OMG! I think we had the same daddy! lolI thought it was "If your gonna be dumb, ya gotta be rich". lol Thank God I'm smart, cause I sure ain't rich. I just got good credit!! Of course, that's just temporary!

 

Thread rating:

Staying on subject: C-

Informative: C+

Entertainment value: A+

 

Thread Author Rating:

Truth: A+

Passion: A+

Controversy: Priceless

 

who needs to stay on topic anyway. it is always easier to lie or run from the truth than it is to face the adversary.

 

The moral of this story is " It doesnt take much to amuse some people". The ones that believe "I had more than enough Ford people under my hood, and they didnt see anything" have never seen behind the scenes when techs are discussing with the service manager how many vehicles this fellow has bought here, or if this guy is a regular customer for service or maintenance, if so, can we let this minor infraction slide? Then when you go down the road thinking" I outfoxed them again" you'll overlook all the techs laughing.

 

This is true with most business that provides warranty / service.

Did you ever notice that the ones you really go out on a limb for are often the ones that bite the quickest, hardest...and have the sharpest teeth?

 

and are the ones who never apologize!!

 

Yep. The ones that hound you the most for on time delivery are the ones that never want to pay when the job is done.

 

Excellent thread Gentlemen and some of the most creative posts ever to grace a forum . I was playing around with the idea for a while, but why tempt fate? Stock it is and I'm not about to mess up my good thing. You got to pay to play just took on a whole new meaning...

 

Wow, how did I miss this thread? (thanks Vloney for making reference to it in another so I could find it) In the 3 years I have been on this forum I have learned quite a bit about hte ins and outs of the 6.0. Enough so that I was not scared to buy a second one. I have come to the conclusion that tuning a 6.0 can be a 50/50 gamble, and in saying that I have used the SCMT 1704 on both of mine and have not had any issues. As far as this engine being a bad platform to mod, I think that is a bad statement. I think it is a bad platform to mod with Fords control system in place. Now before everyone gets their panties in a wad, (I have asked this question several times and really have yet to get a good answer, also the reason I think Matt is pushing some of his builds as hard as he is) why can International offer the same engine with 230 HP and 620 ft.lbs of torque, and get 10,000 miles out of an oil change and 1500 gallons of fuel through a set of fuel filters. So let me ask the question again, what makes these engines night and day different? Where is the weak link, or smoking gun?

 

Here's a novel idea to ponder.

If you mod it and break it, and don't want to go through a bunch of crap with a dealer, service manager, technician, or FMC about the modification, fix it yourself.

Lets just be realistic, and take this for example. You install a tuner and toast the head gaskets. A set of head gaskets off ebay costs about 75 dollars (less than the over 36k 100 dollar warranty deductable) and can be done with the 99-dollar tool-show special engine hoist and a basic set of metric hand tools over the weekend. If you aren't highly technical and need some assistance, the shop manuals are available through Ford for less than a couple hundred dollars (assuming you can't find someone to get the information for you; lots of people here can do just that). Push comes to shove, pay your techie buddy 100 bucks to come over and help for the weekend. Anyone who can afford a 40 thousand dollar truck and a 400 dollar tuner can afford a few tools and a 75 dollar set of gaskets.

No, these trucks are NOT that hard to wrench on- sometimes they can be very difficult to diagnose, but wrenching on them is no different than anything else composed of nuts and bolts. The hard issues causes by heavy modification are very typical and easy to predict; they should be prepared for before even engaging in modification. Either learn to work on it yourself or prepare to hock up the change BEFORE modifying the truck, and you will have nothing to lose. Light modifications (off the shelf tuners, ect) rarely cause serious damage but should be prepared for in the event that they do.

People who whine after throwing a piston through the head during a 0-125mph run with stacked tuners and a 200 shot of nitrous irk me just as badly as those who insist that 5mg added desired fuel from a tow tune is going to leave the truck on the side of the road. All of the conflict annoyingly distrubuted throughout the world of modifications is usually caused by one thing- a shear lack of common sense and logical though, from one extreme to the other.

As a side note, I saw the 6.4 mentioned a time or two in this thread. The 6.4 calibration has already been leaked, reverse engineered, and is in the process of being performance recalibrated. Tuning, EGR deletes, particulate filter and cat deletes, turbo modifications, injectors, high pressure fuel pumps and pump-forward fuel systems will be available before the trucks are released. By the way, if you install all of the above you may want to remove them before taking it in for service work.
Just kidding.

I suppose the ultimate point of my rambling is this- the safest way to mod is to prepare for the worst before hand, become familiar enough with the truck to become reasonably proficient at fixing what could go wrong in a jam, and keep the resources to do so at hand (be them your tools, your tech buddy, or your wallet and local service department) That way when something goes wrong, there is noone to point fingers at but yourself, and when it goes correctly you have the earned right to rub it in everyone else's face that your truck gets 18mpg and makes 540rwhp reliably

 

IMHO...the difference in type of use and abuse they are subject to.

A VT365 in a commercial application will likely be run hard every day, doing a very similar job in repetition and the maintenance schedule in such a vehicle is likely to be religious in a commercial/industrial environment.

Grandpa's F350 (which came slightly tuned up from the factory) that sits around in the barn through the week, idled around town, rarely worked (and when it is, is usually not repetitive and sometimes not what the truck is designed for) ends up coked up from low-load driving and unpredicable use; and maintenance of such vehicles is statistically not as good as the previous scenario.

Both of these are blanket statements and most certainly do not apply in every case (far more not than so) but I think you'll find that the overall theory does have a basis.