Is there any major issues with the 6.0L PSD engine? I talked to an owner and he said his had cracked heads at 50K and from his research this seems to be inherent with this engine. He did a lot of hauling with his and said he put over $10K in repairs in less then 100K. He finally got rid of it and bought an older 7.3L truck-this seems to be the engine of choice.
I've got 42K on my '05 with no problems-YET!!!!

 

You should browse around in the 6.0 forum. Depending on what the emission requirements are for your area, there are things you can do to mitigate, avoid or even eliminate some of the issues that are common to the 6.0 design. All model years have their issues. The advantage you have is the wealth if information here on FTE. The 6.0 forum will have lots of topics specific to your model that might be worth reading because you can do some preventative things to help your truck last longer.

 

Moved to the 6.0L Powerstroke Diesel forum.

 

I don't think cracked heads is inherent with this engine at all. I don't think that problem comes up a lot on this forum. Mostly people are talking about the headgaskets being the problem .. but there again, it isn't the design or quality of the gasket that's the issue, it's the conditions in the engine that occured that caused the gaskets to fail.

This truck thrives on good routine maintenance and an educated owner. Many guys on here will tell you they have trucks with over 100,000 miles, over 200,000 miles, even 300,000 miles. Mine has 228,000.

Solid maintenance of the oil system, coolant system, fuel system and keeping an eye on your electrical system will keep 99% of what could be problem issues at bay.

Some stuff you can get away with, but you won't get away long with the wrong oil filter, bad fuel, neglected fuel filters, adding wrong coolant, or low voltage.

In addition to the maintenance, get yourself some gauges to monitor what's going on in your engine. You can do the regular pod type, or get a fancy computer display that plugs into the OBD port.
The factory gauges on the dash do not tell you enough to be able to nip a problem in the bud.
Use the gauges to monitor oil temp, coolant temp, battery voltage, FICM voltage, exhaust gas temps and fuel pressure.

After that start reading and learning about the things you can do to further improve the reliability. Each model year has it's achilles heel and in the 05 for example it is the STC fitting in the high pressure oil system. That part can be upgraded.

After that just drive it and enjoy it.
One other critical part of the maintenance surprisingly, is you have to drive it real hard every now and again ... helps clear out the turbo .. really.