Hello Again Guys,

I am considering trading in my '09 F350 SRW , w the 6.4 diesel. The ONLY reason I want to trade is because I have been told Horror Stories of the engines reliability and expensive repairs. My neighbor had the high pressure fuel pump go out and cost $12000 !!!!!
It is also hard to find anyone who is not a Ford Dealer to work on it.

What are your experiences , thoughts , suggestions ?

 

well, my opinion, and i own one, is that if you need 100% reliability, get a new vehicle with a warranty, buy the extended, and use ford service for maint to avoid excuses as to why warranty wont cover it.

the 6.4l has every horror story you ever heard for a 7.3, 6.0 or 6.7 except, it does not have the electrical harness horror story the 7.3 has

im not going to list all the issues with the 6.4, its too early in the morning for me to remind myself of these things.

before you venture out on another truck, two thoughts

don't limit yourself to FORD.

don't limit yourself to a diesel

if you do a lot of towing look into trucks with 4.X gear ratios instead of 3.X ones.

and yes, the 6.4's are expensive to repair...my local ford wont even work on one....ford dealerships have metrics on 100% billing of appt time so they avoid non warranty work becuase owners get sticker shock and the appt winds up going unbilled and it hurts the service managers metric's. Like I really care about that.

There are folks who operate their 6.4's in a senerio that they never have a problem....but that is not the case for a lot of owners...your neighbor and I both included.

some folks say do deletes of dpf and egr and thinks will be better, but a lot of cities are doing crack downs of diesel emmissions tampering and I just read an article in which almost 1000 repair were fined for tampering with the emmissions. this is going to become harder to do as time goes forward. Take Harley who has been directly fined for selling tuners that undermine emmissions. I think you will start seeing tuner sellers who do installs getting directly fined asl well.

also, the next round of sulfur removal from diesel will reduce the lube value of diesel fuel even lower to the already low level of diesel #2 since approximately 2008.

one thing to rememeber if you keep your truck....during winter months untreated diesel #2 will gel and clog up fuel filters. this will result in the fuel pump running dry and wearing out the aluminum componets...the particles will enter the injectors and hold injectors open and tourch a hole in your piston. you need to use winterizing additives that prevent gelling and use a lbe additive like opti-lube all year long.....or for lube value ..if you go at least B-5 biofuel , your getting a lube value hogher than any store bought additive.

Im not going to get into the other 2 dozen or so problems with the 6.4l, you can google that and might even see some of my consolidated narrative lists on that subject.

 

I did exactly what you are thinking of last October. I had a '10 F-250 CCSB with the 6.4. I really didn't need the diesel for what I use it for and couldn't stand having to deal with the regens all the time. I almost went the delete route, even purchased a used Spartan tuner. I finally decided it would be better in the long run to trade it for a 6.2L gas. I was able to find a left over '16 F-250 CCSB on the lot with 4.30 gears and outfitted almost exactly like I wanted it. I couldn't be happier with the decision.

 

I love the 6.4 trucks but those motors can be a bitch! I was lucky enough to have a backyard 6.4 mechanic who had a cab lift. He is only $60 p/hr and has the cab off in 4 hrs. He had the cab off my truck 3 times in a year!! I sold it.