so whats the deal with the 03 6.0L's I heard there were alot of problmes with them is there a way to tell if there are any good ones out there...and is there a way to identigy them(vins)
Thanks

 

Overall, the 03's that have been driven regularly and actually used as a truck are great and have had the problems taken care of early in their lives. The 6.0L engine needs to be used often. If it sits periodically for weeks or months there are problems. I have 83,000 + on my 03 and haven't done any major repairs since early 04 when it got 8 injectors and ball joints with zerts.

There are also some advantages to the 03's. they all have hood blankets and front fender wells installed. If you are really lucky you might even find one with the pilot injection still active. Ford did away with this in one of their "lets disable things tha may have caused the problem until we figure out what it actually was and not put back what was removed" flash happy times.

The problem with the 03's were that the injectors were built by Seimens, but they weren't given the correct tolerances for the o-ring and seats. This caused the injectors to allow fuel past the seal into the oil. The other problem was that Ford listed the engine oil capacity as 15 quarts, which it will hold if completly bone dry. The issue is there is 1/2 a quart to a quart that is retained in the engine outside of the pan when the oil is droped. Adding an extra 1/2 quart of oil to the system causes poor mileage, doggyness, and hickupping on take-offs. This was remedied by most of us with a white or silver Sharpy and 14.5 QUARTS ONLY written on the hood blanket above the filler cap.

 

jbullfrog:

That was interesting. I have an 05 and I recently changed the oil at home. I didn't have the recommended number of quarts, I was 1 short. It looked good on the dipstick so I drove it to the autoparts store and bought oil. I still haven't added the quart because the dipstick reads full.