buying a 6.4 now

[navistardiesel]

hey all, i know ive posted to find out about the 6.4 before, but now my fathers into buying one possibly. we'd be trading in my duramax, and his car, for it, and id be buying his truck from him. regardless of the backstory, we need a truck that will be reliable as all hell, because his cummins is now. he has an 03 cclb 4x4 common rail laramie. the truck has been in the shop twice in its life with 150k. collapsed brakeline, and steering stabilizer. other than that the truck has performed flawlessly. ive wanted the truck since i was a kid, and now that he saw a 2010 6.4, with 4,000 miles on it for 35k he wants the truck. its a ccsb lariat with every damn option you can think of. but, we need to know how reliable this truck would be. it will MOST LIKELY see an EGR delete, or BPD egr coolers, and a DPF delete. were going to do an oasis report on the truck and see that as well. ive heard about these trucks having an injector stuck open, and washing out a cylinder, and cracked radiators, but i imagine by 2010, these issues were taken care of. what else can be a potential problem on this truck? can i hook a scangauge 2 up to it, like a 6.0? should i monitor the ECT and EOT during the test drive? how do they start in the cold, new england cold? is there anything i need to look out for on this truck? it will see the DPF delete and EGR delete for better fuel mileage, the lie-o-meter in the truck says 15. probably more like 12. were going down this weekend to check it out more in depth, test drive and possibly take it overnight. any help is greatly appreciated. my neighbor has one, his has been great, however its far from stock, and lifted 10" on 40's. this truck will most likely see 35's and some XD rims, with my influence of course. sorry for the long post, again, any help or insight is greatly appreciated

[raftdaddy]

i have a 2010 with about 40k and no issues, i don't know much about the internals but can tell you no issues in the cold whatsoever. i am in northern canada were we have to worry about hitting caribou rather than deer!!

[ars5147]

Deleting the EGR and DPF will make it much more reliable. It will be much harder and more expensive to fix/work on than a Cummins so consider that (lifting the cabs since 99 seems to get the Ford engineers off ). Good fuel and good filters will influence reliability greatly too, but that goes for any diesel. Hard decision to make, but with a tuner and delete you can make awesome power with a 6.4. Many will tell you Dodge's and Chevy's are junk but all trucks have good and bad points. Like me, I have a 6.0 because it was affordable (b/c of a bad rep) and it was paid off the day I bought it and I have addressed almost everything that I could to make it reliable as a daily driver. Best thing to do is surf the .ORG as much as you can, it is full of knowledge.

[navistardiesel]

what are the service intervals? coolant? fuel filter? should i get s coolant filter as well?

[04hdfatboy]

i change the oil every 5,000 and fuel filters every 10,000. I would recommend a coolant filter. Also i installed an airdog II for better filtration and water seperation.

[Thero]

Originally Posted by navistardiesel

what are the service intervals? coolant? fuel filter? should i get s coolant filter as well?

Oil schedules can vary. If not deleted then 3,500 - 5,000 miles is your max interval, no compromising. If deleted and running regular oil you can probably get a little more but I'd use an oil analysis at 5,000 to see how it's holding up and replace if necessary. If running full synthetic you can go much longer. I just switched to Amsoil full synthetic and they claim up to 25k, but most people think that's nuts. A buddy of mine is a distributor and currently has 18k on his. He's run a sample at every 5k and it's come back good as new every time. The industry and mostly the marketing genious's have ingrained it in our heads that you change your oil at 5k, that's just the way it is ... I don't really buy into those types of generic ideas and go by an actual oil analysis, no need to throw out perfectly good oil just because you're at an interval that some guy somewhere sometime said you should change it at.

Fuel filters is 10k or 1 year, whichever comes first.

I don't personally know anyone with a coolant filter and I'm not yet sold on them as a necessity, but if it helps you sleep better at night it certainly wouldn't hurt anything. An airdog as mentioned though is a great idea and I'll look into that myself at some point!

[navistardiesel]

scratch what i said, trucks an 08 with 6,237 miles on it. sales manager didnt even know the year... its an ecsb lariat with touchscreen navi in there too. took a breif look today. id look into the airdog myself, and that amsoil is EXPENSIVE! its what was in my dmax when i got it. clean as can be, now the rotella i run is blacker than all hell after the first startup.

[reighnman]

Downside about buying such a low mileage truck is you'd probably want to wait until the warranty is up before modding.. Upside is you have a warranty..

[Thero]

Originally Posted by navistardiesel

and that amsoil is EXPENSIVE! its what was in my dmax when i got it. clean as can be, now the rotella i run is blacker than all hell after the first startup.

Yeah man, after shipping I paid $175 for 4 gallons of oil and their oil filter. I figure it'll last me a year, minimum, because I won't put more than 10k on the truck in a year. And if holds up like they say it should then I'm hoping for a year and a half at least. I'll be pulling oil samples every 5k just to monitor it but I'm not pulling the drain plug until the analysis comes back saying it's starting to wear down. So all in all, the cost really isn't that bad.

[navistardiesel]

Originally Posted by reighnman

Downside about buying such a low mileage truck is you'd probably want to wait until the warranty is up before modding.. Upside is you have a warranty..

very true. gotta talk to my father tonight