FICM voltage is good so long as you don't dip below 46V for too long. If I get below 47 I start getting a little concerned, personally. As for deltas and your coolant temp... that's not normal. Coolant operating temp should be above 190. Possibly a stuck thermostat if your temperature is staying around 175ish. Someone with more knowledge probably has a proper troubleshooting for low ECT, but if it was me I would toss a thermostat at it just for kicks and giggles

 

FICM voltage can drop to 47.0 and possibly on warm up to 46.5 for a brief second but mine normally runs 47.5 to 48.0, I have had FICM checked just to verify and everything is normal.

Replace your thermostat with a Ford OEM 190 degree. As for Deltas, get a base line cold between the EOT and ECT sensor, mine is almost a 2 degree difference, replacing the sensors has not fixed it to be equal.

 

Thanks. New Motorcraft OEM Thermostat has been ordered. Will replace it when I flush out the coolant soon.

 

Has the system been flushed before?
When you flush, plan on doing an oil cooler not long after, let the old cooler catch the debris than watch your ECT/EOT deltas. When flushing follow the procedure in the stickies and swap to ELC. Also, your radiator may need to be replaced too depending on the amount of debris. Oh, the stock OEM water pump has a plastic impeller, you might want to look at replacing it too.
If you do an oil cooler replace the EGR cooler with a high flow or a delete, I have the IPR highflow and it has been perfect.

The Slippery Slope of a 6.0

 

LOL....I bought the 6.0 knowing fairly well about the slippery slope and learning by the day There is a long list of 'preventive' maintenance items on my list. I gathering the parts & supplies now and will be performing the baseline maintenance (as I don't know much of the maintenance history) soon thereafter. The only known modification that I was told is that the EGR has been deleted and the oil was changed about 2k miles ago. PO of the truck owned it for a little over a year and put less than 5K miles on it on a few trips with his large family. This one sat around mostly as he has a few other vehicles at home, and drives his work provided vehicle most of the time.

 

Got an email that the white truck was going to deliver my Red ELC from Rockauto. This was the last of the pieces that I needed to have in hand before doing a cooler back flush. I have a new cooler to install, but figured I'd give this a try first.

• Removed the hot side CAC tube easily and installed the FixUr6 adapter. The O-ring on the original was pretty messed up. Taking out the T27's wasn't much of an issue. But putting them back on was a PITA, specifically the rear one. If the turbo comes out, then its easy-peazy. Reinstalled the CAC tube after attaching the water hose. *
• Opened the petcock and drained out about 4.5 gallons of coolant. Unfortunately, I used a dirty tub to collect the coolant and couldn't check to see if there were any sediments.
• Ran tap water through the oil cooler for about 15 min. I don't have a good shop air compressor. I tried using my ViAir 400P compressor, but that wasn't any help.
• Removed the 8mm Allen on the Driver side block and continued to run tap water for another 15-20 mins.
• Continued the same now with engine running for about 20 mins.
• Shut engine, and water. Allowed all the tap water to drain.
• Put the block plug back. Closed the cooler outlet and removed the hose. Tightened the petcock, but guess I was just too strong for the 19 year old plastic* Went over to Advance Auto and got a replacement Dorman petcock (Part#61127) and installed it.
• Poured 2 qts of VC-9 into the degas and filled it up with tap water to the min line. Took the Ex out for ~30 min and drove at various speeds. The delta was still ~24 deg. Came home and allowed it to cool down for about 45 mins.
• Drained the radiator as well as driver side engine block once more.
• Went through 3 more rounds of flushing with distilled water.

* See pics
After all these shenanigans, the white truck was nowhere to be seen Checked my messages again only to find out that the package was damaged in transit and they were sending it back Started searching online for Red coolant at Napa, AA, AZ, TSC etc. and nobody carries them in the store. It has to be ordered and might take a few days to be delivered. Reluctanly, I pulled out the Zerex G05 (Yellow) coolant concentrate that I had bought some time back. I was only able to fill 2.5 gallons of concentrate and 2 gallons of distilled water. Assumed that there was still more coolant / distilled/tap water that was not drained after the last drain that I did. Took the Ex out again and drove for ~1 hour. But, now, my deltas are even more higher. See pics.

Guess, my oil cooler needs to be replaced on priority. I was hoping that the back flush would help keep me running until the summer before the travel season begins.

Questions - The thermostat is a new Motorcraft unit that was installed a couple of weeks back. What is the max ECT that I am supposed to see? As you can see in the picture below, the max number that I saw was 194*. EOT went as high as 231.7

PS: Please ignore the clock and compass. The headunit is not synced.

 

I did get to mount the 35" spare onto the external mount today.

 

My deltas are really good, but I need to update the STC fitting in the HPOP, and EGR. Figure while I’m in there I’ll do the cooler. The red ELC was hard to find in my area as well. Truck stops only have the 50/50 or generic brands, and the local auto parts stores have no idea what you’re talking about. No go at Rural King, but did eventually find enough Rotella at 2 different local-ish Tractor Supply stores.

 

With family visiting, vacation trips, college graduations etc., my calendar is solid booked for the next 4-6 weeks. The means that I'd have to 'tread lightly' when driving my Excursion around. So, I sent this list to my mechanic asking for a labor estimate. Other than myself doing work on my cars & trucks, he's the one person that has worked on them when needed and has been doing good work for me for the past 10 years.

◦ Replace Oil cooler
◦ Replace coolant reservoir
◦ Replace Coolant, back flush
◦ Replace O-Rings, Studs, Head gaskets, intake/exhaust manifold gaskets
◦ Replace Valve cover gaskets
◦ Replace Water pump
◦ Replace STC in HPOP
◦ Replace Sensors - ICP, IPR, IAT, EBP,
◦ Replace transmission pan (6.4) & filters, Flush and refill
◦ Replace EGR Valve
◦ Replace turbo wheel
◦ Replace fan clutch
◦ Replace Belt tensioner
◦ Replace Starter (6.7), Alternator & Serpentine belt

With me providing all the materials and supplies needed, he came back with a labor cost estimate of $3,600. This included sending out the heads to be checked and resurfaced ($1000 for both heads) if necessary. What are your thoughts? High, low, decent?

Or, should I just continue to tread lightly until I do it all myself probably in June/July?

 

I'm no expert on the 6.0, but that seems like a very fair price for the amount of labor he would be doing.

For comparison, I have a close friend who works at a Chevy dealership. He replaced the lifters and cam in a 2023 Silverado 1500 with the 5.3. All work was done under warranty, but he said that the shop manual budgeted around 20 hours total for the cam and lifters replacement. This dealership's hourly rate is about $130 per hour. So that equals out to $2600 for just cam and lifter replacement.

 

I think that is very reasonable.

 

thank you!!

 

Seems a bit low to me, I’d make sure he really knows what he’s getting into…..

 

Compared to the going rates around here in NoVA, I am sure it is lower. I will be meeting with him in person either today(if he's available) or on Monday before making a decision. This is my first 6.0 and I've done quite a bit of homework to ask him a lot more questions. He does work on the 6.0 and 7.3 regularly, so I know that he's not just throwing a number around. Took him a couple of days to do some homework and then give me the number. Having said that, he's been fair with me on the pricing since I've used his shop for many years. The other point that I like with him is that he doesn't fuss with me about bringing "my" choice of parts as he is aware that I always use OEM or better.

FWIW, I have (most of) the tools and the aptitude to do the work on my list except for the head gaskets. I am sure y'all will advice me that it is not difficult. If I had someone looking over my shoulder, I will. Just not comfortable to go at it all alone as it would be the first time for me. The other difficulty is that I have to do all the work on my sloping driveway and only get a couple of hours after work each day. This makes it difficult.

 

Sloping cobblestone-type driveway here. I pulled the engine with the engine crane and used my garden tractor to pull it into the garage. Today, I'd temporarily mount my winch to the garage floor and just use that. It was the same thing going back in, the tractor pushed the engine crane, but I'd set up the winch line with a pulley under the truck and loop the cable to pull and hold.

Just saying ....