Hello all, I am at a crossroads with my 6.0. I have an 03 mostly stock truck w ~145k miles. It is garage kept and in good shape. No immediate problems. I monitor temps and I am seeing 15-18 deltas at times and I think I may need to make changes soon. I could do an oil cooler and egr swap (for bullet proof EGR) myself and possibly buy myself many more miles. My question is about the head studs. Since these are probably out of my skill set I would have to pay someone else for this work and if the cab is coming off maybe let them do all the work. If I go crazy with all the mods and upgrades the cost could get very high (as in >10k as I understand). I am talking about reworked heads, bpd cooler, bpd egr and all the other related seals, upgrades and tweeks. $10k sounds okay if it may extend the trucks life 10 or more years and a couple 100ks more miles. In reality, I don’t drive a lot of miles and don’t pull heavy loads on a regular basis. Getting the return on this investment seems daunting. Do I need head studs? If I haven’t had an issue with stock truck in 145k will I have issues soon? I have read heads often go as a result of the plugged oil cooler and then failed EGR. If I resolve the first two issues (egr cooler and oil cooler) might it stand to reason the stock head bolts would be fine? It seems odd that you would remove sealed heads to reseal them. (I understand preventative maintenance and I see valid reasons for everyone that removes stock bolts to go w ARP studs.) SO my options seem to be do nothing and see how long my stock truck runs, with this approach I am on edge wondering when something might fail. Second option is to proactively update what I can do myself, such as water pump, oil cooler, egr cooler, hpop stc upgrade, and related seals. Second option might by a lot of miles and several more years. Third option is to let an approved BPD installer do the work and have the most confidence in longevity of my truck along with the most $$$ laid down. Once you go down the road to invest a commitment is made and if an unrelated failure occurs like a transmission, AC or other pricey repair it seems you would be stuck to pay for that as well. Ultimatly tipping the scale of what you thought was worthwhile as opposed to more money than its worth. I figure my truck may be worth on KBB values around 10K as is and if I invest that much more in repairs suddenly I have 20k tied up in a truck that is 14years old. This is a pretty long winded post to point out a few things. I like my existing truck and its paid for, a new truck and the payment on 70k- NO THANKS. After this decision is made it is compounded by the fact I have an excursion in same boat, nice stock, garage kept vehicle w 150k. So whatever my decision is x2. Let me know your thoughts. I know a ton of experience is available on this forum and I would like to hear your thoughts. One more thing, I have read, studied and learned so much about my 6.0 I feel somewhat comfortable knowing how it behaves. I believe the knowledge here and the solutions to the 6.0 weaknesses are well understood and available at this stage, if I migrated to a different platform the learning process would start all over.