About the car:
- Year - 2005
- Make - Ford
- Model - F150
- Engine - 5.4 Liter 8 Cylinder
Initial Problem - Vehicle was purchased at auction before the winter of 2013; a winter that was very brutal in the NorthEast US. In preparation for the winter this company had decided to outfit this F150 with a salter and use it as the salt truck for their facility. When the first snow storm was forecasted and they loaded the truck with salt, the rear of the truck nearly scraped the ground under the amount of weight the bed was holding. While the F150 may not be the best option for such a task (F250 SuperDuty and above chassis are better suited for hauling weight), the F150 should not buckle in the manner that was described to us.
Diagnosis & Recommendation - The customer emptied the salter but left it on the truck. We could visibly see the rear buckling slightly with very little weight in the bed. Based on what we saw, we could only imagine what it looked like with real weight loaded into the bed. Upon inspecting the vehicle visually we could see the front spring were cracked. The crack was not fresh so it was likely they purchased the vehicle like this. We removed the rear shocks and they did not have any power within them to hold up the bed. Based on what we saw and the workload designated for the truck.... We recommended that the customer upgrade the front springs & struts with a Monroe Strut setup that exceeded manufacturer specifications, upgrade the rear shocks with a coil spring and shock setup also from Monroe, and replace and upgrade the leaf springs to better handle the weight.
Outcome - Our recommendations could not have worked out any better. Upon completion we could immediately see that the stance of the truck was completely different than prior to the work. The rear end no longer had any sag and the truck was completely level once on the ground. The customer called us prior to the next snow storm to let us know that he could not be happier with the results. Loading the bed with salt on the new setup did not affect the truck in the same manner.
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