It wasn't setup correctly to tow, most V-10s came with the 3.73 gears, which are just barely adequate for hauling the EX's weight around. To get much better towing performance the 6.8 needs to have some deeper gears, like the optional 4.30s or even deeper than that. I drove and towed stock 7.3s in the Fire Dept and I'm confident that my (slightly modded) 6.8 does a better job pulling a similar size and weight trailer. All my EX does for us is tow the 11,300lb TT all over the East without any issues. Of course a modded PSD of any size will walk me in the hills.

An oil change costs me right around $150. That’s two filters and 16 quarts of quality synthetic oil. That’s IF I don’t use archoil in the oil. Add another $40 for that (or so). So, $200 later and an hour of my time, I have fresh oil. Every 5000 miles. You could do a V10 for what, same engine oil filter cost and less than half the oil? $75 at most? V10 guys jump in here....$125 buys a bit of gas, especially when it’s cheaper than diesel. So, in a “normal” year, I probably spend $800 in oil changes alone, whereas a V10 would only be around $200? How far can you drive on $600 worth of gas? And that’s just the beginning.

Don’t take that for anything other than what it’s worth....My vote is still for the diesel

Stewart was talking about my '05 V-10 EX, which I have modded to be a better tow rig. Locally my EX sees maybe 2/3 trips to Home Depot a year and a day doing Boy Scout flower sale delivery and maybe 5 or 6 other short local errands. Otherwise it sits parked in my driveway awaiting the next vacation trip towing the big TT and then some driving around solo at our destinations sightseeing and taking in the local activities, but the bulk of it's miles are done with a heavy TT hanging on the hitch. My mods include 4.88 gears (single biggest performance enhancer without a doubt!), modded X/B springs (4" front 5" rear lift), 35" Nitto Dura tires, Rancho RS9000XL adjustable shocks, Hellwig rear sway bar, Banks long tube headers and Y pipe, Aeroturbine 3030XL muffler, SCT tuner loaded with custom tunes from 5Star Tuning, Torklift 20K SuperHitch and a Hensley Arrow sway elimination WD hitch. Our TT is a '14 Jayco Eagle Premier 338RETS with 3 slides that is 41' from hitch to rear bumper, 12' tall and scales at 11,300+ lbs with 1840 lbs of tongue weight, it's a big heavy trailer with it's own set of mods. Our EX handles the TT very well as we tow it about 5/6K miles a year all over the Eastern states. It can hold OD and 60+ MPH on all but the steeper Interstate grades and will easily accelerate if it does drop down a gear on the hills. In over 36K towing miles with it (15K with the old 9,500lb TH and over 21K miles with the Jayco) I have NEVER ONCE gone to wide open throttle, even back when still all stock with 3.73s. It would obviously loose some speed back then on the hills and it always downshifted, sometimes twice on bigger grades but would still hold above 45 MPH on even Fancy Gap (I-81 in VA, one of the East's biggest challenges). Now with it's mods and bigger TT it will hold over 60+ on that same grade at only 64% throttle opening with the 89 Octane Perormance tune loaded. If I keep the speed to between 60&65 MPH it gets 8 to 9 MPG on a typical long Interstate trip, with a best trip of 420 miles at 9.5 MPG. If I run faster at 65 to 73 MPH the mileage drops to 7.5/8 MPG, we just got back from a 1600 mile round trip to KY and got that mileage at those speeds even in freezing temps.
Over my nearly 8 years of ownership it has proven to be a very capable and reliable vehicle with the only breakdown being a failed fuel pump at 96K, it doesn't ask for much in the way of regular maintenance, fluid changes and lube seem to keep it pretty happy. Is it perfect, no, but for me I think it's the best imperfect choice for us based on how we use it. Would a similarly modded PSD EX deliver the same long term performance (or better) for our use, probably yes, but I made my choice based on my knowledge and comfort level of turning wrenches on gas engines and not feeling that I had the time to invest in learning all I felt that I needed to know about either PSD to feel as comfortable as we drove all across the Eastern states. The 6.0 fear factor also entered into my choice back then, more is now known about helping to make them live longer and healthier lives and I really wanted as new of an EX as possible and that kind of pushed the great, but older 7.3 down the list. One other factor that influenced my choice was that I hate the smell of diesel, you see I make it for my living as a Refinery Operator and after 30 years of smelling it every working day I really didn't want to be smelling it on our vacations!
Personally, I don't really think the big EX, as much as I love them, is the best choice for a daily driver, at least for me. I bought mine in '10 with the intention of keeping it around until about '25 or so when we hope to retire, so I didn't want to run the miles up on it and all of the other associated daily use and abuse and potential damage (I drive into Philly for work), so it was destined to be a "second" car for me. It also proved to be just about exactly as economical at my daily driving 50/50 mix of town/ highway at 14-ish MPG as my old '96 Chevy 5.7 K1500, I'm pretty cheap and wanted to do a little better than that for all of my "empty" commuter and errand miles. In the Winter I drive an '01 Suzuki Vitara 4X4 (our EX is the Jolly Green Giant and the Zuk is the Little Green Sprout) and in the warmer months I drive (now on my second one) a '94 Geo Metro XFi (GEOrgia Peach), I paid 3 grand for the Zuk and $650 for the exceptionally clean 44k mile Metro, with their much better mileage (Zuk @ 25 MPG and Metro @ 55/60 MPG) they have paid for themselves in gas savings based on the 14 MPG comparison. And they are both actually a lot of fun to drive. I look at it like a tool set, I'm not using my torque wrench to loosen bolts, I have wrenches, ratchets and sockets for that common work, the torque wrench rests until needed to ensure correct assembly of critical components, the EX is my torque wrench and my little cars are my wrenches and sockets.

It sounds like your TT is around 7,500 lbs on the GVWR, so even an EX that has the V-10 and 3.73 will get you to wherever you are going, bust with more revs, slower and with more gas burned than the same wagon with 4.30s. You can always upgrade the gears later too, 4.30 came in lots of pickups and the axles will swap right over which is typically cheaper than having a shop perform a regear at $1800-2400 for both axles.
When you look at EXs you want to check out the drivers door jamb sticker (on the door), on the bottom row under "Axle" it will have a code, either 31 (3.73 non-LS), C1 (3.73 LS) or C3 (4.30LS). LS meaning Limited Slip (posi), all the 4.30 rears in EX were LS and all PSD EXs came with 3.73, some LS some not.
All modular motors (5.4 and 6.8 in the EX) are prone to suffer from broken exhaust manifold studs. On a V-10 there are ten on each exhaust manifold, five above the log and five under, be sure to inspect all 20 to see if any are missing. Use any missing studs as a bargaining chip to reduce the sales price, a shop will typically charge $400/800 for a complete stud replacement job but we can help guide you through the process to DIY it for the cost of a new set of studs, $30 or so. I did mine when I installed my Banks headers.
Mod motors also can have a spark plug retention issue. This is on the pre-'03 production engines, the original design only had 4 threads in the heads for the plugs to thread into, over time this has lead to many having a plug blow out of the heads for a variety of reason. Again, we can walk you through the process of properly changing spark plugs and torquing them down to greatly reduce the likely hood of plug out a plug. If one should blow, it's not the end of the world and the repair actually makes the fix much better. In '03+ models the number of plug threads was increased and the instance of plug blowouts is almost unheard of, so a newer EX has one less thing to be concerned about.
Other than those two items, the V-10 is otherwise a very solid platform with no other "weak links".
I would strongly recommend to use a code reader on any used vehicle you look at, and always check the check engine light be turning the key to Run, shady sellers have been known to remove the bulb there to hide standing codes.
Rust is a deal breaker for me, I will not buy a car with any serious rust, it always costs more than estimated to repair and repairs can exceed the value of the car sometimes.
Brakes, these big wagons can suffer from a variety of brake issues so pay very close attention to how they feel and perform on a good long test drive. Use any pulsing or noises to bring the sale price down. We can walk you through a complete brake job here.
Front suspension, give all the components a good shake test while you are under the truck, feel for any clicking, clunking or excessive play. And pay attention to how it feels on the drive, does it wander or need constant correction or pull to either side? These issues can help bring the price down and you can fix them with guidance from the group here.
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