Well, our 04 F550 6.0L service truck has finally given up the ghost. We had a new head gasket put on at 60,000 miles. They had to pull the cab off the frame to replace it. Now w/ 73,000 miles, the exhaust is full of water and blowing white and grey smoke like a freight train, and the turbo has gone. From a dead stop, floored, the truck will hardly move. It took us 25 minutes to load it on a trailer to take to the dealer.

So the verdict is a whole new bullet. A complete new long block and turbo. There telling us 3-4 weeks so we'll see what it's like then. My boss is a GM guy but always bought Ford's for the heavy duty trucks. He's had enough w/ this and just ordered two new 07 3500 Duramax trucks. One 4wd dually and one 2wd SRW.

This is my first post here in diesel land. I'm usually in the V10 forum but occasionally I like to see what the smokers are doing. Just thought I'd let you guys know.

 

Did they give you a reason why she blew?

 

No, the service manager didn't have an answer. The tech's only comment was, "I guess you got a bad one". Yeah, it's bad one all right. And there's only 6 trucks in front of ours, 3 of which are also getting new bullet's. I hope for Ford's sake, this 6.4L is a better engine.

I mean we're meticulous about servicing and maintaining our fleet. The turbo started making noise at 45,000 and a our purchasing dealer said that was "normal". It's been getting generally worse ever since. The head gasket at 60,000 miles. The thing was a powerhouse up until 45,000 miles. It's been down hill ever since.

 

Well good luck to ya. Surprising that if you got a bad one, it took this long to blow.

 

Kinda what I was thinking. Plus, I didn't think Ford had that kind of warranty on commercial trucks. Maybe I am thinking fleet though.

 

I'm not sure what their "standard" procedure is but we documented everything. Every phone call, every day that it was in for repair, everything. The service manager said that since it was just in for a head gasket, that they weren't going to screw around w/ it. They were just going to replace the whole engine. They said they didn't want to get into tearing it down, magnafluxing the head's, etc, etc.... So, I'm not sure this is "normal procedure".