2004 SVT Lightning Reliability

[Mark23GT]

There is a 2004 SVT Lightning with 130K Miles for sale near me & was interested in it for a second vehicle maybe. drove it for short distance, seemed to run good, firm shifts, maybe has a shift kit or something? steering seemed a little loose, might be age or just the way they were back then?
wanted to ask if anyone on here has any experience with Lightnings, how many miles is too many before start having issues? how good are those 5.4L triton supercharged engines? listed price is around $24K

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[daSNAK3]

130k seems like a lot for a boosted engine.. all depends on how it was taken care of. You are probably better off asking over at SVTPerformance.com though.

 

[Tucker80]

Price may be a tad high for the mileage. Take a look at the results on BAT for lower mileage examples. Also take into consideration BAT auctions tend to be 10-25% higher than a typical sale.

 

[Inthehighdesert]

I had one of these back in the day. Use to pull a boat(25’ Nordic) to the lake with it. Was very reliable. They ran really good for what they were. A lot of fun. If it was maintained properly the mileage shouldn’t be an issue. Do a compression and leak down test. Solid svt’s bring decent money regardless of venue. Private, or auction. Ignore the .. about BAT being inflated. It’s not. There just happens to be more educated non tire kickers on there with certain vehicles. Best of luck I’d buy another, Ford did those right.

 

[ice445]

Those supercharged 5.4 are excellent, extremely reliable at factory boost (and beyond). There's a 4R100 trans behind it which is pretty stout as well.

Loose steering is probably front end bushings being worn, but nothing terrible. I wouldn't be too scared of buying it.

 

[Tucker80]

I had one of these back in the day. Use to pull a boat(25’ Nordic) to the lake with it. Was very reliable. They ran really good for what they were. A lot of fun. If it was maintained properly the mileage shouldn’t be an issue. Do a compression and leak down test. Solid svt’s bring decent money regardless of venue. Private, or auction. Ignore the .. about BAT being inflated. It’s not. There just happens to be more educated non tire kickers on there with certain vehicles. Best of luck I’d buy another, Ford did those right.

Pretty decent analysis by Haggerty's that seems to show a fairly consistent, and at the time of publishing, an increasing BAT pricing premium...

https://insider.hagerty.com/trends/is-there-really-a-bring-a-trailer-premium/#:~:text=Between 2016 and 2019, the,it sits at 72 percent.

 

[Inthehighdesert]

Haggerty was behind the curve on much of the market back then, still is to a point today. My cars are insured with Haggerty currently. There stated value policy’s that are above what they thought was the market at the time of the policy renewel. It didn’t take much on my part to get them(underwriting) to raise what they thought the value’s were. There are many specialty cars that change hands privately where the values are considerably above what many think the market is. I’m not a fan of BAT really, to many trolls for my taste. But regardless of that BAT has an earned reputation for listing some of the best examples of some very collectible cars as well as just generally difficult to find models. It is what it is. I’ll leave alone that Haggerty is an insurance company and them putting out an article like that only supports them attempting to lower policy holders insured stated values. It is what it is as well.

Pretty decent analysis by Haggerty's that seems to show a fairly consistent, and at the time of publishing, an increasing BAT pricing premium...

https://insider.hagerty.com/trends/is-there-really-a-bring-a-trailer-premium/#:~:text=Between 2016 and 2019, the,it sits at 72 percent.

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