1997 Ford F150 XLT from North America - Comments

What has gone wrong other than normal Maintenance "Nothing" Truck runs great. But After A hard Life, Bounced over rough plowed fields, overloaded pulling loads fit for a 1 ton truck ussually every other weekend, and drove through flooded waters with water up to the head lights. Yes My 97 F150 with the 4.6 transmission has seen better days. But it still runs great, other than the rear end going out. Transmission was replaced at 140,000 miles, but I was asking for it when I pulled a dump truck in with it. Boiled all the transmission fluid out, and I let it cool and added new fluid and ran it another 5k miles before it started slipping. The truck has had the service engine light on scence the day I bought it and I havn;t found a mechanic that can get it to stay off, even ford dealer was surprised when he couldn't find anything, Also the truck does rattle (lifter noise) when under a large load, again pulling loads that it wasn't ment for. Who knows if my next Ford will be as good to me as this truck has,

I averaged 14 mpg, but I am sure that's due to my heavy foot. The ride was never the smoothest, but I do have aggressive tires on the truck. The back seat is kinda small (extended cab) will not fit an adult. did have some minor wiring issues with the truck I understand that it was known for the 97 fords, nothing major though.

Congrats on owning the world's best built truck. I've owned Ford, Dodge and GM and ALL of them are very good, solid trucks. The F-150, however, is king of the trucks. I don't think they come any better. Even the highly biased Car and Driver magazine just chose the F-150 over all the foreign and domestic competition as the world's best full-size pick-up. Some of my friends have gotten over 300,000 miles on their Ford trucks. I've never kept one over 100,000 miles myself, but of the 4 I've owned none ever required a thing other than oil changes, batteries and tires. None of mine ever even required a brake job (of course I don't tail-gate and ride the brakes, so all my vehicles easily go 100,000 miles on a set of brake pads).