16LT4

Put the caliper and wheel back on, install the lug nuts until they contact the wheel, then back them off 0.5-1 turn. Hop in the truck, put in gear, roll a few feet forward, and stab the brakes. Repeat in reverse. Jack up, remove wheel, remove caliper/bracket, and catch rotor as it falls off. As strong as one may be, a 6000 lb. Silverado is stronger. The same process is used to free aluminum wheels that have galvanically attached themselves to steel hubs, and works every time. I do something similar to free driveshafts that have frozen in place on pinion yokes.

Different engines. The 2v Modulars are bulletproof (aside from spitting their spark plugs); it’s the 5.4 3v engine that was introduced in the 11th Gen ‘04 F150 (the 4.6 3v didn’t make its way into the 11th Gen for a few more years IIRC) was a much different animal, with an extra valve per cylinder, variable valve timing, a variable-length intake manifold, and their Achilles heal: rubber-sealed hydraulic chain tensioners. The 2v engines used non-hydraulic ratcheting tensioners.

A year ago when leveling my truck I noticed my front UCABs looked like they’ve been resting with the Andrea Gail, so I bought a set of loaded UCAs (with bushings and ball joints installed) from AZ for $350, which is an entire order of magnitude less than your quoted price. You could get a new transmission for that number.

Makes perfect sense that it can’t be, otherwise it’s like resetting the odometer. Hour meter is IMO more useful than the odometer. “It’s only got 50k miles on it.” ”Yeah, but another 25k miles sitting still.”

What years?

I agree the 3v engines have shortcomings, but as long as one realizes the ultimate root causes of engine failures and corrects them, rather than trying to correct symptoms, they’re actually not a bad engine (but not as solid as the 2v engines). Mine went 150k miles before I needed to pull the cams, change phasers, chains, guides, lifters, rockers, tensioners, and oil pump with upgraded parts (much like OE with the GM trucks, use ONLY Ford parts on those); do the job properly and it’s good for at least another 150k miles. I’m not envisioning my K2 ever having cam or lifter issues, but I’d probably rather do a timing job on the 5.4 than deal with wiped cam, lifters, HP fuel lines, etc. of these engines, but that’s just me. My larger complaints with the truck were 1) the fuel pump control module being located above the rear axle and being encased in a sacrificial metal (the case rots open due to galvanics, killing the fuel pump) 2) Ford’s 4x4 defaulting to 4x4 ON when vacuum is lost, rather than OFF; this partially engages the front hubs, killing them, and one needs to carefully torque the axle nut to ensure proper disengagement. One can only free-spin the front wheels by hand with the engine running; engine off, the hubs are engaged. The diaphragms of the IWEs themselves crack, losing vacuum, and causing partial engagement. 3) boxed frame holds water (like they all do) and I was going to need to weld in a 1/8” plate at one spot 4) I’d already cut out, repaired and painted both rear fenders to repair rust 5) with a 4 speed, the 5.4 was thirsty on the highway; a 6 speed or more is nicer towing, not needing the engine to scream when dropping a gear 6) it was getting too old for me to trust on non-stop drives NY-FL. The truck lived most of its life towing a 10k lb camper on the ocean beach, and lived a few hundred feet from the salt water's edge, so if it wasn't getting hit by salt on winter roads, it lived it during its free time in the summer too. I do miss it, and if it only needed to live locally, or if we’d already bought the van (and not still had the Jetta it replaced) I’d still have the truck. It definitely drove more “trucklike” (a highly scientific, quantitative description) than the K2.

At the end of '16, I bought a '17 Z71, and hated it so much, accepted the loss when I traded it 6 months and 12k miles later for a '14 Ram Laramie. The Chevy had the Chevy Chuggle, the Shakes, and the tailgate never released properly because the ends of the bed weren't square. And, as it turned out, I did want the extra cab space of a crew cab over the extra 9" of bed space that I thought I didn't when I bought the truck. And to make matters worse, I sold my cherished '08 BMW after having convinced myself I no longer needed an extra vehicle. Enter the Ram in May '17. Beautiful truck, drove great, but did have the shakes as well. A lead F-C tech told me it was because the frames are made too strong these days, so the slightest road imperfections generate chassis harmonics that reverberate through the cab (picture a tight, plucked high E guitar string vs. a loose low E string), and was an issue more inherent to the crew cabs than the extra cabs. Other than that, though, the truck was by far the nicest driving, riding, and using truck I've ever owned/driven. So, that got sold back to the dealer, at which point I bought my uncle's '04 F150 FX4 with 140k miles in December '17. While I liked the truck, I was constantly under or in it, including pulling the cams and oil pan to fix the usual 5.4 3v timing issues. I sold it after 15k miles for more than I bought it for in June '19. The best part, is that selling the Ram and buying the Ford freed up some money to re-purchase the '08 BMW back, which I did in Feb. '18, with 136k miles; it now has 195k miles and counting, and won't be leaving my ownership. Enter the '16 CCSB that I currently have in May '19, and plan to keep for quite a while. I know it reasonably well, I trust it, and have no qualms about it. It has honest gauges; I adamantly do not want electronic screens with gauge animations, I want actual gauges if I'll be looking at them. It's taken us from NY-OBX, and NY-FL Keys many times, is rides great (not Ram great, but great nonetheless), and isn't offensive when I fuel it. The devil I know is better than the devil I don't. My wife drives a '21 Pacifica; I'll keep driving progressively older junk. Once the kids are out of daycare and I'm not having to drop off/pickup every day, my '70 VW will become my daily driver, so I clearly put little need in to such trivial things as technology, comfort, AC, or stereo systems. I also have an '84 GMC that is currently in my garage for a new distributor, timing chain/sprockets, carb rebuild, clutch, u joints, CSB, and just some general love; it's taken not much more than fuel, spark plugs and oil in nearly 40 years, so a couple hundred bucks now is more than OK. I received a call from the dealer a few weeks ago, offering $30k for my 105k mile '16, but I'd have to replace it, and I'm not interested in that. I'll replace it when the frame cracks and the truck folds in half.

I replaced the stock battery in my ‘16, battery manufacturing date of 2015, this past Spring for no other reason than on my biannual load test, it was a little weak. $140 for new AGM at Walmart.

For a nearly a year, I kept my ‘70 VW as a station car 200 miles away for work. I brought it back to my house this past Spring to swap chassis, redo the interior and reupholster the seats, swapping it with my ‘84 GMC. Both were driven each way. The truck’s carb gaskets started leaking enough to smell and see fuel, so in October I swapped on a Weber 38 in place of the original 2SE. Unfortunately, that carb seems to be bad out of the box to the point I’m sending it back; I’ve only had an hour or two every few weeks to work on it, hence it now being December and it not being done yet. It also had developed a copious front crank seal leak. So, it had to come back to my shop. But, I already have 5 vehicles there and didn’t want a 6th, so one had to go… queue the K2. The 442 drew the short straw… or rather the only straw. Which is fine, because it was mostly sitting for a few years, so now it’ll actually get driven, which is a good thing. Once the S15 gets back home, it’ll get a new timing chain, sprockets, all oil gaskets, distributor o ring, front crank seal, clutch, and possibly RMS. When I pull the pan I need to see which one this has; if the 1 piece, I’ll have to pull the engine and the crankshaft to replace the RMS. Its underside is 38 yr old black undercoat, no rust. The Olds weighs 3600-3800 lbs plus a full tank of fuel, and the trailer is 2k lbs. IIRC. The S15 is under 3k lbs. As we all know, the 5.3 did fine. Unfortunately, I had to pick up the trailer and load the Olds in a snow storm, a little sketchy with trailer surge brakes, and now the Olds needs a full underside wash. Until I started hitting a strong 30kt E headwind, the truck was getting 15 mpg, kept in M5 and staying 60-65 mph. I only checked transmission temp when it was working hard(er): climbing the Taconic mountains, or NYC traffic, and only once did it hit 150*; every time I checked it was 142-146*F. I installed the upgraded T stat last year.

The engines can advance timing a bit for more power (which is why E85 makes a bunch more), but individual tests would need to determine the best cost-benefit. I don't pump 89, I make my own: fill up 67% 87 and 33% 93 (using two separate transactions at the pump), because by me, the price of 89 is skewed closer to 93 than it is to 87. I've been self-mixing my BMW for 10 years doing this, but in reverse: it wants 91, so I fill with 67% 93 and 33% 87 each time I add gas, and not necessarily from a near-empty tank (the fuel gauge is remarkably linear in its movement such that estimation of gallons needed to fill the tank is within 1 gallon of actual). Octane above 91 on that car is unnecessary, so the extra couple of minutes it takes to replace and reprogram the pump saves me at least $5 each time I fuel up, a $1-2/minute self-payment.

Question for the fluid engineers out there: when grade braking, using the engine's compression and internal friction to resist gravity free-wheeling an increased engine speed, wouldn't running the oil pump and higher pressure help hypothetically keep the load from increasing the engine's RPM increase? Or, said another way, improve grade breaking by helping keep RPM down due to increased internal drag? Or would the beneficial effect be marginal, if at all?

Duly noted, but I don't have lifter nor valvetrain issues with my truck. Educate me: what in the data tells you that fuel dilution is 1.5%? I know that Blackstone uses flash point as a proxy method for determining fuel dilution, but I'm curious on your standpoint.

Attached is the UOA from my truck after ~ 4800 miles on Pennzoil Platinum 5w-30. The numbers look mostly good, but look at the viscosity numbers at the bottom; the oil was starting to thin out. A 0w-20 (stock spec) oil would be even worse; toss some fuel dilution into the oil and varnish in the oil galleys, and you've got a recipe for lifter disaster. Blackstone misunderstood my comment in the paperwork; my truck hasn't been having issues, but I mentioned issues with other trucks that I wanted to stay ahead of (fuel dilution). OP: I'd send your oil out for analysis. At this point, nothing should be left to guesswork, and the more data at your disposal, the better.

Lifters are not a maintenance item. For such a repeated set of failures, there is likely some underlying root cause of failure that isn't being addressed, lack of proper oil flow or fuel dilution being top of the list.

I went with a 1" level kit, (Motofab blocks IIRC) but also installed Bilstein shocks in the back, which counteracted the 1" level a little bit. My stock front UCABs were shot as where the base of the shocks, so I replaced the coilover units and entire UCAs at the same time with loaded units (bushings and ball joint pre-installed). Because I'll often load the bed, I didn't want to blind planes at night so 1" was a good compromise between unladen look and laden usability.

Ah, OK. Shows how much "meat is left on the bone" sucking fluid out vs. a full drain. 3.5 quarts is only about 25% of the total fluid capacity. I was on the fence about pulling the pan to change the filter this time, but figured I'd wait for the UOA to come back. I'm glad I did; the filter can wait a while. For the next several 10s of thousands of miles, I'll simply remove the drain plug and let'er go. Pour in 6-6.5 quarts via the dipstick tube and drive away, couldn't be easier or quicker. Much easier than my BMW which has a fill hole requiring pumping in fluid with the engine running above me while watching fluid temps on the scan tool (filling temp is 50* C colder than operating temp on that one) or my wife's old VW which didn't have a fill hole, only a drain hole, requiring filling via the drain.

Only 3.5 quarts? Every drain/fill I've ever performed on a 6L80 takes 6.5 quarts. Even a 6L45 will take 4.5-5 quarts.

Easy way to tell if the bolts are actually single-use is to check a torque table for that size fastener, and see if the torque applied puts it into the plastic range. Red loctite is easy to remove... with a little heat. Hit the fastener with a MAP torque and an impact gun (or an 18" breaker bar) and the fastener will spin off. In my younger days, I often used only Red (not knowing the difference), and never needed heat nor impact to remove them, without issue. That said, try the Orange loctite: the strength of Red, but the ease of removal of Blue. Loctite only works on clean fasteners; if they have even a hint of oil, grease, or other residue (such as from sliding a cleaned fastener through a dirty cross member), the Loctite won't function properly. The fasteners loosening so quickly, however seems like a greater concern: they shouldn't. They may not be able to handle the added stress of the lift, and require a grade 8 or 10.9/12.9 to remain elastic.

My '16 5.3 CCSB 4x4 currently has 105,500 miles on it. Back in September on a quick weekend trip NY-OBX, I noticed a slight 100 RPM hunt going up slight inclines at 68 mph in 6th gear and V8 mode. I'd never noticed it before, but hadn't driven it down there with the new exhaust on the truck, either. If it weren't for the slight change in exhaust note, I never would have noticed the slight tach needle movement. I figured it was torque management, but to be sure, I performed a drain/fill when I got home at 104,750 and sent it in to blackstone. I changed the filter and performed 3 drain-fills at 72k miles with Castrol D6, adding a bottle of Lubegard on the final fill. At ~92k miles last summer, I performed a single drain-fill with Redline D6, again with a bottle of LG, and "flipped the pill" in the AT T-stat. In January 2022 I installed the updated 70*F ATF T-stat at 99k miles. This most recent time, I used AC Delco FS D6, a bottle of LG, and a tube of Shudder Fix for good measure. The slight RPM hunt vanished immediately. AFM is enabled, I always drive in "D" (never M5), and the truck spends probably half its life in V4 mode. I occasionally tow and haul much more in the bed than the truck is rated for, loading firewood in the bed until it hits the bumpstops, and then keep loading. With very little exception, the truck is driven at least a half hour every time I start it, and has been used for my long distance (400 mile round trip work commute) at least a half dozen times since August due to fuel prices and is cheaper to run than anything else I own (E85 is a dollar cheaper per gallon than 87). I seldom "floor it," I don't normally force a multi-gear downshift, never use remote start and don't let the vehicle idle to warm up. Most of the truck's life has been on the highway, and is probably much of the reason for the report. My curiosity piqued, I sent in the engine oil last week at its 5k mile oil change. Here is the ATF Report. I'm happy! To continue the trend, I'll be keeping with drain-fills every 10-15k miles.

A pencil gauge is far from accurate. Verify with a a quality dial gauge; cheap gauges like HF gauges can be off by up to 5 psi, and pencial gauges by 10 psi or more; theyr'e entirely dependent upon application speed. I don't use the dash readout for tire pressure; in fact, I've removed it from the queue to avoid having wasted, useless displays in the cycle.

A month ago, I replaced my cargo lights and 3rd brake light with LEDs. The 3rd brake light bulb wasn't bad, but the glass was getting black, so it was at the end of its lifespan. No issues with lighting since bulb replacement, Silvania LEDs from Autozone. I reused the gasket after throroughly cleaning all sealing surfaces and inspecting the condition of it, because I definitely didn't want to incur a leak; my '04 FX4 had their "notorious" leak, to the point that the cab corners were rotted before I bought the truck (like all 11th gen Fords). Thanks for that link, as I'd forgotten all about having another gasket on hand. For $7 shipped, it may as well be free.

I have Pirelli Scorpions in the stock size, because they were the best price on a RWO tire with more aggressive tread than my stock Wranglers (original tread design, no the more blocky updated one) without looking like I'm trying to compensate. The ride is great, and while I've never put the truck in a situation where I'd get stuck, the tires haven't left me wanting in Spring-melt wet grass or logging mud either. I don't know how long they'll last, but fuel mileage doesn't seem to be impacted much as the truck pulls 20 mpg at 70 mph running E85. The tires on on the truck in my sig.

I typically to a drain/fill every 25-30k miles on transmissions, and don't even bother with the multiple drain/fills within a short time interval anymore due to the frequency of replacement. Filter every 50k. I installed a drain plug in my transmission pan so a drain/fill is stupid-easy, and any particulate that has fallen out of suspension is removed as well. I also pour in a 10oz bottle of Lubegard Red on every fill to every transmission. Here's the UOA on the ATF in my '08 E83, which has the GM 6L45 transmission. Not completely apples-apples compared to a 6L80/90 transmission, but not exactly Apples-Ford either. Other than fluids/filters, the transmission is completely stock at 190,500 miles, and has never offered a hint of shudder, trouble, or shifting issue. The fluid was last drained/filled at 165k miles, when the LG was added. Is there life left in the fluid? Sure. But as fluid and suspended particulate vary inversely, and my goal is to maximize the life of the unit, not the fluid. I'm too cheap to skimp on maintenance, and treat the K2 to the same service regimen as the old Roundel. The K2 is due for a fluid change in ~10k miles, and I'll send the fluid in at that point as well. I'm not concerned with the fluid as much as I'm looking for metals, especially in the 6L90 transmission, considering the known TC issues. Note Blackstone's comment about the amount of metal in this sample: proof that the LG works awesome? Not quite. Support for that hypothesis? Certainly. Also from experience, the LG works great for knocking out the shudder from an older, neglected transmission; it cured all shift issues in my '05 F150 FX4 which didn't receive its first ATF change until 145k miles.

I’m not a fan of boosted engines, but that 2.7 does seem much better on paper than the 5.3. Time will tell if it can go the distance; if it can, it makes a lot of sense.

What is the height of your garage door’s lowest point when raised? What is the height of your truck’s highest immovable point, sitting on your driveway? Does the driveway meet the garage floor at an angle, and which way? Basically, impossible for the internet to tell you.