1997 Ford F250 Super Duty XL review from North America

Transmission blocker rings (twice).

Starter (twice).

Clutch (once but slave failed twice).

Three sensors.

Rear brakes (but these lasted 90K miles so no issue there).

Brake lines (two failures in the metal lines on the rear brakes).

Emergency brake (totally replaced except for the pedal).

First off let me say I am a Ford man and will remain one, but I want to caution anyone thinking about purchasing a heavy duty truck: If you do not absolutely positively need a heavy duty truck, then get a standard duty because the heavy duties cost 3x as much to repair on any given repair, and they break just as often as a standard duty truck.

OK, that said, this truck had the 351 engine and a ZF 5 speed manual transmission. This truck was about as good as you could expect a truck to be a pulling heavy loads, and its gas mileage while not great unloaded (13.5 MPG) was not really affected, no matter how heavy a load you pulled with it, and I did a fair amount of trailer towing moving back and forth from IN to WI over a 1 year period.

My biggest beef with this truck was repeated failures of costly parts, like the transmission blocker rings and the clutch slave cylinder. I will say in fairness the truck never stranded me anywhere.

So again, unless you really, really, really need a heavy duty truck, then I would strongly recommend a standard duty F-250, or a heavy half ton pickup.