for highjacking this thread OT. Oh, wait...

 

hey man your thread your rules, you can have it all on one (most people do).

Sounds like a fun little project! You've got a pretty good plan for a reliable tow pig. New seats will be huge... I "rebuilt" mine a couple of months ago by putting more foam on the clapped out seat cushions... waiting for a black leather set to fall in my lap.

Looking forward to seeing what you do.

The only additional thing I would add is a coolant filter. Dieselsite is where I got mine.

 

Thanks Jarrett. I will look into the coolant filter. Your signature reminds me a question that's been lingering: what's the efuel all about? I gather it's going electric fuel pump, and imagine higher volume/pressure for better performance is the basic idea? Appreciate any guidance on that. Also, open to anyone's "best bang for the buck" list.

 

E-Fuel is exactly that, replacing the mechanical fuel pump and fuel bowl in the valley with an electric fuel pump and typically a pair of filters on the frame rail. Pressure by and large should stay the same (around 60-65psi) between mech and electric pumps.

Pros: Eliminates potential for fuel leaks in the valley from often problematic fuel bowl/regulator assembly, and the difficult to change fuel pump. Future-proofing for higher performance mods. Easy change filter and pump on the side of the road. Depending on kit, possibly no more banjo bolt which is notoriously hard to realign in the truck.

Cons: expensive, depending on kit you might have to pull turbo to install.

A lot of people run with the stock setup until it starts leaking, and then replace the whole system. If you get the kit that requires turbo to be pulled, it's a good time to change out the downpipe for a less restrictive one and install bellowed up pipes to fix exhaust leaks.

 

Efuel is just better all around reliability and performance. Plus you don’t have diesel fuel leaking everywhere and rebuilding/replacing the fuel bowl every year or so.

where did you end up finding those seats? That’s something I’ve been wanting for a long time

 

Thank you both on the e-fuel background. Dually noted. (Pun intended)

In Seattle, 20min from the seller of the truck, coincidentally. When I tried to negotiate price, they said "NFW. Just came in a few weeks ago, and in high demand." Guess I got lucky. They seemed to have better inventory and better detail regarding their inventory than most places I checked.
Al's Lynwood Truck Parts.

 

Interesting. I’ve been looking for those or possibly an older king ranch or something. 400k seats aren’t comfortable

 

My Royal Blue fabric seats are in excellent condition, with a mere 225,000 miles on them. Not sure the back bench has more than 5,000 butt miles.

 

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...purchased.html

That is the most basic, complete, low frills e-fuel kit I know of around.

 

Keeping the truck stock-ish is nice, but suspect that getting it at least to the SD level is the ultimate goal. Taking the truck up to SD level will not hurt value either.

Toward priorities given the stated objectives, here is my vote:
- Look into Good Sam or some other type of towing provider. Costs and benefits will vary. With appropriate Good Sam coverage, towing for both the vehicle and trailer is available. But, note that the towing might go to the nearest acceptable location of Good Sam's choosing (ie: repair shop or campground) as opposed to the most personally desirable one. Good Sam is not the only player in this space.

- Fluid Refresh. If not already done, change lubes so that there is a known refresh point and to get an idea of maintenance by the texture / color of what came out. There are a lot of threads on whether to do a trans fluid swap, or not and I will leave this topic alone.

- Transmission. Try to find out if it is pure OE, or was hardened by a reputable shop. Personally, am not much help on what to look for here as I use hand-shakers. As noted in one of the other threads, the OE transmission is known to not do so well with heavy loads for long.

- Check for durability. If there are any OE looking rubber hoses (fuel, HPOP, etc), they should get replacement. Would also look at brake lines and consider an end-to end refresh. RABS (rear ABS) module might need replacing. If possible, do an injector buzz test to at least get an idea of whether the sound of each injector is consistent with each other.

- Cooler Breathing. This platform is pre-intercooler and, based on the heavy towing, adding one will help. Your choice on whether to keep the turbo or swap to one with behaviors better for towing. Also, injector choice will drive whether to keep the existing turbo.

NOTE: After this point, a pyrometer / EGT is highly recommended and likely mandatory.

- Better Fueling. There are two paths to go with this one. This path will also need a bit of homework to figure out whether the truck has single shot (AA) or split shot (AB) injectors. First path is a chip. Favorite chip at the moment is Hydra as it comes with access to a database of 'canned' tunes and allows for custom tuning from a programmer of choice. Second is bigger injectors. Am deliberately going to leave little detail on this as there are *many* options. Best bet is to search a bit on what is available. The injector path might also need supporting mods.

- Efuel. Plenty of information exists on benefits of this mod. Not absolutely necessary, but a nice to do. If the fuel bowl cracks and / or pump springs a leak, this is a great time to ditch the mechanical system as you have an excuse to touch this area.

- Towing Tune. Despite the popularity of getting more power out of a tune for pulling, the focus here is for better powertrain management to slow the load. Focus is on converter lock-up. Exhaust brake would not hurt either.

- Fuel Delivery. The in-tank pickup assembly is known to have issues where the lower section (commonly called a shower head) breaks-off. Result is that the last 1/4 tank is inaccessible. Two ways to check where the first is by driving and seeing if the truck still runs below 1/4 tank, or with a scope through the fill tube. Related, injectors might not like getting starved of fuel. Only way to fix this is to drop the tank. There are plenty of threads on what to do here. Best bet is to do the Hutch mod which permanently removes the shower head risk. Would not hurt to do the Harpoon mod, but this is different on an OBS from the common write-ups which are for the SD.


Toward how to eat this elephant, recommend breaking down the task areas and look for overlaps to minimize repeat work. For example, if considering turbo and / or injectors, adding an intercooler and e-fuel to the scope makes sense as each individual item calls for opening up a bunch of areas common to the other items. Put another way, keep a shopping list at the ready.