My cousin's 99 7.3 couldn't get outa it's own way when he got it. He changed fuel filter, cleaned air filter now it runs like a raped ape ( or better than it did ). same thing as you described. little or no boost, trouble pulling.

 

I had both (purchased new) a 99 7.3 and a 2000 dodge cummins. The dodge hands down was more reliable The dodge never had a breakdown would beat the powrestroke by 2 to 3 mpg pulling. Not only that but the dodge handeled the weight way better even thow it had a lower tow rating then the ford. The body flex on the ford was scary.

My biggest complaint on the ford would be the steering it always felt so loose compared to the Dodge.
What I liked about the ford was the look and interior plus the brakes were stronger in the ford

I was a Ford guy my whole life, I decided to try a Dodge because of a few friends of mine were having good luck with them.

when you run a Ford and Dodge side by side it will make a believer out of you.

 

Whats funny is you say the exact opposite of every Dodge guy I talk too... First complaint out of a dodge guy is loose steering... Second is the body is falling apart around the truck...

Get over it.

Year for year the Ford 7.3 is one of the best work/pulling/daily driving truck made.

Cummins is a great motor, wrapped around a tin can.

 

Every 4x4 dodge I have ever driven,drives like an old lumber wagon.I've got a '03,7.3,
4wd,6sp.that'll run way fast enuf to get me in BIG trouble,and do it loaded weigh'n 20k,and get 10-14 doin it. My dads '02 goat will not pull the hat off your head,and drives like crap. Just say'n Ithink it matters more how they are taken care of rather than what brand they are. P.S. My '03 has 265k on it,and it drives like it.LOL!

 

Again have you owned both the Ford and Dodge? Have you run them side by side? All my trucks get the crap beat out of them. I guess that is except for our 05 F350 mainly because if you hook a trailer to it. It pukes coolent and over heats with 57,000 miles

I had 2 7.3's 1 was lemmoned because of engine trouble. The second one ran but I don't see what was so great about the motor. It ran but was no power house, pulling there mpg wasn't to good compared to the competition.

What I am really thinking is funny right now is last week I did a DPF delete on my friends 08 F350 truck has less then 30K and that truck has not had a hard day in its life when I took it for a test drive my first impression was how unresponsive the steering was compared to my 2010 dodge with 22K on it that gets the **** pulled out of it all the time.

 

my 96 dodge was falling apart with 350k miles on it. put a flatbed on it fixed the door, guess who's still pulling strong? and my 03's body is great i'm very impressed with it. the cr sucks though. i can attest to the fact they well are pos's. it's getting a 12v in it though so i'm bout to haul rounds around ford boys.

 

I'd look into getting all the fluids and filters changed then go from there

 

I always changed the oil and stuff in it every 5k up until recently when I transferred positions. So far its going on 12k since I last changed the oil in it and nobody's touched it yet.

 

You can't compare a 7.3 to a 6.0. There should be cummins guys, duramax guys, 7.3 guys, and 6.0 guys. Second, my dad is a fleet diesel mechanic and powerstroke specialist on top of that. We constantly see beaten, battered, and abused 7.3's in the shop all the time with 3, 4, 5, hundred thou plus still goin just needing an oil change or driveline related. Yeah, you can't pull a house down, but the damned things are so reliable. And you got plenty of power there already, plus a bunch more when you bomb it. The '03 manual made 275 horses. Also you can't say they didn't put the 7.3 in a truck cause look at all the tow trucks that HAVE to be dependable running t444e's (7.3's). I'd confidently say the 400,000 mile barrier isn't even a tarp fence for the 7.3 to cross.

 

According to my observations the early t44e's seem to be the best. We have some 95-96 190hp engines in buses at work that are going on 16k hrs and haven't had anything done to them other than the occasional oil change. The newer ones (99-03) are ok. We had an 3 210hp engines melt pistons and the rest always have overheating complaints on them, but they still run everyday. The 6.0l live up to there reputation even in buses. The 6.4 is a beast but its a little different than what ford uses, ours only have a single turbo. Believe it or not the worst engines in the fleet are cummins. The common problems they have are ip's, heads, turbo's, and the 8.3's like throwing rods. Its hard to drive a cummins powered truck to work and try to convince the other guys they are good engines.