Hey i did it, I am now a Ford owner. Bought a 1995 F 250 excab 4x4 auto with service bed. Has 177,000 miles and has been fairly well maintained. It is hard to start when cold, puffs alot of white smoke. Just started leaking fuel this morning, but I know how to fix that, either the rubber lines off the pump or oring in fuel bowl hopefully. I bought a parts rig the other day, it is a 95 F 250 pretty much the same rig except it has a manual tranny and pu bed. They say the egine is bad due to the fact that it had straight water left in it and froze and broke something, i dont know for sure. Just wondering if anyone has done a tranny swap on one of these rigs. I am thinking about going to the manual and any input would be greatly appriciated Thanks, Chad.

 

For your hard start issue, sounds like either some bad glow plugs and/or a bad glow plug relay...

Many have done tranny swaps. It is easiest when you have the parts truck sitting next to the truck, so you are set there.

 

parts truck=way to go with manual tranny. id test the glow plug relay and see if you get power going across it with a meter, couple be just bad batterys, not giving the glow plugs not enough juice to get warm enough i know my buddys 99.5 had bad batterys and it sucked getting it started we were told it was the glow plugs and checked the batterys first. with a load on them it would drop from 12.6v to 10.8v changed batterys and bingo its fine now. just have to know how the glow plug relay works inside and how to use the meter let us know how you make out and good luck!

 

Hey thanks ill check the relay this evening. Yea it has a newer tranny in it but i just feel like i could get more with the manual. I did the swap on my 92 dodge in my sig and it turned out fine. I cant believe i went to ford after all my bad mouthing but i am already liking the pickup, it has noticably more torque and the cab is way nicer than the old Dodge.

 

we turned the key on and the batterys went down quick.we turn the key off and jumped the solenoid so it would get as much juice as possible and then it started up

 

I would leave the tranny unless you really want a manual... Autos > Manuals

 

if you really want the manual tranny it might just be easier to drop the good 7.3 into the parts rig if its all good except for the bad engine, just a thought...

 

Well i towed the parts rig home after work. Turns out it is a 93 non turbo and it is in bad shape but the tranny feels good as far as i can tell. Just as i had thought i do not like the auto at all i was either redline or lugging the engine. I am really leaning toward the manual swap.

 

if you end up doing the swap, id be interested in how you did it, pictures desriptions ect and how hard you thought it was id love to put a 5 speed in mine, or even the superduty zf6 if its possible

 

ZF6 is possible, just need to make room for it because it's pretty big.