Just saw this thread and thought it was interesting (makes me wish my 04 had a simple way to check the engine hours). Anyways, we just sold one of our 2005 F350 6.0L feed trucks this spring. Truck had 179,000 miles on it and distinctly remember checking the engine hours on it when I serviced it before we put it on the market. It had 10,001 hours on the engine. Now, granted, this truck did spend alot of time idling checking and feeding cattle and such. AND it was running poorly cold when we decided to sell it. Had the dealership check it over and they said, supposedly, it was only firing on the 4 driver's side injectors properly. When it would warm up, it ran like a scalded dog. And the guy that drove it from day one was... to say the least, rough on it. He would drive it until, "My truck no work." hint hint... That poor thing had the guts drove out of it. Oil changed whenever he thought about it. Dented, dinged, scraped, scratched, etc. Truck was mangled when we finally sold it. Got $7,500 out of it which was basically because it had a decent bale bed on it. Even gave the guy the shop ticket showing all the injector work it would be requiring before winter, since they assured us with the 4 bad injectors, it would NOT be starting once it cooled back off.
SO... My point is, that truck had over 10k hours on it. HARD hours. And essentially, it was still a solid truck! It needed injectors, but they were fine warm. The front end could have used some freshening, but that's not engine related. It was that truck there, that really made me feel good about the 6.0L durability. It never burned oil, it never had EGR problems, no head gasket problems, no major 6.0L problems. If it quit, it was usually something minor due to operator error it seemed like. But that happens when the operator isn't able to read the English written in the manual....It just suffered a slow and painful 6 year decline, but still went to work until the day we pulled it from the fleet. That's a :ford: truck right there. 10,000+ hours on the clock, and still ticking.