Our 1997 Ford F350 — The Dream Truck That Never Felt Right

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– Posted on May 31, 2026
The Actual Truck
The one picture of the actual truck which I could find

Throughout his life, my father had bought vehicles he could afford rather than the ones he truly wanted. That changed in the 1990s when he earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering and finally reached a point where a “dream vehicle” was within reach. With a higher salary came the opportunity to replace his basic 1984 GMC Jimmy—a no-frills model he had purchased new and was still rebuilding—with a fully loaded Ford F-350 Power Stroke. On paper, it was everything he could have wanted: big, powerful, capable, and packed with features. Yet what was supposed to be the reward for years of hard work would eventually become the dream truck that never quite felt right.

Our F350 a 4×4, powered by the 7.3-liter Power Stroke Diesel, which has gone on to have quite a following. The Power Stroke diesel only put approximately 215 horsepower down, but it was the 425 ib-ft of torque that mattered. While nominally the Power Stroke was down on power from the 460-equipped trucks, and only about 15 lb-ft of torque up on those trucks, the Power Stroke had a turbocharger, and thus it would make 215 horsepower and 425 lb-ft of torque at high altitude. At 7500 feet above sea level, where we lived, the 460 V8 would lose approximately 22% of its net output, or about 50 horsepower, leaving the 460 decidedly outgunned by the 7.3 Power Stroke. All that power and torque was sent to the wheels by a four-speed automatic transmission.

BAT DIESEL
Photo Credit: Bring a Trailer

And it was big. Too big, too thirsty, and too expensive. With its crew cab and extended bed, it was nearly 20 feet long. It was difficult to drive, and my mother learned, at the cost of a rear bumper, that reversing in a truck of that size is no easy task. The cost of diesel went up at about the same time my father bought the F350 and never came back down, eliminating any fuel savings the diesel may have offered. Maintenance was not cheap either. This resulted in the F350 spending most of its time parked, with my father driving smaller, more economical cars to and from work when they were available to him. One such car, a 1986 Suzuki Samurai, he purchased to use as a 4×4, practically defeating the purpose of buying a 4×4 pickup.

BAT F350
Photo Credit: Bring a Trailer

I do not get the impression that my father was particularly happy with the F350, even if it was quite an impressive machine. During my father’s period of ownership, the F350 acquired about 14,000 miles on the odometer. Years later, I learned that my father had actually wanted to buy a Dodge Ram with the Cummins diesel, but the dealer he went to had been impolite to him. And so he left and bought a Ford, depriving the Chrysler Corporation of its last opportunity to take money from him (well, second to last, as he would test drive a Jeep Liberty a few years later).

So, the F350 had not been his first choice of truck, and he does not look back on it fondly. However, my siblings and I adored it. My brother loved it because it was a real diesel truck, and it made real diesel sounds. My sister loved it because it was a real truck, and at the time it dwarfed just about all other trucks on the road. I cannot articulate why I loved it, and in hindsight I believe it’s because I had grown up with it. I was about three years old when it came home for the first time, and I recall seeing my father climb out of this behemoth for the first time, and running to see him and the new truck.

BAT Interior
Photo Credit: Bring a Trailer

The F350 stayed with my father until about 2007, but it did not leave the family. My sister, then a college student moving to Colorado, needed a new car to replace the beater she had been making do with. She asked to buy the F350 and, when my father resisted, she posed an ultimatum; either he sell the truck to her, or she would go buy another one from somebody else. Given her budget, my father had serious concerns about the reliability of any truck my sister might buy and capitulated. He agreed to sell the F350 for what was, even then, a steal.

However, by this time, the F350 was ten years old and had spent much of its life sitting. It needed maintenance my sister could not afford, and the cost of fuel was no less burdensome than it had been on my father. As a result, the F350 served my sister about as frequently as it served my father; more as a yard ornament than as viable transportation. Eventually, my sister came to her senses and listed it for sale, recovering her purchase money and then some from a seller in Arizona. In the years that followed, she retained her taste for “real” trucks, and today she owns a Square Body Chevrolet. As for my father, he did not replace the F350 directly for about a decade, and only did so when he came to need another truck. More on that truck later.

The F350 was meant to be my father’s gift to himself for decades of hard work, and for the right person, it probably would have been quite a reward. However, my father never really took to the F350, and it never really fit our family. Instead, we took to smaller transportation over the years, as you will see in the coming entries.

 

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