Advice needed following crazy accident
03-30-2014, 06:16 PM
#22
It will go for many more years. I just sold my first 04 XLT with 245K. Would of kept, but wanted to go 4x4. Found another 04 Lariat 4x4 with 110K. Don't let miles scare you if you do regular service. Great work.
03-30-2014, 06:33 PM
#23
It will go for many more years. I just sold my first 04 XLT with 245K. Would of kept, but wanted to go 4x4. Found another 04 Lariat 4x4 with 110K. Don't let miles scare you if you do regular service. Great work.
03-30-2014, 07:05 PM
#24
Thanks, all, nice to have this forum for the advice and support. This has been the nicest rig I've ever owned. I'm happy to have it working again and plan to keep it for a good long while.
10-04-2015, 01:12 PM
#25
Update as rig approaches 180K miles
Am posting a brief update re. the continuing story of this 2005 FX4. Kept the vehicle after the tree crash and am trying my best to take it to 250K miles but it is looking like it will be an uphill and expensive slog. Most of the miles are highway miles with minimal load and very rare towing. I have followed the regular maintenance schedule but repairs/rebuilds have been piling on in the last two years ($ ~$500):
1) transmission rebuild: $$$$$$
2) complete rear differential rebuild (gear and pinion assembly, bearings, seals, wheel bearings and seals, etc. and etc.): $$$$$$ (maybe should have sourced a used rear end)
3) successive failures on 4 coils so I had all of them replaced: $$
And then, just last week, an injector failed (and this after a recommended injector cleaning at the dealer) which pushed raw fuel through the system to the point that gas was dripping out of the muffler's weep hole and it ruined a CAT. I had this repaired at a small shop in Colorado because I was out of town and the shop manager told me that he was worried that he was going to have a fire because there was so much gas on the floor! Ford wanted $2K to replace the bank 1 (passenger) CAT so instead I took it to a muffler shop here in Austin and they welded in an after-market for $500; driver's side CAT seems to be OK, no codes on that one.
I know that there are some of you out there with rigs like mine that just keep going with no to minimal repairs. Don't know how this history compares with the majority of you, but the repairs have now summed to more than a down payment on a new rig. Maybe the sweet spot for trading these off is at 130K miles?
Have to admit that my loyalty to Ford is being severely tested...
1) transmission rebuild: $$$$$$
2) complete rear differential rebuild (gear and pinion assembly, bearings, seals, wheel bearings and seals, etc. and etc.): $$$$$$ (maybe should have sourced a used rear end)
3) successive failures on 4 coils so I had all of them replaced: $$
And then, just last week, an injector failed (and this after a recommended injector cleaning at the dealer) which pushed raw fuel through the system to the point that gas was dripping out of the muffler's weep hole and it ruined a CAT. I had this repaired at a small shop in Colorado because I was out of town and the shop manager told me that he was worried that he was going to have a fire because there was so much gas on the floor! Ford wanted $2K to replace the bank 1 (passenger) CAT so instead I took it to a muffler shop here in Austin and they welded in an after-market for $500; driver's side CAT seems to be OK, no codes on that one.
I know that there are some of you out there with rigs like mine that just keep going with no to minimal repairs. Don't know how this history compares with the majority of you, but the repairs have now summed to more than a down payment on a new rig. Maybe the sweet spot for trading these off is at 130K miles?
Have to admit that my loyalty to Ford is being severely tested...
10-04-2015, 03:42 PM
#26
I have a 2005 F-150 FX4, bought new, with 138,000 mostly highway miles. I have followed the maintenance schedule, and it has had the usu large issues, most expensive of which was a $3K transmission build in Jan. 2013. Two weeks ago I was driving a forest service road in Colorado. As I was rounding a curve I saw a bunch of cut up wood along the side of the road. No one was around so I figured that the Forest Service must have chopped up a tree that went down across the road. WRONG!!!! All of a sudden there is an explosion in the back of my truck, my ears are ringing, head pounding, and I get out to find that a family of firewood gathers from New Mexico was responsible for the roadside woodwork, and the sawyer felled a tree on the upper cutbank about 20' above the road just as I drove by and it landed on my truck. There were no spotters on the road. It was a big tree too, and it pulverized the canopy, bent the bed, crumpled the tailgate, and looks like it might have bent the rear portion of the frame. If I had been driving a split second slower –and here I’m talking 0.25 seconds or less – he would have planted that tree on the front half of the truck which likely would have ended up planting me.
No surprise that the sawyer's insurance company has been unresponsive. I've contacted my insurance company to have the repairs paid for under my comprehensive coverage and will have my company subrogate to the other company. Insurance has estimated the repair at $7800 without any consideration for possible frame damage (they'll assess that possible damage when they get it up on a lift, they tell me).
Here's the question: is this the signal to buy a new truck? I'd planned to drive the remaining 2 years off the transmission warranty but it might be that this is the time for a purchase. I don't know if I can get much out of the truck as it currently sits, and the $7800 could provide a bit of a down payment. If I repair the truck I might be able to get a bit more out of it. If I keep it, I don't know what sorts of high cost maintenance/repairs I'll be looking at as the truck lurches toward 200,000 miles. This has been a great rig, and my kids and I, plus the two black labs (who luckily were not in the bed when the tree hit) agree that it has been the best rig we've ever owned.
Advice welcome!
No surprise that the sawyer's insurance company has been unresponsive. I've contacted my insurance company to have the repairs paid for under my comprehensive coverage and will have my company subrogate to the other company. Insurance has estimated the repair at $7800 without any consideration for possible frame damage (they'll assess that possible damage when they get it up on a lift, they tell me).
Here's the question: is this the signal to buy a new truck? I'd planned to drive the remaining 2 years off the transmission warranty but it might be that this is the time for a purchase. I don't know if I can get much out of the truck as it currently sits, and the $7800 could provide a bit of a down payment. If I repair the truck I might be able to get a bit more out of it. If I keep it, I don't know what sorts of high cost maintenance/repairs I'll be looking at as the truck lurches toward 200,000 miles. This has been a great rig, and my kids and I, plus the two black labs (who luckily were not in the bed when the tree hit) agree that it has been the best rig we've ever owned.
Advice welcome!
10-04-2015, 03:48 PM
#27
WindowGuy
I had an 05 that I sold last year with 265,000 miles on it. My experience has been the transmissions are good to about 225,000-250,000. I think it's better to get a used, lower mileage tranny, than rebuilding. Even with new clutches and seals, the internal hard parts are likely to fail. Coils usually start needing replaced around 200,000. I've never had to change injectors. Many people don't recommend cleaning high mileage injectors because the do tend to leak after. I replaced my rear end with a used unit that had 80,000 on it, and was a limited slip. I know this doesn't help you now, but I would have anticipated 250,000-300,000 miles from your truck.
10-05-2015, 01:52 PM
#28
Senior Member
Have to admit that my loyalty to Ford is being severely tested...
10-10-2015, 12:52 PM
#29
After some months, delayed by out of country travel, the rig is finally coming back together. Took longer than I thought it would but I finally sourced a used bed in decent shape and a camper canopy for my damaged pickup. Thanks for the advice from chris c. on removing the old bed -- came off/went on just as chris said. The good guys at the wrecking yard assisted with their forklift and that made easy work of the install. Still need to get it painted but am sort of amazed at the high bids I'm getting -- I threaten to just buy a case of rattle can paint and let my kids knock themselves out, ha ha! Have heard additional stories of folks who were just driving along and had trees fall on their rigs, some natural falls, some by other would be lumberjacks, some miraculous escapes like mine, some not so lucky, and some not lucky at all. Still feel fortunate to have survived by my too slim margin of 0.3 seconds!
10-10-2015, 04:28 PM
#30
2x10 mobile launcher
Tommy J -- Man, your accident sounds like a close call!! Would not have wanted to be on the receiving end of those 2x10s!! Will look into that Duplicolor paint, thank you. The auto body shop wants $300 to paint the cap (which is more than I paid for it used) and I assume that it would be an exact match to the rig but this does not matter $300 to me. Rattle-can sounds great!
Re. what to expect for repairs, this was really the point of my long update post. I suspect that we all accept maintenance costs and we more or less have to trust the manufacturer of whatever we drive to be straight with us about what needs to be changed out when. But, Ford has definitely had some expensive stumbles with the F150: e.g., the spark plugs were a poor design and ended up costing some of us a lot of extra $ and time, and Ford also admitted to the injector problem (mine failed within the 11 years but not before 120K miles).
However, out of the 13 vehicles I've owned over the past 45 years (not counting tractors or motorcycles), I have never lost a tranny or a rear end, let alone both of these in the same vehicle. Clutches, yes, expected from heavy-footed second drivers; ring and valve jobs on high mileage engines, sure; but a tranny and rear end are to me outside of the typical range of anticipated repairs -- and I still own some of these 13 rigs and two are over 60 years old. I understand that some owners are ok with these sorts of repairs, and I guess one person's low miles is another person's high miles. But again, the point of my post was see what other owners are experiencing. jkenprice1 offered a positive story for his rig at 265K miles and that is great to hear.
My recent repairs (not maintenance issues) at +/- 150K miles totaled nearly $9000 (1/3 the purchase price) -- if I had had any idea that this was the order of magnitude of repair costs, I would have sold the rig and used the $9K as a down payment on a new vehicle. My rig is now running nicely, not spitting any codes, all systems go, so it is testable to see how long until I have to start repairing major parts a second time. But when it is time to look at a new rig, I am going to dig deep to see what I can find from other owners about failure rates and repair costs. This sort of information will help me to make a better-informed buying decision.
Re. what to expect for repairs, this was really the point of my long update post. I suspect that we all accept maintenance costs and we more or less have to trust the manufacturer of whatever we drive to be straight with us about what needs to be changed out when. But, Ford has definitely had some expensive stumbles with the F150: e.g., the spark plugs were a poor design and ended up costing some of us a lot of extra $ and time, and Ford also admitted to the injector problem (mine failed within the 11 years but not before 120K miles).
However, out of the 13 vehicles I've owned over the past 45 years (not counting tractors or motorcycles), I have never lost a tranny or a rear end, let alone both of these in the same vehicle. Clutches, yes, expected from heavy-footed second drivers; ring and valve jobs on high mileage engines, sure; but a tranny and rear end are to me outside of the typical range of anticipated repairs -- and I still own some of these 13 rigs and two are over 60 years old. I understand that some owners are ok with these sorts of repairs, and I guess one person's low miles is another person's high miles. But again, the point of my post was see what other owners are experiencing. jkenprice1 offered a positive story for his rig at 265K miles and that is great to hear.
My recent repairs (not maintenance issues) at +/- 150K miles totaled nearly $9000 (1/3 the purchase price) -- if I had had any idea that this was the order of magnitude of repair costs, I would have sold the rig and used the $9K as a down payment on a new vehicle. My rig is now running nicely, not spitting any codes, all systems go, so it is testable to see how long until I have to start repairing major parts a second time. But when it is time to look at a new rig, I am going to dig deep to see what I can find from other owners about failure rates and repair costs. This sort of information will help me to make a better-informed buying decision.
Last edited by PavementEnds; 10-10-2015 at 04:43 PM.
