[Grizzly]

Originally Posted by HBarlow

An old friend of mine is a semi-retired mechanic-shop owner. He has been in business in his own shop since the early 1960s. He prefers to work on GM products but his wife works in a restaurant down the street from his shop and he let his wife talk him into working on a rough-running Furd F150 w/Triton 5.4 engine a couple months back because it belonged to a cook or waitress who couldn't afford to take it to a Ferd dealer.

The truck was six or eight years old, don't remember exactly. He tried to pull the plugs to replace them and found the spark plugs are deeply recessed down in the cylinder heads and the plugs had corroded or been subjected to electrolosis and it was almost impossible to remove the plugs. The first one he tried to remove was "welded" in the threads and broke off when he tried to remove it. He told me he struggled (and cussed) for hours to remove the broken plug without destroying the threads or removing the head. He finally got the broken base out, replaced it with one new plug, and returned the Furd to it's owner and told him/her "no charge." He refused to work on it again.

I have heard many experienced mechanics say that experience is fairly typical when working on Furds.

I've had enough personal experience working on my own F-250 gasser, seems like every weekend under the shade of my tree, that I will never own another Furd. Even if it had the mighty Cummins.

I did have a well respected shop rebuild the 390 engine at 104K. I blew that engine pulling my 29' 5er up a long grade at 121K. Had a new factory rebuilt engine installed. At 132K the engine and the truck were getting so bad that I gave the truck away and ordered my first Dodge with a 12v Cummins and a 5 speed manual. That was my 95 dually, which gave me no problems for 10 years. Excellent truck.