The 2001 truck did have water in the fuel, it sat in the bottom of the filter housing. The crud probably came from the element, it's not burnt out but I'm pretty sure a bit came from that. I saw a video showing those pickup screens in the tank, so figured that must be the problem with it sucking air. At least it's not a fuel line leak. $17.50 part from rock auto so I just bought the OEM setup. It's not a bad idea to have a screen on the pickup, if the screen gets plugged, then there's some pretty major fuel system issues and it might have saved the pump. After we cleaned the housing and pumped some fuel into it, no water in it, and once we got it running, no more water in fuel light.
Shifting gears a bit, I have a laptop with an OBD2 to USB adapter and for fun read the 2001 truck, holy crap does it have a ton of PCM based codes set. Nothing too major, lot of bulbs and indicator malfunctions logged. I researched and found the software can handle the older ford trucks too, so hooked it to the 1995 parts truck and it had a few codes set too, map, back pressure, and low fuel pressure (it was leaking fuel so makes sense). It was cold last night so didn't get to scanning my good truck or throwing batteries in my dad's truck. We did pull my dad's truck computer and popped it in the parts truck to test. Transmission shifts fine, so his computer is good. Pretty much narrows down his problem to the solenoid shift pack, like $150 now, used to be $300+ when the truck first messed up.
For anyone interested, the scan software I used was FORscan which is designed to pull specalized ford codes and such (PCM, ABS, etc). It seems to work well, but I haven't poked around too much, mainly wanted to read codes, but it appears it can do live data, logging, etc. I read it can reprogram parts too that normally has to be done at the dealer, but you have to have the paid version ($10 for a year).
https://forscan.org/home.html
Here's the adapter I used, worked on my windows 7 laptop that's starting to age. Thinking about dedicating it as a vehicle scanner. I originally planned to setup a carputer which is why I had the adapter on hand and everything already. Kind of advanced, but I wanted it to log and analyze how I take off at different points of my routes (gps based) and use that data to learn how to drive the car better for mpg. Instant is nice, but calculating the "best" for my vehicle would be a neat programming project. Anyway, I never fully got around to it, but it works pretty well for a scanner, the adapter does NOT like the cold though, was ~20F last night and it was connecting/disconnecting on the laptop. Took it inside and warmed up for an hour, then it worked fine.
Here's an ebay link for the adapter, affiliate link so I can earn a little if a purchase is made.
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-5...0001&customid=
Seems like we are just about like we are trying to become power stroke specialists or something. Got every truck running and driving except my dad's. We can't drive 4 trucks, so might end up fixing one up well enough to be a daily driver and sell the 2001 or parts truck to make a profit and recoup some money. It seems like a running/driving truck is bare min $2500 and I keep finding ones with issues for around $1000, $1500 isn't bad for headroom for repairing one, if a major part is needed like ecu, buy a whole parts truck.
I'm scheduled to get my good truck legal at SoS (DMV for other states) on Monday, and the parts to fix it should be here Wednesday.
Also, found out Costco has really cheap batteries, might be worth buying the membership ($60) just to buy them. retail the Interstate batteries are like $185 each, they are $99 each at costco for the same thing. We do have a set of batteries, one set are blems with no labels, so no clue of age or brand, other truck has the walmart everstarts, they seem to do ok, but don't have a lot of backup power after the glow plugs go for a bit, so kind of weak for the truck (probably sat a lot at too low of voltage for too long).
Pretty crazy, 6 pages for the thread, and I don't even have the truck legal yet xD. #1 thing to do is fix the truck and make it happy, get a base line to compare against, and improve things from there for mpg.
Anyway, Merry Christmas to everyone, hope you guys are having a good time with family. Sounds like I'll be working on my dad's truck with him lol.