Is the 6.0 a bad motor?

[etalian]

now please before you bash me and kick me off this site, i really need some questions answered.
1. is the 6.0 a bad motor?
2. or is it just the early 03-05 models? have all the kinks been worked out?
3. if you change your oil every 3K miles and oil and fuel filters evey 12K miles will you be alright?
i did reasearch on google and heard rave reviews about the Cummins motor but it just had a bad tranny. everybody said a cummins with our current tranny (R400 i believe) would be the ideal diesel.
so basically, my question is, are all the problems associated with bad maintenance? TIA. hope i dont start too much trouble...

[stump0331]

i believe that the bulk of the issues came with the 03-early 04s and following that they were pretty much good to go

[jwiger]

'05 and later 6.0s are good engines, and there wasn't really much wrong with the first 6'ers except that the wiring harness would have heat related issues and then other problems would develop as a result of bad signals to and from the computer. there are a few other changes to hardware and seals and such but for the most part those can be replaced on the early engines.

there are alot of people concerned that the 6.0 is a junk engine and that is the reason Ford is changing to a 6.4. this is not true. the 6.4 is basicly the same bottom end as the 6 just with some improvements to make it quieter and allow for cleaner emmisions. you could look at it alot like the evolution of the small block ford from the early carburated 289 to the fuel injected 5.0 just makeing a good thing better and keeping up with other technologies.

As far as trannies, i love my torqueshift, smooth enough to daily drive, but firm enough to have fun and pull hard. plus the tow/haul feature is awesome. my wife doesn't like driving large trucks but she managed to help me drive from oregon to south carolina towing a loaded trailer with out loosing her hair.

[DirtyDiesel]

i have heard stories about people with 6.0 having the bottom end come unglued. one of them only had a programmer and the other put like 2 or three motors in his but he did have quite a few mods including nitrous. but i would have thought the 6.0 could have taken that for alto longer than it did.

[720Deere]

Even a 454 Chevy will come unglued if you mod it heavy enough and lean on it constantly! When you tell some people that an engine is "bulletproof", they are actually dumb enough to shoot the engine just to prove it. There is another thread on here where a guy posted today saying he has had nothing but trouble from his 6.0 and he doesn't understand because he "changes the oil every 5000 miles and the oil and fuel filters every 10,000 miles". Clean oil is imperative on these engines and the filter is the most important part of that. I can see if you changed the filter trying to stretch an oil change, but you just can't change the filter every other oil change and expect satisfactory results.

The strange thing with the 6.0 is that I have heard of far more stock failures in the early build motors than I have modded failures. I have seen and heard of some guys that run these things extremely hard with some extreme tuning, yet they have had no problems. Then the poor guy that drives his 10 miles each way to work every day and changes his oil every 5000 miles has nothing but trouble. I wish somebody would compile all of the data and show what percentage of these engines have been problematic. That's the only way we will know the truth.

[etalian]

thanks for the reassurance guys. it is exactly what i needed to here. trust me, my dad and i take care of our cars. thats how we kept our 92 explorer to go 125,000 miles. and we rotated and balanced the tires every 3000 miles. and we got 70,000 miles out of those FIRESTONES. thats right the tires that caused all of those accidents. so my stroker will be very well maintained.

[Maintain]

92 explorer to go 125,000 miles

My 94 mazda b4000 (ranger 4.0) has 176ish grand on the ole odometer, hasn't been too nice to her either


Anyways, most of the problems I've heard about were from the 03 and 04 models and it had to do with egr, injector, and electrical issues.

[Ranch96]

Don't think the cummins don't have their problems too. My brother has an 05 that has bad blow by (80,000 miles) and he is fighting with the dealer now for a new motor. From what I have found out, its not an uncommon problem with them, even though the dealer denies it is. They told him the motor was "idled too much"!!!!!!!!! What a joke!!
BTW.....he just had his auto tranny totally rebuilt also.

[pipelayerjdh]

I know a guy who's 6.0 came "unglued" with only 20,000 miles stock.

[DirtyDiesel]

Originally Posted by Ranch96

Don't think the cummins don't have their problems too. My brother has an 05 that has bad blow by (80,000 miles) and he is fighting with the dealer now for a new motor. From what I have found out, its not an uncommon problem with them, even though the dealer denies it is. They told him the motor was "idled too much"!!!!!!!!! What a joke!!
BTW.....he just had his auto tranny totally rebuilt also.

my brother used to work at a chrysler dealership and he said the new cummins were problematic in the fuel delivery system. he said that when it goes out usually after warranty expires it is like 10K to fix it.