My guess is that the shift indicator or possibly the entire column has been switched out. The aod only came for small block bellhousing.
Ahh. That makes perfect sense and explains the transmission behavior she described. Sounds like she doesn't know a ton about old Ford trucks.
Honestly to me it seems like a big can or worms that you aren’t ready or even wanna deal with.
It’s been neglected, and you can’t stand up, unless you can get it for an absolute steal of a deal, I’d focus time and energy on your pickup.
My RV was a can of worms too and it's been decent. There's an advantage to not being able to fully stand: you go outside more. That's supposed to be a major point to the whole exercise of RVing. I spend far too much time indoors in the RV because I can stand up and move around. Room encourages me to stay inside and do nothing.
And I really do not like a truck camper set up. I've more or less ruled that out.
Leave it unless you want a life-time project...
Welcome to the world of old vehicles.
I'm still gonna go have a look, if it's still available next week, since I'm driving the RV right near by anyway. It'll cost me a couple extra gallons of diesel (~$9) but i can make a day out of it, since it's only supposed to be about 90 degrees and there's a nice park there. Keep in mind, I can directly swap parts to it from the motorhome since it's the same generation van chassis, so I can save some money there.
Unless I see something major like a milky radiator or burned transmission fluid, it still seems decent. Go look up how much people want for Econoline vans anymore. It's insane. $6000 with 200k miles on a gas engine and e4od is pretty common place.
Sometimes you can find ones like this, $2000 with 216k miles (listed 40 minutes ago) but it has a dented rear bumper too, and it's far away in Tuscon. so again I'd have to travel a long way to fetch it. A bit further than 200 miles, as I would for the yellow IDI one. And in fact it would cost me more since it's far out of my way to even go look at. At least the IDI one is only about 16 miles extra driving to go look at. This blue one would be an extra 236 miles further, one way. So double that for round trip, JUST to look at it.
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Also saw a similar one with a high top for $3200 (185k) but it's WAY across Arizona over near New Mexico. So again, same problem with how to get it. And it would cost a ton just to look at it in person.
By the time I spend $1000 in fuel/rental cars to go look at half a dozen vans scattered around the entire southwestern US, I might as well just buy the yellow IDI and replace/swap parts, IF it looks like it has no obvious major issues.