nfldfordman

Frame, bed supports and bed floor were all weak, 2 broken leaf springs and 1 broken front coil, exhaust was gone up front, and she was wearing tires funny.

Yeah, time to go. :/

06HDF150

agree...

weather is extremely harsh up there. i assume that's what did her in...

nfldfordman

Yeah, you can't get away with abusing a truck here as you can down south, and even places like Montana which get lots of snow but only use sand on the roads. Our winters are actually fairly mild compared to a lot of the Midwest area, but we do use a bit of salt on the roads, plus a major factor is the salt in the air all year round since we're right next to the ocean (which i wouldnt trade for any truck). It's not hard to prevent if the truck is coated from new and kept ahead of, but not everyone bothers looking after their vehicles. And that 04 was bought to be a work truck and treated like one. My 02 is 2 years older and has more miles, but is still 98% solid. She was always regularly washed and coated, and maintained religiously.


It's kind of funny, places that don't have salt, or worse, the liquid ice melt that some places use, you can find older trucks all day long, solid trucks but with engine trouble or the like. Here, it's usually the opposite. Perfect drive train but rusty.

elricfate

Loaded up my 87 Octane tune today and took her for a spin. There's little differences between it and the customized 87 Tow tune I have stock, but the little differences matter in terms of shift points and instantaneous response to feathering the throttle.

SCORGE

If you can't duck it.....

nfldfordman

Swan it.

RexB

Replaced the grille nameplate today. After finally getting the emblem pried off, it was quite a chore scraping and cleaning the sticky coat off the plastic underneath. Check out the difference:

Heavy_Metal

Nice. Can you list the source please? Did they happen to have one for the tailgate? I was just gonna do an overlay but new chrome would be nice...

RexB

Front and back are the same I believe. Bought the two off amazon. Haven’t done the back yet. I used a few chisels to get underneath the emblem in a few different spots then pried it up. Spent about 15 minutes scraping the gunk off with the chisel. A razor and a putty knife didn’t work as good as a chisel scraping it off. Make sure you get it all off so the new one has a flat clean surface to stick to.

Here’s the link:

2008__XL

They’re all over eBay. Make sure to get the “new 3D” 3 piece style. Replaced mine a few years back when they redesigned and they’ve held up great.

I’m not sure the ones posted above are the newer 3 piece design where the blue parts and chrome are completely separate. But that’s the style you want. Don’t get the single piece that laminated. The same thing will happen again.