Ok, so I’ll preface this by saying I know its impossible to diagnose this with what info I have, but I’m hoping maybe someone had the same experience or can point me in the general direction.

I’m looking for my daughter’s first vehicle, and she wants a truck. An F150 like her dad, but she wants a RCSB…which is hard AF to find at a reasonable price. I found one I like, it’s a 4WD with 4.6L. 220k on the body, but motor and trans were rebuilt less than 30k mi ago, and all the front end components were recently replaced. And the 4.6L is basically bulletproof, so its seems a good deal.

I messaged the guy, and he said the only issue is, his son put gasoline in it that was 10% ethanol (which is literally 99.9% of all gas stations anymore), and now there’s a slight “flutter” upon acceleration, but its getting better since they put 100% pure gas back in it. Seems a little like BS, since these motors are made to run the E10, like every other modern vehicle.

He’s 5.5 hours away, so it’s a little difficult to just run over and drive it and pull some codes, so I turn to you, F150 community.

If motor and trans were rebuilt 30k mi ago, I can’t imagine it would be plugs or coils, as you’d think those would’ve been replaced. I’d assume fuel injectors as well. Fuel pump/sending unit, maybe? Or maybe the plugs/coils were cheap knockoffs and went bad already?

Combustion motors are simple….Fuel, Air, and spark…so which of these is messed up and causing a flutter, but only with E10 fuel (allegedly)?

 

what year is it and how much is he asking for it ?

 

2005 and he’s asking $4360. It’s hard to find a RCSB around here for less than $5K that’s not a total piece of junk.



Was trying to upload a link to the listing but it’s broken every time I paste it.

 

Be careful of long distance scams.
Ask him to take it to Autozone (or other) and get the codes run. Request that he take a photo of the printout and email it to you.

 

not a bad idea actually

 

id walk away from that one. multiple red flags for me (my opinions/observation):
- lift is a big negative
- hard to blow up a 4.6 and trans at less than 200k, likely abused
- if you spend time and money to properly redo engine and trans, why would you the. turn around and sell for < $5k?
- gas/flutter story sounds like total BS
- 5 hour trip is in general doable, but this truck doesn’t seem worthy of the trip/risk

.

 

That not a 2" lift either.