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You may have a point, but this PARTICULAR engine we're talking about, SHOULD be well out of it's "teething" stage by now. Going on two years production, and it still is'int worked out. Don't believe me? Go over to the DieselStop, you can read about problems for yourself over there. Also, since it's "worked out" already, where's the pilot injection that Ford touted?...

My opinion is, there are way too many posts concerning problems with this engine, from users in all kinds of forums, (RV, Horsemen's, farming, off road, construction, and truck enthusiasts) for all of this to be a few mere teething issues. . How many unhappy buyers do you suppose have never even owned a computer? It's pure folly to suggest that the only unsatisfied customers are those who frequent these forums - all others being happy.
I for one am not content to simply believe Ford has it all under control, they BETTER get this engine together AND SOON! It's already bad enough, that even once they do get it working right, many people will want to wait for some time to go by before taking anyone's(Ford's) word on the issue - I know I would, and I'm sure I'm not alone either.

 

i have a friend thats owned a 02 powerstroke sense he bough it new in november of 01 and he has nad NO problems with it and its a daily driver that he uses to pull a goose neck trailer around 5 days a week, hes very pleased with it. i ahve another frien that just bought a 04 6.0 powerstroke about 4 months ago and he also has had no problems with it and its an everyday driver, i havnt heard of anyone in my area haveing much problems with there powerstrokes, but i do here quite ofton that the trannys are going out of dodges, and the chebby duramax are haveing problems, i think ill sticck with ford, every ford ive owned hasnt made me walk yet.

 

Amen.
sinister73, I think they have the `teething` bugs worked out of the 6.0, the new issues with the 6.0 are not any more common than issues with the Cummins 600. I'd buy one.

 

Isn't that a brand new motor? I have no idea how that motor is doing but it's really not the issue. I agree with Sinister that the ford 6.0 should be well past any teething stage. It's more like damage control at this point, IMO.
Want to buy mine?

 

Classic. Let me guess, you're buddies uncles best friends boss had trouble with the dodge/chevy, right?

My accpetance criteria is a little higher than a truck that just doesn't leave me walking.

 

A n00bie jumpin in here.
Every make has problems. I have a buddy that had a '02 Duramax and that thing just ran horrible. Horrible milage, no power, and barley idled. That thing was always in the shop. If it had to go into the shop one more time they were gonna lemon it. But I have 2 uncles with Duramax's and they love them but they don't pull loads just up and down the road and in the oil field. The motors are doin fine but the rest of the truck is falling apart. But I have heard of ppl cracking the heads on Duramax's cause of hauling heavy loads. And they don't pull worth a poo. My pop's has a '01 PSD with 177K with abosolutely no engine/tranny problems. He just has problems with his front axle and that is it. My uncle's company has about 3 PSD 7.3's and one has over 300K and only problem was a new tranny but that was after 280K. I know a few ppl with the 6.0 and some have problems and some don't. Dodge on the other hand has a solid motor but a horrible tranny and poorly built truck. The Dodge dealers around here have stacks of trannys in the shop. The only thing Dodge going is the Cummins and that is it. And that isn't much. I don't think they even pull that well IMO.
Ford has a overall well built truck, still working out some problems but with a motor that high strung will take time to get it perfect.
I am not bias towards any truck, I own a Chevy right now but would prefer a Ford. Because of the proof that I have seen on how they last.

 

It's almost 100% net rumors about problems with the duramax heads. This is something that ford and dodge owners want to believe so badly that things tend to get made up. Lots of people have "heard" of this problem but the reality is it's not a problem. And they pull awesome. My 01 dmax pulled very, very well and was a totally reliable, quiet and bulletproof motor. I just wish GM had that motor in the suburban so I wouldn't have had to go through what I've been dealing with on my ford excursion.

MY personal experience shows me that GM makes MUCH more reliable and dependable trucks.

 

I never heard anything about cracked heads over the internet. That is what I hear from local ppl.
I understand that my experience is different to yours. Every Duramax I have been in pulls like a dog unless its chipped. I was driving on I-20 the other day and a Duramax comes flying around me until we hit a overpass then it bogs down then finally gets back to speed on the down side of the over pass.
I am not saying the 6.0 doesn't have problems. But that motor when finally everything is worked out will be the best on the market. The 7.3 dominated and I bet the 6.0 will get it back.

 

You say in your last post that you're not brand blind and then you make this statement. How can you say what kind of motor this will be if and/or when they ever get all of it's problems fixed? There are lots of posts here about Ford divorcing itself from Navstar/IH over this debacle. If that's true, Ford isn't even sure this will ever be a good motor. I'm sure not convinced, either. I KNOW the duramax is a great motor and I KNOW the 6.0PoSD is not. At least the ones I owned. What the future holds is anyone's guess but I'm not concerned about it. I want ford to fix the mess they've made before I worry about that.

Sorry, don't mean to be so hardass about it. I just get frustrated with my truck and hearing folks make excuses for Ford and this motor. Ford needs to do the right thing with these motors and replace all the injectors on the early motors, get the pilot injection working, fix the drone, etc rather than hiding behind the DSB process. It is NOT customer service to tell folks to go to the DSB rather than make more effort to fix the truck, IMO.

 

I said that because its my opinion. I have seen how the Duramax performs and I am not impressed.
I guess I feel the same way about excuses with my Chevy as you do with your Ford.

 

First Toddler, you are certainly biased in favor of Ford. There may be justifiable reasons for this based on experiences you may have had in the past, but as jeb said,
you assume the 6.0 PSD will not only have all the problems worked out of it eventually, but in your own words you say (it)" will be the best diesel on the market".
You could never be so predisposed to believe this (inspite of the fact that so far it's probably been THE MOST problematic engine Ford has ever had) if you were truly as unbiased as you say you are. This in itself, shows me that your "experience" must be weighed carefully, and in at least some instances, taken with a grain of salt. I'm a construction guy myself, but I hang with alot of horsemen (as my brother is one himself). Here at the OBS you see lots of trucks coming and going all the time, and especially during the sales. 5 years ago you would have been hard pressed to find any GM over a 1/2 ton coming in, and if you did, it would usually be an odd ball dually with gas engine. These days however, Duramax's are always coming in and going out. There are tons of them. I personally know two gentlemen who both own Duramax duallys. These guys talk only two things - horses and trucks. Neither one has had any problems - at least from what I've been told. These are not "work" trucks in the same sense as my trucks have always been, they are pleasure pullers. But they do pull some HEAVY loads very pleasurably. I have also driven tow trucks for years. Mostly Ford 7.3L trucks. These have always been reliable engines. Maintenance costs much more, and is more frequent than Cummins from my experience. You will see many more Ford wreckers and roll offs than you will GM or Dodge. But this is mostly due to the availability of the 450/550 chassis with higher GVWR. GM has only started offering
a redefined chassis with available Duramax engine in this class over the past couple of years. Dodge still does not offer one. I do know the the one oddball Ram 3500 wrecker we had with Cummins diesel, would outpull any of the 7.3L 450's and 550's we had. This was true regardless of the load weight being pulled, and inspite of the fact that the Ram only had a 12,000lb GVWR compared to 19,500lbs for the Fords. The Ford's only weighed about 600lbs more as well.

 

jeb, no, the Cummins 600 is not a brand new motor, it's the same Cummins, just reworked, so I wouldn't expect much of a `teething` stage from it. Also, I wouldn't say that the Duramax has had no problems. The strip mines above my house here has Fords, Dodges and Chevrolets there for the work trucks. The Dodges and Fords don't have anywhere near as many problems as the Duramax trucks do, but I don't think it's related to the aluminum heads.

 

sinister73,
WoWz! Toddler how original. First of all I am saying and have stated already that I am saying my experience and I will take your opinion with a grain of salt also. I am hoping that the 6.0 will finally come around and I believe it will. I like Chevy's gas engine's can't beat em. But everything I have seen and experienced with the Duramax has not impressed me.
I should have stated in the first post that I am not a Dodge fan at all.

 

FordLariat,
As I said, I no nothing about that motor old or new. The ISC 8.3L Cummins we have in our RV runs great so my experience with Cummins is good.

No matter what board you go on, folks will tell you that their brand of truck does almost everything better, lasts longer, stands up to more abuse, etc than the other brands. I see mostly GM trucks at construction sites in the area I live in. But we really have to go on here is what folks post about problems. I don't think any reasonable person, which can be the catch, can look at the amount of complaints on the 6.0 forums and compare them to what you find on the dmax forums. I've been looking at the dmax forums more lately since ford is forcing me to think about my next truck now. It's so refreshing to see a page of post headers without words like DSB, Turbo Replaced, Lemon Law, Dead Pedal and the like.

As I said, I've owned both. Both were/are first year motors. I can tell you without any hesitation that GM is building a better product. Yeah, maybe my experience with the 6.0 is not what the majority of owners have but it still happens to far too many of us.

 

I will say that the 6.0 has had it's share of problems, whether or not you get a good one or not is kind of like reaching blindly in a bag and pulling it out. I still stand behind it somewhat even though it has been a problem, I would take a 7.3 over it any day. My brother had a mess of problems with his ('04 F-350 6.0 6sp FX4) no power, smoking at 2000 rpm and above, poor fuel economy, but they didn't start till 1800 miles or so. The first dealer we took it to reflashed it and sent it on it's way, it still was messed up so we took it to a friend of the family even though the dealer he works at is 80 miles away. He put his scan tool on it and drove it for 400 miles, changed the exhaust back pressure sensor (my brother drives it so soft it got plugged with carbon) then that didn't totally fix it so he did some stuff with the scan tool and he found that when the truck hit 2000 rpm or so it thought it was at crusing speed and opened the EGR all the way and that was causing the smoke and some of the loss of power. So he turned the EGR off and kept driving it for a while. He also found that the dead spots in the throttle were caused by the throttle plate closing (stupid idea on a diesel, what is a throttle plate doing in there, doesn't that belong on a gas?) so he turned that option off too and kept driving it. The result, more low end power, no dead spots and better fuel economy. But once you unplug his computer/scan tool that all starts working again, and legally he can not disconnect any of that stuff. So when we got the truck back we disconnected the EGR and removed the throttle plate and the thing hasn't had a problem in 3000 miles, and has low end power down to 1000 rpm or so.

Now to fix the re-flash that the first dealer did he put factory programming back into it, that made it quiet again with the pilot injection and put everything back to stock. The reason they are removing the pilot injection is to try to get rid of the loping that the 6.0 tends to do when you start it in cold weather.