ok, here is my situation. I have an early 99 because i have the badge on the fender, and the build date was in early 98, but right before i bought the truck the previous owner put a new motor and turbo in it. How do i tell whether my motor/turbo/everythin else.. is a 99 or a 99.5? is there any specefic characteristics that i can just look and see? i know that the turbo is smaller on an early 99 but i dont have anything to compare it to. thanks

 

My 99.5 has a garret turbo, I think the early 99's used a different brand, I'm not positve though. HTH.

 

mine says garrett on the side of it? does this mean it is 99.5

 

I'm really not 100% positive but I guess it is a 99.5', at least the turbo is. Anybody else?

 

I haven't heard that the turbo's were smaller on the early 99's. Where did you get that info? I'd like to research it.
I have an early 99 and it has a garret turbo so I'm not sure if thats a good indicator.
My early 99 does have smaller 2 inch intake manifold ports as apposed to the 99.5 which has 3 inch. This does reduce that amount of HP I can make and acording to banks the intake design limits the air to the right hand cylinders. Banks claims to be able to make up for this with a modified intake adaptor but it doesn't actually replace the intake so I'm cautiously optomistic about their claims. Some of their test were on a 99 but they don't specify if it was early or late. I'm using superchip 60 HP boost the rest stock, so I can say for sure if it works or not.
The early 99 also has a differnt turbo wheel compared to the 99.5, according to Banks, the primary differnce is less lag and noise on the early version and they recomend you upgrade if you have the later 99
I'm continuing to learn about my truck so this info is just my research and much of it based on banks and this site.

If you haven't heard yet, don't put Mercon V in your tranny if it calls for dextron 3 or mercon. I just found this out and had to dump a fresh change of synthetic blend dextron/mercon/mercon V last week. I heard about on a post here and called my dealer, they confirmed that factory bullitins were advising dealers not to use any Mercon V rated fluid in transmissions that call for dextron 3 or mercon only.

Enjoy your truck

 

I could be way off here, but don't engines have some sort of ID number on them to where you could give that number to O'Reilly or Auto Zone or any Ford Parts center and they can tell you what it is exactly???

 

There should be a build date on the valve covers that would let you know when it was built. My pick up is an earlly 99 build date 12/97 my turbo is a garret with a 1.10 AR on the cold side.