Hey Folks, I am looking at purchasing a 2003 F350 6.0 dually, Lariat.
Truck will be used for:
1. This will be a farm truck.
2. For the next 2 to 3 years it will pull a 30 ft Jayco travel trailer (bp) during the summer months. A bumper pull horse trailer - on weekends or trips to the veterinarians for livestock. Pulling a flatbed trailer with large round bales of hay during the summer, or when I purchase large amounts of feed, fencing and other materials.
3 years from now... a goose-neck 3 to 4 horse trailer with living quarters. Still doing all the above hauling.

The truck has nearly 200,000 miles. It has the EGR deleted. It has been used to haul a Bar B Que cooking trailer, and horse trailer. The interior is in good shape but the driver seat needs re-covering, 2 small to medium size tears in the leather. Stock truck. Exterior of the truck is in great shape, 1 small ding on tailgate.
Coolant and trans where serviced last year at some time.
Oil and fuel filter have been changed on a regular schedule.
Front end has been lined this past fall. It is driven daily with no mechanical issues.
Stock trucks starting price is $8,500.
Going to go look at the truck this weekend.
What are somethings to run away from if I see it???

 

Best advice you will likely get here is don't buy it until you have something to monitor data live, like a Scanguage.......you will want/need one if you buy a 6.0 in the future.

I would find out if it's ever had injectors. At that mileage you might be looking at doing those at some point in the future.

 

If you go up into the Tech Section of this forum there is a wealth of info. for what to look for before buying. One thing I would do is go over the owners records. Something specific to ask the owner for this year truck is if the High Pressure Oil Pump has been replaced (HPOP), if not, the truck is in the mileage range life limit for the early style pumps.

If you can wrench yourself, there is much you can do yourself. If not you will need to find a well qualified mechanic on the 6.0.

When we talk about reading live data: lots of information is flying around on the truck's data bus and can be queried by some inexpensive devices. Having a device to do that and knowing what to look for both before and after purchase is critical on a 6.0...

Good luck,
Scott

 

If you can wrench on it yourself, go for it. If you'd be paying someone else to work on it, I'd consider something newer.

 

theyre really not bad trucks.. if it running well and hasnt had any major issues by now you should be fine.. dont let the bad rep hype scare you away from it.. biggest reason so many of them failed was because people did things to the engines without the understanding of how they operated and then turned the tunes up past the designed limits of the engine (ford didnt help with this factor either).. can they be made to be stronger?? yes.. would it cost $$? yes.. but if its working well right now and isnt having any mechanical issues then leave it be and just drive it.

 

Thank you all for the replies...
Sparky83, this are my thoughts too. Running good today should run good tomorrow. That is why specified that the truck was stock.
I can wrench on some, but not major things.

I have been looking into buying a Scanguage 2. They are not cheap!

I have an auto dealer friend that told me years ago to stay away from the 6.0. But he likes to chip his trucks that he hauls with.

 

The thing to keep in mind with the 6.0's is International/Navstar has been running these engines for years in their trucks with very few failures.. The reason the 6.0's in the ford line had so many issues was Ford went against Internationals advice and turned the tunes up to get higher numbers during the "who has more power" wars between the big 3.. Ford pushed it to run near the max designed specs and when they did this failures started to happen.. didnt help they also ran coolant they were advised not to run as well.. When the failures started pouring in Ford in turn tried to push the blame off onto International saying the engine was crap when it wasnt.

It didnt help that people deleted the engines safety features while turning the tunes up even higher.. it was a recipe for failure.. if built right yes these engines can handle much more power than what they had from factory with ford and run without the added safety features... one big one for example.. Many believe the engines didnt have a waste gate because of the VGturbo.. but the EGR cooler & valve acted like a waste gate to protect the system when the accelerators were let off.

Scan gauge II has gone up quite a bit since they came out thats for sure... i bought mine for $60 at autozone when i got my truck.. was looking a min ago and saw they were now running 150-160 now...

 

Do you have a smart phone? there are inexpensive Apps that will do more than Scan Gauge can do. You buy a bluetooth device that plugs into your OBDII port ($10), pair it to your phone, download the app (I prefer Torque Pro $4.95), do the initial set up and then load up some gauges on your phone. EZ Peasy... If you are an Apple phone user there are inexpensive apps for them too: Buy a WiFi adapter instead of BT and download Forscan which I think is free... Get yourself set up with this before you test the truck out and you'll also use it as you use the truck to prevent things when you get an early warning or to read diagnostic codes, etc. (something Scan Gauge is particularly not good at)...

"Assuming" stuff on a 6.0 is like playing Russian Roulette with about half the revolver loaded...

Scott

 

Scott do you know what the torque pro/other similar diagnostic apps is called for Apple phones? until i can get a new laptop to put the ford software onto again i need to get something to scan the truck with thats more detailed than the SCII.

 

Like Scott mentioned, I am using Forscan Lite with the BAFX WiFi adapter. I paid for the add-free version ($10)

 

Mark has you covered -- I think there may be a couple for Apple, but from folks on here I think the favorite is Forscan. Unless of course you want to step up to something more like DashBoss (lots more money). From what I've seen of DashBoss, I like it over Torque, just not the price. And I also don't have any Apple stuff...

Scott

 

DashBoss will let you add on sensors, but you pay a pretty price for that capability!

 

I like that feature as well as DashBoss has such a cleaner way to log data than Torque - while it is cool that Torque as a gazillion data logging options, you have to go in and set up specifically what you want to log. Dashboss: hit Record on your real-time screen. Done...

Since I have already taken the time to put the things I want to look at all at once on a given screen, logically, just being able to record it would be a nice thing to have.

In general (and I don't know squat about Forscan) -- the ability to Log PID info to a file is HUGE when you are trying to trouble shoot or compare before and after mods, etc...

Scott