We bought a 2003 Excursion 6.0L w/142k miles last November. I am a Chevy fan but I love Ford trucks. I love everything about the Excursion except like every other vehicle when something goes wrong.
First the positive things. Lights and more lights! We have to drive a ways to get my kids and involves a lot of night driving. To help deer and other critters from surprising me, I added a Susquehanna Motorsports 12awg headlight harness http://www.rallylights.com/all/elect...p-harness.html with Hella 80/100w bulbs http://autoplicity.com/products/2460...ogen_bulb.aspx. With just the harness itself, with stock wattage Phillips Xtreme Power bulbs http://store.candlepower.com/bfcopo90hbpo1.html, the light output increased. I was happy with the mod and the light output. The Hella's helped even more with no one flashing me due to brightness.
The foglights were next. I first installed 9005 65wattt bulbs into the stock housing. It was nice change from the 45watt stock bulbs. I got a great deal on four Hella Micro FF driving lights and installed two in the stock foglight location with a 12 awg relayed harness I made this time myself. Love the light output/distance. I wanted a LED bar but was concerned with distance and not close up lighting. With the foglights done, I thought about how I love the HELLA 4000 compacts on my Sport Trac. Might be addicted to lights.
I installed 100watt Hella 4000 compacts behind the grill that are activated via the high beams. The 4000 compacts are thicker than the 500's so I had to massage/sand a little of the grill for fitment. I made two aluminum brackets to hold them. I used a piece of rubber on the back of the compacts to prevent any rubbing of the a/c condenser. The harness is a fused relay from Hella. I use this type of Relay on all my harness so I dont have to have separate fuse block. It is a little cleaner also. I dont have any switches mounted for the Hella Micro FF's or the 4000 compacts.
The exterior lights (hood, parking, tail lamps running boards) were replaced with 5630 SMD LED's. The lumen per SMD is up there and pretty happy. All the interior lights are red to prevent that blinding effect at night except the cargo light and the glove compartment. The led reverse lights are okay. They are bright but projection is ehh. Should have went with a Cree Led instead. The bulb just doesnt project out like I would like from the stock housing. I have bought the 7" 18w flood lights from ebay and will be installing them on the rear. I need to make/fabricate a bracket to mount them on either side of the hitch.
The things that have gone wrong is on a trip to drop off my kids, an injector started going out and the rear started to sound like I had mud tires. Great.
I changed the single injector thanks to Tousley Ford http://parts.autonationfordwhitebearlake.com/ and this great forum. I went ahead and cleaned the turbo, ipc sensor change out, and cooling system flushed with Rotella Ultra ELC installed.
The differential rebuild makes me shake my head. The Ford dealership changed the seal and bearing on the pinion for the previous owner. Apparently they did not set the gears up. What they told me the 4x4 sound was a simple side bearing replacement is actually worn out gears and pinion bearing again. The pinion wore to a nice razor edge. I was attempting to do the work to save $2K (yes that is my quote for repair) but I got discourage when it was more than a bearing swap. A local shop is doing the work now. Instead of the factory 3.73 gears, I am going to be running OEM FORD 3.55 gears 8C3Z-4209-E. I got a great deal on them and might save .5 mpg. I really want to learn to setup gears in differentials. It is very nice not to worry about computer programming with a gear change on the Excursion. Now why didnt GM do that!?

I will post the pictures I have later. I dont know how or if you can from a mobile phone. I would like to thank everyone on the forum for your helpful posts. Appreciate it.

 

Welcome neighbor, yes pics are mandatory.

 

Pics! I wanna see the lights.

 

Hella 9007 5051 80/100 headlights, Hella 4000 Compact w/100W, Hella Micro FF w/55w. Grill off. Note the LED turn signal bulbs.





Hella 4000 Compact behind grill, Micro FF in stock fog light location





The small amount of massaging/sanding behind grill required to fit Hella Compacts.





This is the Aluminum bracket on the passenger side for the Hella 4000 Compacts. The brackets are not against the A/C condenser. Sure does look like in the pictures.





Driver side Hella 4000 compact

 

Those turned out great! Nice job.

Welcome to the 6.0l Excursions with big lights in, or behind our grills club. I think there's two of us now.

Rule#1: Don't blind me if you see me coming.

That is all.

Interior LED pics?

 

william_04_x, thanks. Lol, I will try not to blind anyone. We will be headed out west (We love the western US) this fall and the lights should make a comfortable ride in the middle of nowhere. Just here in Georgia I see more deer now with the Hella's than I want to.
I will take some interior shots of the LED's tonight. The Excursion is still on jacks waiting for the differential to be finished so excuse the missing rear.

 

Welcome to fte! Looks like you have started modding your truck out Do you have digital gauges to check the health of you engine? You can tune your ficm to get 1-2 mpg I had to add extra led lights inside to get decent interior light levels.

 

I took some interior pictures. Hope they come out alright. The 5630 LED's are from DT-Autotech on ebay




Running board lights. They are brighter in person. Be sure to check led bulb height. I bought some 5000K Korean LED's that didn't fit but I had other places for them.





Red 194 Map Lights. I reused the old bulb base. Snip the old bulb wires and inserted the 194 LED's in. Again all LED's were bought from DT-Autotech on ebay. You can easily read if you need to. Night Vision is retained.





All red festoon LED's.

 

6000K LED cargo light. It is great when you need the light. It has 9 5630 SMD LED's http://www.ebay.com/itm/High-Power-LED-Map-Dome-Interior-Light-5630-Chip-Bulbs-6000K-White-42-MM-Festoon-/191236734018?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&vxp=mtr&hash=item2c8698fc42





Dt-Autotech 6000K Cargo light with Red Leds on.

 

Front pinion bearing. Terrible pic. It was rough enough to grab your skin on your finger.





The 3.73 pinion gear (far Right part ) was sharp enough to cut the mechanic.

It sucks the injector went bad along with the differential on the Excursion but we are happy with the purchase.

 

Thank you! I am doing just a little bit of modding. For checking on the engine, I have only have a tablet with the Torque app. I bought the app after the the rear started making noises and the engine started "missing". The app let me know that the IAT and egr were clogged with soot and which injector. I have never seen soot so bad.

1-2 mpg with a FICM tune!? I need to do some searching. Is it in your signature, the FICM tune? Cant see it with my mobile phone if it is. The Excursion is our highway/trip mobile. Any extra mpg will help but I am not expecting our VW Jetta TDI 44 mpg.
There are dark areas in the Excursion we have to break out the flashlight. I can see adding extra LED's.

 

If the soot on your EGR valve was dry, that's normal and nothing to be concerned about. A proper cleaning, or replacement will fix it up. Spirited driving also helps to keep it cleaner. Long idle times can pile it up. If the soot it wet, or gummy, there's probably an issue.

The temp sensor your pulled from the intake manifold is IAT2. Same conditions as the EGT valve. IAT1 is integrated with the MAF sensor, just downstream of the air filter in the intake tract. If IAT1 had soot, YIKES!


The 6.0l forum here at FTE is an excellent resource for engine specific knowledge.

Diggin the red interior LEDs.

 

Also, the Torque app is a very good real time data, and diagnostic tool. Good call.

And study this, motorhead.

 

If my FICM is reading 48V, is just an Atlas 40 tune with no repair from ficmrepair.com alright? Does "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" apply here? 1-2 mpg is calling me.

Thanks for the reading material!! Modifying vehicles is not good. It is addictive. Now I want to go get a base line 1/4 mile time. Great...I am getting the "you want to take the Excursion to the drag strip?!!"




Here is the IAT. Guess who wasn't thrilled I brought this inside the house?





EGR. If these are wet, what does that indicate?

 

If they look wet, take a flashlight, and look down into the EGR valve cavity in the IM. More wet=failing EGR cooler. Watch your coolant level very carefully. Make sure its a yellowish/gold color.

Bad EGR coolers are one of the root causes of more serious problems. The cooler starts to fail, and small amounts of coolant enters the intake tract. That goes through the engine, mixes with soot from combustion, and gums up the variable turbo vanes on the turbine side. That eventually will cause the turbo to hang, produce too much boost(>26psi), and POP go the headgaskets. Then its ARP headstud time. I predict you'll eventually be doing studs in there anyway.