1. The plastic "drain tray" thing under the oil filter. Nice touch. You still need to position the waste oil container just rught under it because the initial oil that comes out when you loosen the filter doesn't fall into the tray. However, it's very nice to not have the oil that spills as you play contortionist to pull the filter out once its free, run all over the frame/front axle. This was my first oil change in a long time where I didn't spill at least a couple of drops on the floor, and didn't have to stuff rags into small crevices to wipe up the oil spilled from the filter.

2. The intermediate exhaust pipe between the Y-pipe and muffler has an absolutely ridiculous crimp in it. For no good reason at all, it's reduced down to about 5/8 to 3/4 it's diameter for a fe inches. What the hell is the point of it? My neighbor has a couple year old F-350 dually with the V-10 and he had a local shop do a custom cat-back. He said they showed him where his stock system had a similar restriction in the same spot. Why does Ford do this? Do the modular motors need some amount of backpressure or something?

 

I too find this interesting. I have a 2005 F150 5.4. The intermediate pipe that initially came on the truck did NOT have that crimp. But recently I needed to buy a new intermediate pipe because I decided to go back to my stock exhaust system (the muffler shop butched the original intermediate pipe when installing my aftermarket muffler). Anyway, I noticed right away that the new pipe from Ford did have the crimp. At first, I returned it to the parts counter claiming that it was somehow damaged. So they ordered another one, and sure enough it was crimped too.

The only reason that I could possible think of is to reduce exhaust resonance. Since day 1, my truck had a slight resonance when the exhaust system was cold. But since I installed the new interm pipe, I can now barely hear it. Maybe that had something to do with it..??.. Just a guess.

 

My '99 has that "drip tray" too. Pretty slick.