No one wants a unibody truck, unless your an idiot and buy a Ridgeline. After Ford redesigned the Explorer to be a crossover utility class vehicle, that was the death of the sport trak.

 

It's all got to do with gas mileage. Thats why Dodge discontinued their Dakota as well. Toyota Tundra and Nissan Titan get terrible fuel mileage so their midsize trucks are still around.

Ford with it's 3.7L and 3.5L engines, get the same milage as the Sport Trac and my 5.0L is about the same as what I was getting with the 4.6L 3V in the Sport Trac.

They don't care about anything but mileage even if some people still want a smaller, cheaper truck. For that matter the Sport Trac was only a few grand cheaper and it had a lot less features than the F150. The F150 is a better buck for the bang truck. It offers more features, a lot more performance, and a lot more capability for just a few grand more. Back in '08 they were priced about the same since the Sport Trac didn't have the rebates and discounts that the F150 gets. I wanted something fuel efficient so the 4 speed trans and 5.4L were out of the pic for me. The 6 speed in the 2010 made so much difference.

Dodge now with their 8 speed trans and 3.6L get better performance and milege than the Dakota with the 4.7L. Their 5/6 speed transmission sucks. Poor gearing and it's really a 4 speed since it has only 5 gears in auto mode, and 2 of them are overdrives. It's like a poorly geared 4 speed trans that sucks all the power out of the engine it's connected to. The 8 speed/3.6L is a much better combination.

I had a Ram 4.7L rental and it's about the slowest, lowest performing vehicle I've ever driven, and that includes all the 4 bangers!

 

did your truck get fixed by changing the torque converter? Mine is doing the same whining noise in the lower gears but shifts fine with no slip dealer wanted to just change the trans at 4800 dollars

 

Make sure it isn't the alternator making the whine. Remove the serpentine belt and see if it still makes the whine.

 

*HEADS-UP* The thread is 7+years old and it appears that Mike Up (the O/P) has moved-on to a 2019 F-150 (as per the sig').
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I saw that and I also saw the title of John's post that stated that he is having the same problem.