Hello fellow Ford owners,
I recently had a strange problem occur. I was driving my 2001 F350 Super-Duty with 144000 miles on it, hauling a new travel trailer to a dealer. I had about a 40-50 mph headwind and needless to say, I was working the truck to just keep it around 50 mph. When I arrived at the dealership (680 miles one way), I found oil residue on the front of the trailer. Then after investigating, I found the entire underside of the truck splattered with oil. I checked my oil level and it was 2 qts low. I added the oil and looked for any possible leak. I found nothing. I drove the truck back home an had no problem. The next morning I found a small drip of oil on my driveway. I climbed under the truck and noticed that the oil drip had come from the dip stick assembly on the side of the oil pan. I reached up to see if it was loose and the nightmare happened. There is a big nut and it was loose and the inner portion of the assembly fell into the oil pan. I had a friend of mine that is a top mechanic with me, so we decided to drain the oil and drop the pan to retrieve the part. Not easy. After a couple of hours we had dropped the pan, about an inch. It dropped right down on the cross member that the motor mounts to. My magician/mechanic friend fished out the part and we found that the nut had stripped itself. We went to the Ford dealer and bought a new nut. Went back and my magician/mechanic Friend somehow got the inner piece in place and the new nut on it. We got the pan back in place, put in new oil and oil filter. ran the truck and the leak was fixed. My friend crawled under his truck and his nut was loose also. Since then several friends of mine have checked the nut and found it to be loose on EVERY one of them.

Please take a minute to check and see if you have a nut loose too.

 

Perhaps I missed something - what engine do you have?

Thanks for the heads up BTW!

 

Yes... which engine do you have?

So, if you find you have a nut loose, I assume you have to drop the oil pan to tighten or replace it?

 

OK checked his 1st post and he says he has a small fleet of ford diesels soo may be 7.3?????????

 

didnt think you could drop the pan on a 7.3 with the engine in.

Edit: Sorry, just re-read it and saw the 1" comment.

 

Thanks for the heads up. Does your magician friend have any tips on how to get the new nut on there? How long did it take him to do it? I can imagine myself trying to fight that thing for an entire week and still not having any luck since you can't drop the pan more than that.

I guess it's nice to have those kind of freinds.

 

Hmm very interesting, gonna have to take a look see at mine.

Thanks for the tip!

 

Does anyone know for sure if this is a diesel-only thing? Ford Fleeter hasn't been on here since he posted this thread....

 

I'm pretty sure it is a diesel, and 7.3 diesel, only thing. TBH, if your oil pan doesn't have a large nut holding the dip stick tube in, probably doesn't apply

 

Ford Fleeter's profile shows he has a 2006 F-350. I don't know why I always ask myself the question, but here was his last line. Maybe I watched too many X - File programs?!

Last line of his post:

"Please take a minute to check and see if you have a nut loose too."

 

Hi Guys,
Sorry I havn't been on lately. I've been on the road pretty constant. I am sorry, I left out that it was a 7.3L TD. I don't know if this would apply to any other engines or not. That's all I have. Out of six trucks I had the one I wrote about and 3 others that the nut was loose on.

 

Hi Guys,
A little more info. I began loosing boost at around 50mph. I would eventually have to cause my truck to down shift. Turns out these 7.3TD have electronic valve cover gaskets. Yes, I said electronic. At around 100k to 150k miles there is a plug inside the valve cover and it starts to work itself loose. The drivers side valve cover is not too bad to remove except for the rear bolt. The passenger side is another story. Anyway, I removed them, cleaned up the plugs and super glued them. I am hoping to get another 100k out of them.