I am looking really hard at getting a 99-02 Crew Cab short bed Super Duty Diesel. I narrowed it to those years because I want the newer body style, and want the 7.3. I have heard problems on the 6.0. I also want an automatic b/c I hate shifting.

I see the 99/00 are 235hp & ? torque and the 01/02 is 250hp/505ftlb. Will I really see any difference? Are any of these easier/harder to work with a programmable chip and/or other simple mods?

From reading, it looks like the early 99's have problems, so should I narrow my search to 00-02? I will be towing up to about 7000 lbs or so, and using it as a daily driver. Are there any other general things in particular that I should consider between these particular model years?

I am new to diesels and new to fords, but I love the idea of a powerful engine with decent MPG, and I like the styling of the Super Duty. Any help will be greatly appreciated! Feel free to mail me at joshtrel99 at yahoo.

 

Welcome joshtrel99 to Ford Truck Enthusiasts.

If you are not planning on drastically increasing the power output of the mill....any of those years will work great for you. Pick out the one that best suites your need/wants and go for it.

 

I was looking for the same truck 2wd. Years later, I finally got one. Look for 99.5 -10/00. The early 99s had the smaller turbo, and of course some other kinks since they were the first batch. If you stick betweem the late 99 to 10/00 models they all have the forged rods instead of the powdered metal. This is important if you ever plan on adding a tuner or chip. Granted of you have the money, the rods can be changed on any truck. None of the 7.3's will have a problem pulling 7k.

 

Late 99-00 had decent trannies! 01 had some internal tranny changes which created alot of problems on the 01's, so for the 02-04's Ford went back to the late 99-00 internal design which resulted in fewer tranny problems.

 

Turbostroke, can you point me in the direction where and what was done to the 2001 trannies that made them different/weaker? I ran a search but couldn't find anything. I didn't know there were changes in to the tranny in 01 and I'm super curious to what was done

joshtrel99, the PSD superduties are awesome trucks. Aside from what the others have stated, in 02 Ford changed instrument clusters and added a tranny temp gauge to the 02+ models. Some 03s were 7.3-liters also A chipped or PSD with a tuner is already pushing plenty of power for daily driver/towing so I don't think the forged rods matter much, unless you plan on really hopping it up (370+ RWHP). There are tons of 01+ PSDs making a lot of power w/no problems...aside from trannies

 

late 99-00 had all metal internals. If you have a 01 you have some plastic pieces(in the name of saving money) in your internals. Went back to to on 02-04's. I have physically seen the different pieces from each year version. Ask your dealer or mechanic, they will know exactly what I'm talking about.

 

Interesting. I guess I will have to see what the plastic pieces are. I do know that in late 2000 Ford changed all the plenatary gears to a stronger metal than the 99-early 2000 models to handle more power; but I guess it's not the gears that fail it's the friction materal clutch stuff.

 

mechanical diode

 

Here's all the info you will want and more for your mechanical diode questions.
Then you'll see why I didn't delve into it too far as I would have needed 5 pages of posts to explain....

www.epilogics.com/md/tekintro.htm