A good friend's uncle no longer needed a truck and donated it to him/us a few years ago. Hard to say no to free. It sat parked a lot and squirrels got to the injector wires. Then a rear brake hard line blew. Fuel pump died. Has just over 100,000 miles. Just had new tires put on since none of the tires that were on it matched and were so old the truck would just spin the tires at almost any speed with anything more than half throttle. Amusing at first, then really annoying when trying to merge with traffic. It also has had the fluids changed.
Current issues:
It's very hesitant to shift into 2nd gear. Double clutch and it's happy.
Headlights are terrible
Big crack in windshield
Steering wheel is disintegrating
Didn't come equipped with a tach
Most of a large dog's fur is coating the cloth seats under the awesome faux ostrich seat cover
Rattles galore inside the doors
Here it is in all it's glory.
Future plans would be fix the 2nd gear issue, lower it, replace the steering wheel with a leather one from a higher trim truck, brush/bash bar?, winch to make loading 2 and 4 wheeled things into the bed easier, fix tailgate, address door rattles and headlight upgrade.
Any things I should know? Parts interchange? I think this V6 is well regarded. I found an 01 Harley edition truck being parted out and those headlights are a lot nicer than what this truck has.
does it have a digital odometer? If so, you can hold the trip reset button on the gauges while you start the truck and run a diagnostic mode which includes a tachometer.
Had one for a few years that my son managed to kill. I think the only repair not due to age or teen driving was a switch on the master cyl that deactivated the cruise control.
The lights are awful. He got new headlights, which remained awful. We ended up with this:
Clear fogs on the outside, driving lights triggered by high beams on the inside.
It solved the lighting problem, but sadly was not durable in the teen gorilla/high school parking lot environment
The 4.2 V6 was actually a pretty robust engine. I've seen many with high mileage. Younger me lusted after one of these new. I wanted a 2wd standard cab short bed with V6 and stick, 2 tone paint, rear slider, ac and cd player. Nashville area Ford dealers kept tons of them in stock equipped that way.
If it were mine to do, I would do thr bare minimum to make it safely go down the road and possibly any cosmetics that can be completed for under $100. Then I would drive the heck out of it until it literally gave up the ghost.
In short, treat it like a not particularly interesting or collectible appliance. With minor repairs I wouldn't be surprised to see you get another 50k out of that rig.
