[Bill Schwab]

Dale:

Any of the new trucks have transmission temp guages. The 450 does, our 4500 series do, and the 3500 GM pick does. GM also has an hour meter which is really handy for service metering if you are doing low milage rough service work like plowing.

As far as you purchase of a '93 Ford. That will have the E4OD automatic in it. The same one that has no reverse pump, something to keep in mind when you have to back up. Chances are that transmission has had all the upgrades. To start, they had an aluminum carrier which scattered under load. They updated that, and the center carrier was designed with a bushing, that failed. They updated that so it had a bearing. The next problem ran forward to the torque converter. Because of the small input shaft size, they had vibration issues which either destroyed the torque converter, or the input shaft, or both.
If you have one that had all the updates, there were still problems, but, the tranny had some capabilties it did not have with all the inferior parts. Ford designed it with aluminum in search of better fiuel milage because of federal regs. Fuel milage and trucks don't go in the same sentence. If they lighten up the truck, it is not getting good milage in comparison to a car, simple as that. One last thing about E4OD trannies, when they scatter, it is best to install a huge external cooler and bypass the internal radiator cooler. The particles enter the cooler, stick there, and will erode the new transmission within 10,000 miles.

I agree with Mark. I think that new TS tranny might work fine for a pick up truck. Or if they are going to to it, do it like GM did and put a heavy series tranny into a pick up knowing it is overkill.

The issue I have with all this is down time. For example, when our Cat went down under warrantee, Cat gave me a new machine to use until ours was done...What is Ford going to do for you with the down time?


John:

Isuzu trucks in our application are not near heavy enough, won't carry the loads we do at highway speeds pulling up the grades we are pulling. If we worked along the coast every day, they would be fine, but in the mountains, if you can hot 35 under load, you are pushing the envelope. We have several local competitors who had Toyota fleets, and went back to GM and Ford. The Toyotas for thier purpose, was not getting the job done. No ability to carry much of anything at all.
Basically, they make a homeowners truck. And though thier engines seem to run for a long period of time, the bodies and frames rust in half.