I have a 2000 F350 7.3L diesel crew cab with SRW. The truck is a dream, wonderful to drive and was the love of my life. However, for a vehicle to meet my standards it should not have mechanical problems early in its life nor often. I did not tow any trailers and only hauled a 3000lbs cabover camper for a total of about 2000 miles when my torque converter failed and took out the transmission and the transmission cooler as well. There were only about 45000 miles on the vehicle. The manual recommends you change tranmission fluid every 40000 miles, so my tranny barely lasted one transmission fluid change. Obviously this is faulty design or parts. Since I did not spend an extra $2000 - $4000 to purchase on extended warranty, I had to pay the $5000 it cost to repair all the damage. The mistake I made was having Ford do the repair (or install the new tranny) because the pump failed in less than a year so I had to have them fix this (while I was stranded with the P.O.S. out of state no less). I've had problems with sensors, turbos, water fuel separators, etc. Since my truck has less the 100,000 miles on it, but I purchased it over 6 years ago, I get shafted every time something happens and have to pay big money for its repair. It is funny how I can have a major repair done on it and within 18 miles have another failure of a different, supposedly unrelated item and have to pay for an additional big repair.
*** I will never own a Ford again.***
Since buying this piece of junk, I have seen that Consumer Reports states that Fords have on average around 70 problems per 100 vehicles by the 5 year checkup. This is 11th on the listed vehicle manufacturers. I guess that wouldn't be too bad if Ford would step up to the plate and pay for their faulty designs and parts instead of shafting the customer with it.