Love My 6.0L Ford

Shoot, nothing wrong with liking your truck.

True, the 6.0L has a bad internet reputation, but indeed, as appears to be your case, there are owners who have had no major problems with them.

Good for you.

Keep on trucking and enjoying your rig.

I hope my 6.4 does as well.

A lot of what I see here slamming a perticular truck is from lack of maintenance and knowledge about their trucks. I love mine and it is by no means a race horse. I do the maintenace and repairs on it and haven't had much trouble at all. In total other than maintenace, about $400 Not bad for a truck with 224,000+ miles on her.

bigburg wrote:
I know i am among the minority of 6.0L who is willing to be vocal about being happy with there truck. Which I guess is normal considering people who are happy are content and need not say much while those who are angry simply must express there emotion and experience.
My truck is a 2005 Lariat Crew Cab 4x4 SWB with 199,805 miles. She has been rock solid and looks and runs like new. Have replaced one FICM and one EGR valve plus regular wear items like brake pads.
I drive her off road she pulls hauls and generally earns her keep. Overall I love my truck.
I know many have had issues with the 6.0L but my story is one of success which I though I would share as I am close to 200K miles know.

I have a similar truck, except not a 4X4. I love the truck, but the engine started causing problems at around 96,000 miles. I attribute the problems to two things.

1. I put a tuner on it and blew a head gasket.
2. The coolant blew out due to the head gasket problem and the shop that worked on it put the wrong coolant in it. The coolant superheated and formed silicate crystals the clogged the oil cooler and EGR Cooler, further damaging the engine.

If I could go back in time I wouldn't have towed using an aftermarket tuner and I would have installed a coolant filter.

I decided to fix the truck rather than trade it or sell it because it's really a great truck. I just spent $8000 "bulletproofing" it and hopefully will get another hundred thousand miles on it.

Just rolled over the 100,000 mile mark yesterday.

I too loved the 6.0 i had. It was an 07 and put 100k mi on it. I am watching for a reg cab 4wd that is relatively clean with a bad engine for cheap and will fix it and use as a beater truck.

I suspect the overwhelming majority of the much maligned 6.0L PSD motors are reliable and required no more repairs than other makes. The internet always accentuates the bad and creates many false narratives. No doubt there were issues and considering the number of these that were sold equals many bad motors. Percentage of failures we will never actually know and even if we did it would be impossible to sort out the self induced issues from the bad production ones. Reputation is always a hard thing to overcome and this is a classic case of it. Many people here still believe that Ford diesel motors are not as good and are prone to failure even though reality says otherwise. Much like the mythical quality gap between domestic and foreign produced vehicles that ended 20+ years ago many still spout the mantra regardless of the truth.

A few $10 coolant water filters can prevent the problems that the 6L and 6.4L engines had on them. I put a coolant filter on my 1997 Ford Bounder motorhome with a 460" gas engine in it, and it has had no engine problems whatsoever!

I only changed the rotor and spark plug wires on it at around 15 years old, 50,000 miles. Still running the original spark plugs, coil, heater hoses. I did change the radiator to engine 2" diameter hoses at 10 years old, along with it's only coolant change. And I changed both fan belts somewhere outside Yellowstone NP, where one broke in 2006. Not bad for a 18 year old motorhome that is always at 20,000 GCVW.

I installed Napa coolant filter #FIL 4070 and kit to install it is FIL 4019. My truck driving buddy highly recommends the coolant filters to me, because they stop minerals from wandering around in the cooling system, clogging the radiator, allowing minerals and dirt to build up on radiator heat exchanger, and keeps wear on the water pump minimal. Hoses and seals also benefit from the coolant filter and the SCA's that come precharged in some of the water filters.

Glad that you are having a great time with your truck too!

Have fun camping!

Fred.

fla-gypsy wrote:
I suspect the overwhelming majority of the much maligned 6.0L PSD motors are reliable and required no more repairs than other makes. The internet always accentuates the bad and creates many false narratives. No doubt there were issues and considering the number of these that were sold equals many bad motors. Percentage of failures we will never actually know and even if we did it would be impossible to sort out the self induced issues from the bad production ones. Reputation is always a hard thing to overcome and this is a classic case of it. Many people here still believe that Ford diesel motors are not as good and are prone to failure even though reality says otherwise. Much like the mythical quality gap between domestic and foreign produced vehicles that ended 20+ years ago many still spout the mantra regardless of the truth.

Ford released a statement saying that the 6.0 was the most expensive mistake they ever made. It cost more in warranty repairs per vehicle than any other engine they've ever made. That's why they didn't offer them for very long. They've re-engineered a lot of the more trouble-prone parts, like the variable vane geometry turbo. They had so many issues with them that Ford actually purchased some of the early trucks back from the owners.

It was their first attempt at complying with the new EPA regulations for diesels and they tried a lot of innovative design changes. Most of the owners didn't know about the strict servicing requirements until problems started.

Golden_HVAC wrote:
A few $10 coolant water filters can prevent the problems that the 6L and 6.4L engines had on them. I put a coolant filter on my 1997 Ford Bounder motorhome with a 460" gas engine in it, and it has had no engine problems whatsoever!

I only changed the rotor and spark plug wires on it at around 15 years old, 50,000 miles. Still running the original spark plugs, coil, heater hoses. I did change the radiator to engine 2" diameter hoses at 10 years old, along with it's only coolant change. And I changed both fan belts somewhere outside Yellowstone NP, where one broke in 2006. Not bad for a 18 year old motorhome that is always at 20,000 GCVW.

I installed Napa coolant filter #FIL 4070 and kit to install it is FIL 4019. My truck driving buddy highly recommends the coolant filters to me, because they stop minerals from wandering around in the cooling system, clogging the radiator, allowing minerals and dirt to build up on radiator heat exchanger, and keeps wear on the water pump minimal. Hoses and seals also benefit from the coolant filter and the SCA's that come precharged in some of the water filters.

Glad that you are having a great time with your truck too!

Have fun camping!

Fred.

I am certainly one that had a really bad experience with my 04 PSD. By year 2 it was consuming a gallon of coolant every time I towed in the mountains. It received all the proper maintenance since it was at the dealer's service department all the time. I traded it in with 35K miles and by then it had had head gaskets twice, EGR coolers 3 times and finally an oil cooler plus it had started to leak oil. About that time Ford sent out a notice about having the coolant checked since it was breaking down and clogging the oil cooler. Mine had so many coolant changes because of the engine repairs it never had a chance to get old.

From what I learned from diesel forums, a major contributor to the clogged oil cooler was the Ford coolant breaking down. The International version of the 6.0L engine did not seeme to exhibit this problem and many learned to switch over to the International coolant to mitigate this issue otherwise you had to install a bypss coolant filter.

I now have a 09 V10 F250 and have had no issues at all with the engine and it does not even need a coolant filter. I have never regretted getting rid of my 6.0L PSD.

Dick