Originally Posted by
Big Red Rig
The EGR Cooler delete is the important part of the fix you are looking for. The cooler is there to lower EGTs before the EGR (which has problems with high temps)
The EGR delete kit may cause your truck to throw a check engine light. The SCT Livewire can be ordered with the proper software for turning off the light plus you will get 3 tunes to select from. Economy/Tow/Performance.... Always use the Performance setting unless you're pulling something heavier than about 8 to 10K. This will give you the best MPG and reliability. The other upgrades you mentioned are great, but the EGR COOLER delete is the most important. That cooler sends boiling coolant back to your heads, which will give you the head gasket issues. BTW, go ahead and get the MBRP 5" Turbo back exhaust. The truck will drive great and it will sound like a 747 flying down the street.
EGR delete is not necessary on the 6.0. Contrary to popular opinion. Most issues that happen with the EGR are caused by the owner, knowingly or unknowingly based on how they drive the truck. Very simple and inexpensive fix. The only other issue that the owner wouldn't be able to control is if there was casting sand left in the oil cooler that got trapped, that would cause the EGR Cooler to fail(as well as the oil cooler). You could still have an oil cooler failure despite getting rid of the EGR system. So really you could still have issues despite having an EGR delete and what issues the EGR delete would help with could be mitigated by just driving it a certain way. Lot of people don't like to "hear" that, but it's a fact of life.
A/M intakes are also not necessary as they do not improve performance on the 6.0. Most of your a/m intakes do not flow more air until you hit 3700 on the tach. Peak HP/TQ is at 3300 and 2000 respectively. That figure of 3700 was the quickest high flow a/m intake that I could find that had figures for that intake on a 6.0. Most charts, especially now, only show what it does on the 7.3, which gets huge benefits from an a/m intake.
The LiveWire is also a device that I wouldn't do. It has screen and power issues that seem to happen roughly 50% of the time. You may or may not have those issues, but I would actually go with the tried and true X3 or find a used xCal 2.
5" exhaust is also overkill. The OP isn't going to be flowing enough exhaust to spin that turbo and expell those gases quickly. In layman's terms, he will lose low end power unless he overfuels it beyond that of a normal performance tune. That can bring about it's own set of problems as well.
Most of the advice that I see furthes a certain belief that is wrong, but people have it in their head otherwise.
By the way, since my siggy doesn't reflect this and we are in the superduty forum and not in the 6.0 specific forum, I'll throw this out there. This is coming from someone who has a 6.0 that puts down 508 at the rear wheels and only thing left unmodded is one KR tailgate badge. Not much else stock. So I've been through the numbers with the 6.0, not due to problems, but due to my wanting to have a DRW that went over 500HP at the rear wheels. You are also getting this from a person that hasn't had an EGR issue or headbolt issue when his truck was in stock form. Only two issues that I've had are a FICM going out after 5.5 yrs and an A/C "headunit" going out. That's it. Either I'm extremely lucky, or I know something.