Fabrik8

I thought that was pretty much eliminated in high volume engine block manufacturing a couple of decades ago. Interesting.

quick26

no it was a problem on some of the 6.0s

IMSHAKN

You will always have some residual sand from the casting process. To their credit, IH changed their cleaning process in mid-2005 to reduce the amount of sand left.

The problem with the 6.0 is that the coolant passages in the oil cooler are small, so any particulate buildup will reduce flow downstream...the EGR cooler. The issue is not just with casting sand, it is any particulate in the coolant. Not performing routine coolant flushes can also cause the problem. A bypass coolant filter (like what is installed on most bigger diesels) helps reduce the problem, but doesn't eliminate the need to maintain the cooling system.

edit: It's not a problem with most engines due to the size of the cooling passages. If you pull the radiator of a 10 year old car that has never had the coolant flushed, you are likely to find sand in the bottom of the radiator.

HatefulMechanic

I find it very interesting that the DT365 (Internationals 6 liter engine that is mostly used in small buses and UPS trucks) has no major issues with the EGR coolers, Oil coolers, or much of any of the pattern failures from the Ford version (aside from the HTC fitting at the pump).

Oh yeah....thats right. Ford's engineers said Internationals design was insufficient for their application, and they redesigned the coolers and FICM programming.

quick26

iirc, international told ford that they were selling to agressive of a tune on the trucks.

HatefulMechanic

Hence my reasoning for telling people to leave them alone lol.


Yeah, I got dozens of DT365's with over 300k on the clock in fleets I service, rollin trouble free. Only main issue we have is branch tubes cracking and the STC fitting blowing off and cracking the rear covers, but that is on the later ones. Once we put the 1 piece fitting on it is never a problem again.

quick26

mine has not been a bad truck for an 03. i had a turbo issue at ~130k, just recently had to replace the intercooler ~171k and i had to replace the frame fuel pump and one injector. apparently when the pump died it finished off the one injector. i run mine with a sct with a tune from innovative and keep it hooked to a trailer. in the grand scheme, its still cheaper than a transmission at this point. i know a guy that had less than 40k on his 7.3 and he needed a tranny. however, my dad had a 6.0 when i first came out and ford bought it back. i had the obs 7.3 it was good, dad now has the excursion with the 7.3.

HatefulMechanic

Ironically, the tune that Innovative and SCT use for their "tow tune" is almost identical to Internationals factory programming. Ford brought the HP ratings up by bringing the injection duration on too fast, which caused them to have way high cylinder pressures for the torque that was being put out. This caused a slight overfueling, which then caused an underfueling from some bullshit strategies they had. The 06E17 reflash was a pretty damn good one in the fact it brought the parameters into spec, but their engineers still could not get it right cause it was having massive issues with the VGT turbo sticking causing other random issues.

And if you had an aftermarket exhaust on them, the reflash WOULD NOT finish because it would never be able to relearn the VGT curve correctly. I HATED that bullshit, took forever to figure out a way to get it to work right. And of course, if you had any kind of issue with an engine, a tech would tear it down and they would use the "star pattern" bullshit line to say you used a tuner and voided the warranty. They are just now realizing that the pattern they used to void warranties was from their own programming, and was an indicator of them operating correctly. I have dozens of images from torn down DT365's showing the exact same pattern that are being used for various court cases.

The intercoolers are shit, I am very impressed you got that kind of mileage. The main cause for failure on them is overboosting, which happens when the ring sticks in the turbo. That generally happens due to wet stacking, from not driving them hard. Or just straight up high mileage. I did a turbo cleaning and IC replacement on an F450 with 955 miles. It was an ambulance, they would fire it up and let it sit idling for a few hours every week, and rarely ran it. Fucking morons.

I<3Strippers!

hateful mechanic knows his shit.

quick26

eric did not want to give me a extreme tune at first due to me having an 03 without head studs. when i ordered the tunes, i got the one with tow brake, i did not like it so he sent me another tow tune which is what i normally run on. he sent me a hot street tune and a "race" tune but told me they were not at 100% due to not having studs. told me to get studs and he would send me new tunes, order a vgtss and he would really make it run. its a truck though and not a race car so i just want it to pull my trailer with the toys in it. when we pulled the cooler, it appeared to have been leaking for a while and upon inspection of the o ring, it had been torn for a while. we locked the turbo due to a lag issue. it spiked and finished the cooler off. come to find out the tune had gotten corrupt some how and caused a lag issue. re-flashed the tune and it was good to go. i dont know what ford flash i am using right off, but i was told by innovative to leave it alone because it was one of the better tunes and the faster guys are using that flash on the ficim. i dont have the one where the ecu still uses the back pressure sensor, not the one that has to go through the learn cycle. when the turbo shit, it stuck wide open. let it cool and proceeded on. ended up sticking again and ringing the shaft in half. i ended up going with the mishimoto intercooler. its all alumnium and i got it for just over cost on a factoy one would be. i wanted to go to the vgtss if the turbo went out but since i was just north of winston salem when it let go, i had to take what i could get. i have a friend that is a ford tech in the area and he has a side shop as well. he just so happened to have a reman 03 turbo on the shelf he aqquired from somewhere.