A lot of people blame it on tunes but most of the tuners writing tunes for the SCT can write you a safe tune for the stock head bolts. I ran Vivian's Looney for 30k miles before I studded my truck. Watch your EOT/ECT delta. Ruptured egr coolers leaking coolant into the cylinder are a leading cause.

 

It is turning out to be a problem of:
silicate, dirt or deposits in the coolant that end up blocking the oil cooler which then,
backs up to the EGR cooler causing it to fail allowing coolant into the intake (even as vapour) creating too much compression thereby, blowing the head gasket and damaging the heads.

Why? There may be other issues at play, but over the past 5-8 years the masses had been blaming just the head gaskets, studs and EGR cooler failures. Perhaps for some it was the stupid power they could get with a tune and the high operating temperatures! Others, it was just plain poor maintenance causing the problem or portions of it. It looks like the Ford Gold anti-freeze may have also contributed to the problem.

Most of the trucks are fine, but if you see high oil temps compared to coolant temps, the saga will start unless immediate action is taken!

 

Lots of early head gasket failures, but there were very few failures of the round EGR coolers (early model).

Cylinder pressure, poorly written combustion control programs, and sticking turbos (overboost) were the primary issues early on. There were also issues w/ inconsitent torquing and warped heads installed out of the factory.

After the switch to the square EGR cooler, it appears that EGR cooler failures (which were a result of plugged oil coolers) were the main cause as mentioned earlier. Overboost was also still common (causing increased cylinder pressures).

Lots of factors at play.

 

overboost is a big cause. There are many different ways a turbo can stick, some times it's favorable to performance and you may never know anything is wrong.

 

thanks for your replys guys i acutally feel alittle bit better about running a tune just going to monitor and watch everything.

 

My truck actually runs better with a tune. I had all kinds of oil leaks from a stock tune and it ran like a slug. I got a mild non studded street tune from innovative

 

It's never a bad thing to replace the head bolts with studs. If you know your gaskets are good might be a good time to replace them one by one.

Sent from my SPH-L710

 

i saw the thread and looked through the pages on changing them out one by one but is there a write up on how exactly to do it that way...like what cylinder to start with or if its just starting with taking one out and putting a stud in its place? do you replace them with the same pattern as taking the head bolts out to take the heads off?

 

Who knows why they go..... I have an SCT but was on stock tuning when mine went. All temps being monitored with no sign of any issues......:dunno:

 

ya i actually think im going to do the studs 1 at a time and change them out this engine only has 20,000 miles on it...the guy i bought it from blew it up put a new motor in it and sold it. ill let you guys know when i do it and how it turns out

 

I met some fellas at a mud bog a ways back and a bunch of themm had 6.0's to pull there rigs. In talking with them they all said going one for one was they way to go. I thought it was because they were cheap, but they also had 20 and 30k mud trucks behind them and definetly knew what was up when it came to motors! Good luck man. Let us know how it goes.

 

You know what's funny? If you read some of the very first literature ever published on the 6.0 (2003.25 coffee table book) international actually states for rocker arm removal it is acceptable to remove one head bolt to change the entire rocker arm assembly.

Now this is long before they ever knew about headgasket failures but it makes you think. At one time they thought this idea was okay and didn't forsee any issues with it. The problem with one at a time stud change is going to be the gasket. You have no way of knowing the condition of the gasket or the rest of the cylinder head/base engine. There have been a few guys on here that found melted pistons while doing headgaskets without ever suspecting anything was wrong.