I'm in the market for an F250/350 Ford Diesel to haul my toys; say 1998-2005 vintage. Not owning a diesel before, wondering if there are any Ford Engine models that should be avoided due to problems or poor performance. Thanks!

If you can find a 7.3 turbo powerstroke that is the motor to have. I had one with a 18ft roll back box on it hauling and towing big heavy farm machinery and put 275,000 miles on it and the only repair ever done was a clutch at 135,000 miles (besides wear items) but nothing ever on the motor. Not a water pump, alternator nothing!! Pretty incredable. I have a Case IH and New Holland farm store. There is a ford dealer right next to me and he says he has a waiting list for trade in trucks that have the 7.3 turbo. That says a lot!! My 7.3 was a 1998 f-super duty. Great truck. In 06 I ordered a new f-550 to replace it and within 60,000 miles it has broke down/laid me up 4 times. Love the new truck but the 6.0 turbo is not nearly as reliable. I here the 6.4 is even worse. I could go on for hours on the ford motors but bottom line- get the 7.3 turbo powerstroke!!

the 6.0 and 6.4 are junk !

I have a 08' F350 with the 6.4 and I love it. Not one problem in 40,000 miles... Why are these so bad?

I know a lot of people that haul horses and quite a few that haul tractors and farm machinery and pretty much the concensus with them is the 7.3. Make sure to get one with the intercooler. I think they started them in 96 but can't be sure about that. I currently have a GM 6.9 and haven't had any trouble with it. I really wanted a Ford when I bought but couldn't find one for the price I could afford.

Snofish, if you have never owned a diesel before you probably wont notice the difference in the 6.0 and 6.4 engines over the 7.3. The 7.3 drives like a traditional diesel, it has great low end torque response and all you have to do is tip into the throttle and it starts pulling. The newer 6.0 and 6.4 engines are more like a gas motor in driving, you have to tip in a little harder to get the power, but the top end it makes more power and supposedly does better on fuel. I don't know what year it started but you want to stay away from the ones with the particle filter exhausts, they get worse milage, and are not as easy to hop up. If you look at the exhaust tipes the ones with the particle filters have a heat shield around the tip.

The DPF became mandatory for all vehicles built after Jan 01, 2007.

all of our 6.0 and 6.4 have been nothing but headaches ! multiple trips to the dealer for warranty on ele. fuel inj problems , computer issues , injector issues , and oil leaks . all ours are well under 100k , BUT our trucks idle ALOT ! possibly the problem , but why would you build a truck that can't idle for extended periods of time ? our trucks also use diesel and biodiesel , could also be the problem as when the 6.0 first came out the biodiesel was eating the tanks liner and sending it through the fuel system . and at first ford told us to pi$$ off , and after a few ph. calls to corporate ford they all were covered !

All very helpful info; thanks guys!
Can you offer any input on fuel mileage; non-towing and say pulling a 4-place enclosed snomo trailer?
Thanks!

fuel mileage is a loaded question for sure. The big thing there is 3/4 or 1 ton and gear ratio. A 3/4 with the right gear ratio will get way better then any one ton. A one ton dually will be a lot more stable but you will notice a bit more side pull when you get in some heavy snow.

I don't know what the milage on a ford is, but it is diffinetly related to the gear ratio. I drive a ram with a cummins and a friend of mine has the identicle truck but I have a 4.10 ratio and he has a 3.73. I only get 16 highway empty and he gets 22. I don't have a towing comparison because we have never towed the same trailer for reference. But I would immagine it would be from 12 to 14 towing a 4 place enclosed.

Working at a Ford store I can tell you that we have had our share of issues with the 6.0 and a few 6.4s. However I can also say that Ford has learned ALOT about some of the causes of these issues. First, use Motorcraft diesel motor oil. Some different brands can and do break down prematurely which can cause high pressure pump issues as well as a host of other things I could mention but I'm not going to take the time to write 16 pages on here right now. KEEP THE OIL CHANGED REGULARLY. If you idle alot change the oil every 200 hours and nevermind how many miles are on the oil. OIL QUALITY IS CRITICAL. Biodiesel fuel is another MAJOR problem...even more so in the winter.Too much bio will take out injectors big time. These engines are designed to run on up to 5 to 7% bio. Most places are 10-15 and even 20% bio. Keep the filters changed and use additives in cold weather. A LARGE percentage of these issues can be avoided by being aware of this stuff.

thats the problem , we have to use what the company buys for fuel , and they idle alot when the booms are in use . really no way around it for us . worse case scenario , lots of idling and biodiesel ! have you ever used the ford meathod for working on the engine and take off the cab ? I was at a class and the ford rep said thats the procedure for engine work ? is that true ?

Yup, remove the cab to work on the heads. Our guys can have a cab off in about an hour and a half. It makes engine work or head work super simple. Just walk up to it and work. Your not all cramped up laying across the radiator.

We also have had multiple issues with 6.0 in a 2005. On a cold snap we lost #3 injector and two days later lost compression. The motors are not reliable but the truck is great.As far as cab off for head work that is true. However you need a way to lift it off. Not everybody has that luxury.You can remove the motor by removing the grill and front end;then pull the turbo and computer off the top' pull the pan and oil pickup and out it comes. We finally got fed up and installed a 12V cummins in the truck.Not quite the raw HP but 24 MPG and reliable.

I have a 2003 F-250 and had the normal Ford problems with it. Computer went out, Ford covered it. The high pressure oil pump went out (which runs your fuel system) Ford covered it. Other than that just one set of brakes and one new set of tires, keep the oil changed and a spit shine every now and then. So all in all no real complants on the 6.0 motor. I have 103,000 miles on it now. I get about 17-18 mpg normal driving and around 10-11 mpg pulling a 4-place enclosed with the hammer down. With the family in the truck and pulling a 30 foot fifth wheel I will get as much as 14 mpg with it.
As for the 7.3, it was a good motor for me also but with my foot in it pretty hard she blew the head off the driver side at 169,000 miles.
Also have a 2006 F-350 flat bed for work with a 6.0 in it with 204,000 miles on it. This truck is always loaded heavy and a bobcat and trailer behind it. 10 mpg , and it gets run hard every day with no problems yet.

GOOD LUCK with your truck serch.

what are you using to get the cab off ? special tool , or home made ?

Darn computers, mine went out to. But Ford covered it. It cost $1042. for it. Glad it was still withing warranty, that would have cut into the beer fund. I have a 2002 F350.

i have a 03 f250 w/ 7.3 and it has been a great truck & the moter has been awesome. got a banks 150 hp big hoss chip with a 6 gun tuner stacked on that. it has 150,000 miles on it and has had the banks stuff on it since about 50,000 and had a diablo sport programmer on it before that. had the oil pump seals replaced twice and the tranny done @ about 100,000 miles and that is all.i pull used to pull a 28 ft. travel trailer almost every weekend, pull 4 plc enclosed trailers, and everything else. doesn't run out of power and still gets 18+/- on the road empty and about 13-14 pullin.

nytro rxt,
I have a buddy that tuned his 03 F-250 7.3 up and blew his tranny within the first month. I myself want to put a tune on my 03 6.0 but dont want to screw anything up. It seems to be running good right now. Besides I have other plans for my allowance that mama gives me. New sled, tires for the four wheeler, 1956 F100, Trip out west, Bigger shed, well you get the idea. the plans are endless..

doo

I have a 2005 F250 6.0 that had an oil leak (rear cam seal I think it was), but that's it. But, it only has 18k miles on it... I only drive it here and there. It's a Harley Davidson edition, so it's more of a "pretty" truck than a work truck... That's why the miles are so low.

Another note: If you WANT TO CAUSE PROBLEMS, chip it. A very high percentage of trucks that are chipped have head gasket and warped head issues. These aftermarket performance chips can and do cause lots of problems. Too high exhaust temps (NOT WATER TEMP!!) will take out a head gasket and or warp the heads. It only takes one hill with your foot in it for 20 to 30 seconds to do the damage. Exhaust temps can climb too high too fast (faster than you think) and damage the engine. Seen it too many times. People say "I watched the temp guage and it never got hot" Again, it's not water temp, it's exhaust temps that burn em up. Take my advice and DO NOT CHIP IT!!!

lx700kev, the thing i like about the banks systems is the fail safes to set for egt's & other things. i have mine set @ 1350 and when it reaches that the system will reset itself to get the egt temps back to a safe temp. don't know how good it works but mine hasn't went down yet.(i said yet lol) also a chipped truck needs to have a 4 in. exhaust or bigger to get the heat out. i have many freinds that have chipped trucks with many trouble free miles on them.
nytro

I have had mine modded since it had 11,000 miles on it and it now has 122,363 and have had very few problems with the engine. I run a multi posistion chip, 4" exhaust from the turbo all the way back, have a boost fooler that doesn't allow the MAP sensor to see over 20lbs. of boost so it won't defuel,has an open element air cleaner, a ported compressor housing, the ATS exhaust housing, a Banks wicked wheel, adjustable wastegate set real tight, regulated fuel system plus some other small mods. I lost a head gasket around 20,000 miles and puked the factory turbo from hitting 35-37 lbs. of boost quite frequently. Beside these two problems I had an IPR (injector pressure regulator) go bad but that is it. It gets 21-23 mpg on the highway not pulling but has got a best of 17 mpg pulling my 5th wheel but usually gets 15.5-16 mpg pulling it. With winter blend fuel it gets 12-14 pulling my 24 ft. fully enclosed steel framed haulmark trailer with 4 sleds 2 of which are Yamahas and 2 Polaris but 3 of them are long tracks. This has been a very good truck as I honestly have used it mostly for towing and when not pulling it has been driven quite hard more than a few times. Oh yeah mine is a 2001 7.3L Ford Super Duty 4x4 with 3.73 gears. trick on the highway is to keep it below 2,000 RPM as it will lose 2-3 mpg over that speed.

LK700KEV is right, you have to watch what you do to it. If it is just a downloder type upgrade you have no way to monitor things, I would put an Exhaust Temp gauge on it to monitor. I have a cummins and a TST chip which doesn't change the factory fuel map, but it has a wiring harness that plugs inbetween all the injectors, cam and crank sensor, map sensor and a modified wast gate elbow. And it has an EGT sensor that monitors the tempature and will set it to go back to stock timing once it goes over the set limit, and me like nitro rtx have mine set at 1350. Now I did blow up a stock turbo, but I am not sure if it was because I was pushing 45lbs of boost out of it or it did have some burnt oil on the bearing surface. The biggest reasion turbos go bad is because if it is too hot when you shut it off the oil film left on the shaft burns to it and eventually starts to build up and lowers the bearing cartridge clearance and eventually rubs and goes bad. That is why a lot of newer tuners have a cool down timer. Mine doesn't and i think that is why mine went bad. They say you should let your egt to cool down to below 350 before you shut it off.

For reference my 03 Dodge has a 5" exhaust, south bend clutch, bigger pusher fuel pump, open air filter, TST chip, and has been making 400+hp and around 850ft-lbs since around 20,000 and I have around 180,000 on it now. With one blowed up turbo and normal ball joints, clutchs and brakes.

-Mark

I guess I should have included that I also have gauges, EGT, tranny and boost. I have a fuel gauge also. My EGT's have never been over 1150*F and that was on a long full throttle pull. It will hit 1,000*F fairly quickly but takes a while to climb higher. My turbo spools very fast. When i said I lost a head gasket in my previous post it was just leaking oil into the valley and dripping down the back of the block, so it was just torn, not completely blown as it didn't leak any coolant into the cylinder or oil into the antifreeze. Mark use Amsoil and forget about the oil coking up. Gene

Sledneck, how long do you run on an oil change with amsoil? A buddy of mine is a dealer, and he runs for 15,000 on one oil change and just changes the filter ever 5,000. That seems a bit long for me, but what do you run?

Watch this video

15W-40 Diesel Oil

15,000? Mark, that seems way to long!

Mark I used to change it out at 7,500 mile intervals, but that was while I was still under warranty. Now that I'm out of warranty I'm going to try 25,000 just like Amsoil states that i can. I am also a dealer. Does your buddy do oil analysis? If he does ask him for the results, I would bet he could go longer. Is he using the Eao filters? If so I can't see why he's swapping the filter so frequently. The filter is rated for 25,000 miles also. I can tell you right now I have over 10,000 miles on this oil and it looks as clean now as it did the day I poured it in. I was hoping the video linked above would show the engine internals as it does in our Amsoil News magazines, they do regular teardowns on those trucks. It was very clean inside and the wear was very minimal, still within factory assembly specs. I have a buddy that uses Amsoil in everything he has, he had it in a 1995 Chevy S-10 Blazer thta he sold to his nephew. After 1 month his brother in law calls and wanted to know what kind of antifreeze he used as it was down some and they couldn't figure out where it was going. He told them Amsoil, they said well we can't afford that it's too expensive. So they keep driving it for a couple of months and keep losing antifreeze. They find out it's going into the crankcase. A teardown reveals the engine to be fine. The mechanic tells the kid and his mother and father your Uncle sure did you a favor by running Amsoil as the engine is fine no damage at all. They replaced the intake gasket and he was good to go. Now he uses Amsoil as the mechanic told him it saved him a bunch of money. Sorry for the long post but I had to tell you the story. Gene

Let me clarify a bit on my warranty statement. I know the Moss Magnuson act and I know that running the Amsoil for 25,000 miles would be perfectly fine but if some catastrophic engine failure occured while running the Amsoil at 25,000 mile intervals you would be blamed for going over the manufacturers recommended oil change interval. Now this is a battle you could probably win but who can afford to have to pay for the engine and then go to court to try and recover the cost. I just avoided any potential problems by following the maximum 7,500 mile interval in my owners manual. Alot of Ford guys will know what I'm talking about with the HPOP (high pressure oil pump), but most guys with chips or high power programmers have to go to an aftermarket HPOP for the increased oil pressure, but with my Amsoil I'm seeing over 3,000 psi at full throttle and only 42% duty cycle on the stock HPOP. I can start my truck in -40*f temps without having to plug it in.Gene

My buddy changes filters because he uses them as a farm truck and always in the dirt. I think it is just a preventitive thing. I might try it with mine and see how it works. I still have one oil change left with regular oil. Still have 3 gallons on the shelf.

Mark how many miles on your truck? The reason I ask is if you have high miles you would be doing yourself a favor to get the Amsoil engine flush and use a good but cheap filter like Wally worlds Super Tech filter. Amsoil will clean up your deposits like you wouldn't believe and can plug up a filter. If you use a cheap filter with the engine flush it will get rid of most of the deposits then. If you do change to Amsoil I would flush it if you have high miles and use the cheap filter then get the good Eao filter. No sense paying that kind of price for a filter that will be on for just a few minutes. Ask your buddy about it if you decide to try it. It's also possible with some high mileage engines to need a couple filters (if the engine starts using up oil) that's a good indication the filter is plugged with the deposits the Amsoil will remove, then just change filters and top it off and good to go.

I have around 180,000 on it. I always change the oil around 5,000. I use the Shell brand Rotilla oil and a frame filter, as well as a Lucas oil stabilizer. It burns very very very little oil if any. It used to burn a quart every oil change before I replaced the turbo. I think it was a bad turbo from the factory because the new one is a factory replacement and sounds a lot different, it spools up way faster than the old one and makes more boost sooner than the factory one. The engine also stopped burning oil after I replaced it. So I think I had a bearing clearence issue on the origional one. I might try amsoil on the next change, espically if it will get me through the winter with out having to an oil change part way through.

buy a chevy with the duramax

If you need 2005 6.0 powerstroke engine pasts call. We have one on the floor with 70,000 miles.We lost #3 injector and I suspect a blown head gasket. Also have stock torque converter.815-303-9009. Scott