The problem im Having comes and goes, the truck runs great but will randomly run hot but I dont believe the truck is running hot. My reasonings for not believing the temp gauge are:

1) If i pull over and turn the truck off, it takes about 30 seconds for the gauge to reset to normal when i turn the key to on. Its my understanding that a car can not go from boiling hot to normal cool in the matter of seconds. Once back on the road it may take 10 mins to start acting up again or it may peg to full hot before I get up to speed.

2) if I watch the gauges closely, i have noticed 100% of the time it does this, when the temp gauge goes from normal to full hot it goes instantly, it doesnt climb slowly, it jumps all the way to hot in an eye blink and everytime it does it, the oil pressure gauge will go from normal to all the way low at the same time the temp gauge jumps to hot.

3) I got in a pinch this summer and was way out in the woods in the middle of nowhere without phone service, I had no choice but just run the truck while it was claiming to be overheating. I know, that's dumb... but I drove it for an hour to get out of the woods and then I drove 45 mins home. Im no mechanic but if this truck was actually overheating I would assume it would have but the dust after that abuse.

I took the truck to a shop and they couldn't replicate the issue. They let it idle for an hour in their parking lot with no reaction. So that was the worst spent 160.00 I have ever had. I also looked all over this forum and others, I have found similar issues to mine but nothing that fits exactly. I changed the thermostat last year and it seemed to fix the issue temporarily for a month. But lately it seems to do it everytime i drive it. Pulling over every few miles has become impractical and just driving it in that state is stressful even if its not overheating.

I also drained the radiator to no success and got a new radiator cap... my heater core is bypassed if that matters, and my a/c compressor has been removed. I tried burping it on a steep hill but thay didnt fix either. With the price of shops these days id like to avoid paying steep prices to fix this, im decently handy with a wrench but im frustrated and cannot figure this out.

Any ideas from you f150 gurus out there would be great. Thanks for your time.

 

Since it doesn't seem to be an actual overheating problem, it may be a bad solder connection/wiring issue somewhere in or to your instrument cluster which is affecting the temperature gauge.....

 

Welcome to the forum.

 

You have replaced the CHT, right?
That CHT doubles as the cooling temp sender too
I would replace the sender before tearing the cluster out and apart Maybe)
Reason,
I have a NGS
If you look at the Ford flowchart and diagnosis for your cluster problem
It will have a NGS plugged in and looking at a few PIDS
That is what I'd be doing and maybe pulling the cluster apart immediately

 

Check the coolant for exhaust gases just to be safe, hopefully it's not a head gasket issue.

 

Well the first place to start would be to at least try reading the coolant temperature with a scanner to see if there's a disconnect between it and the cluster gauge....

If it's real you probably got a head gasket leak

Is your coolant level Rock steady? If it varies then you got gases in the system and you've got head gasket problem