I recently purchased a 2005 f250 with the 6.0 diesel. It has high miles for the year 207k, most of them put on by the first owner (186k in 3 years). I know these are almost all hy way miles because the engine hr gauge only shows 4000 hrs. If you do the math it comes out to an average speed of over 51mph for those 207k miles! The owner I bought it from said that he recently had the egr cleaned out and the turbo cleaned. The truck runs and idles great, but does seem to be a little more "cold blooded" than other diesels I've driven/ran. I'm using this mainly as a DD, but it will see occasional towing pulling my off-road truck on a tandem bumper trailer.

I'm looking at getting the Diesel Edge Evolution programmer with the EGT probe. I'm mostly looking for improved fuel economy. I plan on doing 4" exhaust and the EGR delete in the future if that makes a difference.


That being said, would you do it? I have no clue if the head studs are original.

 

In general I recommend against tuners for the 6.0 unless you really know what you are doing. Otherwise you likely to end up with a bus wreck on your hands.

Also most of those in the know about tuners will tell you that you shouldn't expect increased fuel mileage from installing a tuner.

 

Stay away from edge products for tunning! They are known to cause problems with the torque shift tranny. The best, and only way in mine and most on heres mind, safest way to tune your truck is to get an SCT with custom tunes. If you delete the egr without custom tunes the truck won't run right. That is something that we have found out by one of our local techs. When the egr valve is not in place the pcm limits operation of the cooling fan. Causing overheat problems while towing. The only way around this is to use a custom tunner to eliminate the egr system. You should really do your homework before buying any add-on for your truck. Read, USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION! Search for "best mods to a 6.0", "best tunner", or "should I tune". All this stuff is talked about on a daily basis. You should educate yourself on what you have, and what you want/don't want to do to your truck.
Greg is right. You shouldn't tune your truck with the idea of fuel millage gains in mind. A tunner/programer/chip is a performance mod first and formost. Chance are you will not see any MPG gain. I know all the off the self guys claim you will see X amount of gain in MPG. The reality is that is just not true. The guys that have, and mind you that is very few, claimed to see better MPG. Only report like 1-2 more MPG TOPS! At that rate it will take forever for that thing to pay for it's self. What im saying is your waisting money if you are buying a tunner to increase your MPG. You will most likley end up disapointed if you go in thinking your going to see a gain. Just go in thinking you will see increased HP, and Torque. You will end up happier that way

 

It depend on if you can afford the repairs. If you can by all means do so.

 

Like so many things that you have said, not exactly true. I have well over 200k, putting done 508HP and I would say it has done very well as far as reliability goes. Never has left me stranded. My 5.9 and my 7.3 that I had before it, can't say the same for those and those weren't even tuned.

I'm not saying you are not running a danger with putting on a tuner, but the mere fact of having a tuner on there doesn't mean that you'll have issues. Do you homework, something mobey needs to do.

Also, like others have said, don't do it for economy. You might get some extra bump, you might not, you might even lose some. It is what it is.

Go with custom tuning though.

 

If Tex will volunteer to pay for the head gasket replacement I say go ahead and put one on it!

 

It all depends on how you do it.

There is even a small group, very small that have put tuners on their truck to actually de-tune the truck. That's right, de-tune the truck, but guess what, they actually are running tuners.

How does that factor into your line of thinking?

There are also quite a few people runing tunes that haven't had problems like you are suggesting.

Oh and by the way, it isn't stock gaskets that are the issue, I still use stock gaskets on my truck, it's the stretching of the head bolts that are the issue. Research bubba, research.

 

To the op. You might want to read through this post before you listen to anything Mobey has to say! https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...y-a-tuner.html

 

Ya, I already saw that thread. If the stock gasket is fine, is it possible to replace the studs one at a time with ARP's without "breaking the seal" so to speak? Is there enough room to do this without pulling the cab? I've done head gaskets on gassers before, but I understand these trucks are a lot more complicated than that with all the injector controls.

 

yes it can be, and has been done with suscess. Me personaly I woudn't do it that way. Why tear it all the way down to that point and not do the job right? I mean at that point the only things really left is buy new HG, and injector o-ring kits. Maybe a few other things like have the head checked at a machine shop to be on the safe side. You could have problems now just to the point to where you can't really tell yet. You really don't want to do this twice.

 

As texans pointed out, yes you can do it. Question is: how sure are you that the bolts haven't stretched already? If you are to the point of being able to say 100% sure or extremely close to that, then I would say go for it. If you can't say that, then you might want to go through the motions.

I personally would go through the motions regardless of how confident I was, because I know myself and I know that I'll also say "what if". That's just me though.

 

If I do that though, can it (just replace the bolts) be done without pulling the cab? I have quite a few other "projects" going on right now and it wouldnt be too bad to spend a Saturday changing out bolts for a little insurance as opposed to waiting until i have enough time to pull the heads/cab off and have a machine shop check them out.

 

Here ya go:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/8...-hvac-box.html

 

You can do that, I personally wouldn't try to think of it just a day deal either if I was going to do things one by one as that might rush you mentally.

However, I have to add that this may work without a hitch, but you do run the risk that you were wrong in your assessment that nothing is wrong with your bolts and have to tear back into it at a later time.

 

Imho I would not do them one by one, the factory specs as far as flatness are not good enough to risk it... on my current build we had my heads done to ensure flatness... people have had success with this but others have not... also If you are doing the head studs why not also do an egr delete at the same time, just my two cents...