I'm being offered a 2006 Ford Cab-forward box truck with the 4.5L diesel. It looks just like the 6.0L, and that's what all the sites say - it's the 6.0L with two cylinders lopped off.

Anyone have any experience with it? Any known problems other than known 6.0 problems?

 

Other than it could not meet 2008 and up emissions that's why it went away is all I know about it.....

 

Master tech I know at the local dealer told me he's worked on a few, they just really never caught on with the competition of the Mitsu's reliability, and it's not a huge market.
It will have the common 6.0 problems, like the STC, DP's etc.
Not to mention they have a compound turbo set up like a 6.4 does.

I'm not even sure you can use a regular OBD port reader set up, seems I remember someone somewhere saying it takes a special ADL reader? $$$
I guess one thing about a cab over will be it's easier to work on.

 

Buddy of mine drives one for work, they are a dream to work on
And yes it shares a lot of parts with the 6.0L, same water seperator,fuel filters. But I forget but i think the oil filter is a tad different. Only problem that we had reoccur was alternator related. One caught fire, but that was due to wrong alternator being put on prior to me helping with it. It is awesome tilting cab forward and having access to everything, I would not hesitate to purchase one, unless it was not maintained properly

 

If a 6.0 was a chevy 5.7 then the 4.5 is a chevy 4.3, basically its a 3/4 six liter, we have one in a box truck at our work, really neat little motor, its a shame they couldn't find a way to stuff them in F150's. From the information I have gathered they are non emissions compliant motors and only available for certain commercial applications.

 

They are not good, they have a problem breaking the crankshaft. Reasearch alittle on the 4.5 and broken cranks. You see them forsale all the time with bad engines.

 

Ford DID stuff a few into F-150's. I had one. It wasn't really mine, I was a Ford development engineer. My job was developing the transmission "tune" for this package.

It drove really, really well. Then Navistar gave us an engine tune that was emission legal. 0-60 times jumped to 23 seconds. It was awful. The program was canceled.

 

Dang, that doesn't sound good. I'll check it out. This one is fairly low mileage, maybe it has some life left.

At the same time, that engine is so easy to work on, I might even put a crank it it.

 

I wondered how well it would pull that box truck at only 200hp. They look slow.