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A lot of the tech questions I get every week are from 6.0 Powerstroke owners or potential owners asking about the reliability of these engines. There are numerous horror stories out there about them together with a load of misinformation from an industry that is aftermarket always coming up with the next big repair to cash in on those stresses. In this essay we are going to attempt to explain these issues and provide you a bit of insight on the 6.0 Powerstroke engine.


First things first, in this informative article we're likely to presume that you are utilizing this truck for routine tasks that someone would buy a diesel truck for. Hauling, towing, work, or just commuting. Understand the advice and recommendations below may be different in case you are dyno competition killer, or a drag racer, sled pulling king. The common truck owner does a turbo back exhaust, a cold air intake, and normally some sort of programmer. We are referring to stock or slightly modified vehicles. Some things that you would do otherwise if you are going for ultra high hp, while most of this advice still uses Truck Egr Related Problems.


The major question is: Are the 6.0 Powerstrokes truly that bad? The answer is definitely not to be honest. They are a fantastic running motor that may be made to be permanent if kept correctly. Most of the horror stories you hear are coming from owners who don't maintain their vehicle properly and/or those people who are unfortunate enough to have someone who does not know what they're doing fixing it. We have had so several trucks transported to our shop after having an impressive listing of high-priced parts thrown at it trying to get it to run right. If you are likely to possess one of these simple trucks, you need to discover a really good store who understands them or arm yourself with all the knowledge and tools to do the work yourself.


On the very best of your list in case you are planning to possess one of these trucks ought to be regular care. I cannot stress how important it truly is. Please be sure you utilize a 15W40 quality diesel oil and change filter and the oil religiously. Turbo location is management by oil, oil controls injector pressure, and of course engine lubrication. The oil is requested to work really hard and can wear out fast. Proper oil changes will help you more than you can picture. Synthetic oil is fine to use and does help enormously when cold starting the truck. But it still needs altered often. Fuel filters should be changed every 10,000 miles interval. Low fuel pressure is a major killer of injectors. Do yourself a favor and alter both fuel filters every other oil change.




The very first difficulty people hear about with a 6.0 Powerstroke is head gaskets, head gaskets, head gaskets. Are the head gaskets a genuine dilemma on these trucks? Kinda. The early years had a different layout for the head bolts which lead lifting and causing problems. It simply is not as robust of a layout as the 7.3 before them. The primary couple years the 6.0 was out is where the bad name for the head gaskets really began. They had some difficulty head bolts as I said, but in addition the aftermarket hadn't exactly determined the tuning on these trucks. It wasn't unusual for someone to set a programmer in and instantly see head gasket failure on the more popular melodies. Every one blamed awful head design and the weak bolts, however in the end we came to find out tuners were running too much time. This created an excessive amount of cylinder pressure which induced the heads to lift instantly. Of course their brand-new truck was still under warranty taken by any owner back to the dealer for service. And also the dealer who only got a $7,000 occupation lost in their lap that had a guaranteed paycheck from Ford was all to eager to do the occupation. So the storylines get started about how awful these engines are and how awful the head gaskets are.


I'm a strong believer there are various head gaskets that get changed that have absolutely nothing wrong with them. Naturally as many know the solution to help keep the heads is ARP head studs and new gaskets. Most owners that are confronted using a potential head gasket issue usually just bite the bullet and install new gaskets and head studs to be finished with the problem once and for all. If you possess one of the trucks or are purchasing, my advice is always to be sure that it stays in the back of your mind which you could be setting head gaskets in it sooner or later. However tend not to only step down to the fact the head gaskets are bad every time you take it in the shop. We now have seen when the serious problem proved to be an awful degas bottle cap, terrible head gaskets be diagnosed, stopped up heater core, coolant leak that was unrelated, plugged oil cooler, or our next topic: the ill-famed egr cooler. More so, there exists zero reason unless there is a leaking one to replace the head gaskets. We see many trucks go several hundred thousand miles simple using the stock head gaskets with no failure. In the event you are in the engine for some other motive already and it is sensible to do gaskets and studs I would, however I wouldn't make a particular occupation of it unless you are constructing a high hp truck or know for certain you have a broken gasket.



This system is simply a nightmare on those trucks. For emission purposes the engineers designed a system to reintroduce exhaust gases to the intake manifold to be burned. Exhaust Gas Recirculation. It is a nightmare for any one who owns these trucks while I guess it must have satisfied with whatever standard for discharges they had to fulfill. At the least later or sooner your egr valve will either fail or just plain become totally clogged up with soot and quit working. Which results in terrible running that commonly gets misdiagnosed as flawed FICMs, awful injectors, awful turbos, or a bunch of other shade tree guesses. How a egr system works is as follows. The hot exhaust gas is let into the egr cooler from a conduit involving the turbo as well as the exhaust manifold. Before introducing it into the intake in order to cool the gas, they have coolant running to exchange the warmth. The major issues with this system are two fold. First, dirty sooty exhaust gas has been blasted into your intake tract. The soot covers everything in it's course.


It's not uncommon for all of us to tear down a motor which has had it's egr system complete it's life that is entire and discover the intake interfaces into the head to be coked as much as half their diameter. The intake manifold becomes limited from this coking as well. But that's not the worst difficulty. The extreme heat acts the cooler and breaks it down. Later or sooner it will rupture letting coolant into the exhaust or intake. Which if not taken care of quickly can and will end up in broken head gaskets.


But wait there's more. The extreme heat that the coolant is striving to scrub away in a usual operation egr system breaks down the coolant. A number of the components of the coolant begin turning right into a goo like substance that does a really nice job of clogging up all sorts of coolant parts that are related. You have no doubt heard about replacing the oil cooler, should you have already been doing any research about those engines. These desire replaced because this goo will clog them up.


Oil temps are then going to be elevated when the engine is worked, causing fast overheating. Also, the coolant continues to the egr cooler next and leaves the oil cooler. In the event the oil cooler is restricted, your egr cooler WOn't get enough coolant flow to keep it cool. Subsequent thing you know, blown egr cooler. Then of course the awful egr cooler is diagnosed by a shop, replaces it, and the customer comes back in a month with another blown egr cooler. It's not uncommon for people to get trucks which have had seven or six egr coolers replaced in their lifetime and an oil cooler. Here is the type of things that gives a bad name to these engines also it stems from the people working on them misdiagnosing them and not doing complete repairs.


My advice to you'd be to delete the egr cooler out as soon as you are able to if you have more than 50,000 miles on the truck when you do it., and replace the oil cooler In the minimum, when you yourself need the egr system function, replace the cooler with a bullet proof one that's a really strong centre section that'll not rupture. Adding a coolant filter to each engine is, in addition, a fantastic way to combat coolant contamination and is essential. Our Facebook Page.