It could have plug trouble too. Triton's like to fail plugs/coil packs and they have a few years with intake manifold issues.
Back story helps. I worked at a Ford dealership for 12 years. Put a GOOD scan tool on it and see if any cylinders are low or throwing pending faults. Coils are VERY common. Plugs too because most people hate changing them on these motors. So many times even if they are changed, people use copper plugs instead of the correct platinum which are expensive. Coppers will wear out in 10k miles and start having all sorts of weird running problems.
Here's what I would do. Good scanner, like Snap-On first. If nothing obvious, then yank a coil and plug from one of the harder to get to cylinders. If the plug has paint on the tip were the coil pack goes on, it's an original spark plugs and from when the engine was assembled. You'll be able to tell a lot by doing those things.
Does the bucket hydraulics run off the PTO or are they electric pump driven? If they are electric, an aux power unit could probably save you a ton of money. Hell, a 5 horse Briggs engine hooked to an alternator could maintain the batteries for a couple hundred bucks.
Got ya. I had installed a homemade APU on my big truck to keep the batteries charged over winter, and that thing was just handy as hell.well her's the rub. In current form primarily it runs off a belt driven pump ( much like an aftermarket AC ). There is an on-board gennie to run a secondary backup pump in the event that the main pump fails / truck stalls but ATM it's Inop due to wiring issues. Plans are to convert it all to 12v DC system running off a 3x battery pack ( like a transport truck ) with an isolator from the vehicle charging system. Using this system nets us appx 3 hours run time before the truck needs to be started to re-charge. For now just looking to make this a reliable backup unit when one of the other 2 needs service without dumping a bunch of cash into it.
One thing to consider is that even though it only has 166k miles, it's got untold hours of idle time. Vehicles that get that type of usage don't always get the best of maintenance. A fresh oil change and tune-up is almost certainly needed but the fact remains, it's just got a lot of run time so it's probably a little tired.
Any idea why it was parked in the first place?
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