New user, intro and some questions
01-17-2015, 02:36 PM
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
New user, intro and some questions
Hello everyone. I just registered here and figured I would do an introduction, as well as ask a few questions I have.
My name is Mike, I'm 32, live in Tinton Falls NJ, and I have been a Ford fan in general since I was 17 and had my first car, a 1991 Mercury Cougar 5.0, which I still have. I'm also an ASE Master Certified mechanic, so I look forward to helping people on here try to diagnose any problems, as well as possibly bouncing some odd ones off of others here. I was never much of a truck fan, always preferred a lowered fast car, but I needed a truck for work, so about a year ago I picked up my 01 F150, and it has been great! I was looking for this truck for a long time actually. I knew I needed a truck, but I'm not one for off-roading (nowhere to do it in NJ anyway), and I knew I would be putting a ton of miles on it, plus I just can't deal with an automatic trans, so I was looking for a regular cab, short bed, 2WD, with a manual trans, that wasn't completely rusted apart. I finally found the truck about a year ago. It was everything I wanted, except it was a V6. My aunt has a 98 F150 4WD automatic 4.6, and that thing is a slug, so I was a little worried that the V6 wouldn't have enough power, but it turns out with the manual trans, it is actually quicker than my aunt's with the 4.6, and while I'm definitely not winning any races, it has enough power for any job I have tasked it with so far, including towing over 6K pounds! Anyway, I bought the truck about a year ago with 167K on it, practically stole the thing. I paid $1500 for the truck, with 4 brand new tires and a rhino-lined bed. I did have to replace the intake gaskets, sway bar links, inner and outer tie rods, and lower ball joints, and then over the summer it needed a new starter, but other than that, the truck has been and continues to be great, and is currently sitting at 196K miles. While I had the front end apart, I also lowered the truck slightly with a pair of 2" drop shackles in the rear, and I cut one spring off the front coils. I also installed a class 3 hitch almost right away, since I do a fair amount of towing with the truck, and that bumper hitch just wasn't going to cut it. Anyway, here is a couple pics of the truck, as it sits now.
Now onto the couple questions. The only 2 issues I have with this truck are during cold starts. The first issue, is that on cold days, the oil pressure gauge doesn't read until the engine warms up. I did find a TSB on this from Ford saying to replace the sending unit, but before I do that, I know on some other Fords there is a resistor somewhere on the cluster that you can bypass, and run an older style sending unit to convert the dummy gauge into an actual oil pressure gauge. Does anyone know of a way to do this on this generation F150, or know where said resistor is?
Also, only this winter it started doing something intermittently on cold starts where it starts to crank, then stops for a second with a crunching noise, then starts again. I have been trying to get a video of it, but every time I think of it and pull out the phone to record it, it doesn't do it. The starter and battery were both replaced in June, and have not given me any trouble in the past 6 months, so I don't think that is the problem. The way it acts is exactly like when you have a car with a distributor that has the base timing too far advanced, but of course it is a DIS system. Does anyone know if there is a TSB or a reflash to the computer relating to the cold start characteristics?
Anyway that's about it. Thanks in advance!
My name is Mike, I'm 32, live in Tinton Falls NJ, and I have been a Ford fan in general since I was 17 and had my first car, a 1991 Mercury Cougar 5.0, which I still have. I'm also an ASE Master Certified mechanic, so I look forward to helping people on here try to diagnose any problems, as well as possibly bouncing some odd ones off of others here. I was never much of a truck fan, always preferred a lowered fast car, but I needed a truck for work, so about a year ago I picked up my 01 F150, and it has been great! I was looking for this truck for a long time actually. I knew I needed a truck, but I'm not one for off-roading (nowhere to do it in NJ anyway), and I knew I would be putting a ton of miles on it, plus I just can't deal with an automatic trans, so I was looking for a regular cab, short bed, 2WD, with a manual trans, that wasn't completely rusted apart. I finally found the truck about a year ago. It was everything I wanted, except it was a V6. My aunt has a 98 F150 4WD automatic 4.6, and that thing is a slug, so I was a little worried that the V6 wouldn't have enough power, but it turns out with the manual trans, it is actually quicker than my aunt's with the 4.6, and while I'm definitely not winning any races, it has enough power for any job I have tasked it with so far, including towing over 6K pounds! Anyway, I bought the truck about a year ago with 167K on it, practically stole the thing. I paid $1500 for the truck, with 4 brand new tires and a rhino-lined bed. I did have to replace the intake gaskets, sway bar links, inner and outer tie rods, and lower ball joints, and then over the summer it needed a new starter, but other than that, the truck has been and continues to be great, and is currently sitting at 196K miles. While I had the front end apart, I also lowered the truck slightly with a pair of 2" drop shackles in the rear, and I cut one spring off the front coils. I also installed a class 3 hitch almost right away, since I do a fair amount of towing with the truck, and that bumper hitch just wasn't going to cut it. Anyway, here is a couple pics of the truck, as it sits now.
Now onto the couple questions. The only 2 issues I have with this truck are during cold starts. The first issue, is that on cold days, the oil pressure gauge doesn't read until the engine warms up. I did find a TSB on this from Ford saying to replace the sending unit, but before I do that, I know on some other Fords there is a resistor somewhere on the cluster that you can bypass, and run an older style sending unit to convert the dummy gauge into an actual oil pressure gauge. Does anyone know of a way to do this on this generation F150, or know where said resistor is?
Also, only this winter it started doing something intermittently on cold starts where it starts to crank, then stops for a second with a crunching noise, then starts again. I have been trying to get a video of it, but every time I think of it and pull out the phone to record it, it doesn't do it. The starter and battery were both replaced in June, and have not given me any trouble in the past 6 months, so I don't think that is the problem. The way it acts is exactly like when you have a car with a distributor that has the base timing too far advanced, but of course it is a DIS system. Does anyone know if there is a TSB or a reflash to the computer relating to the cold start characteristics?
Anyway that's about it. Thanks in advance!
01-20-2015, 05:11 PM
#5
Senior Member
Thread Starter
I took apart my cluster yesterday to see what I could figure out. I had to re-solder the odometer anyway since it was intermittently cutting out, and some searching on here found a few posts about cold solder joints, so at least that is fixed now. It doesn't look like I'll be able to do anything with the oil pressure gauge though. After looking at some wiring diagrams, and some playing with the gauge and resistors, it appears the gague is controlled by the ECM, and is not directly linked to the sending unit. Also apparently the gauge has 2 separate coils that control it, so to make it work for real would require having 2 separate signals wired though the oil pressure sending unit, so unless someone makes an aftermarket sender specifically for that type of gauge, there really wouldn't be any way to do it.
01-26-2015, 06:20 PM
#6
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AutoAnything is the one stop shop for mods! We price match and offer forum member discounts.
PM me or select the CHAT option if you have any questions!
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