Sounds like you got one of the bad V10s and one of the bad 6.0s.

 

That would be because in stock form, EGTs shouldn't be a concern. The ECM will regulate fuel appropriately to keep EGTs in the required range. Anything beyond that, is Ford's problem.

 

I do not understand the comment, "anything beyond that, is Ford's problem."

If you modify beyond factory settings where you would need an egt gauge makes it your problem, not Fords.

I have had my 7.3 for almost six years. I have had a few failures, one (the gang in Tennessee found it ) I chased for six months before finding, but that was due to inept mechanics that could not find their *** with both hands and written instructions at how to do it. The glow plug relay failed at 15 below and then the cps drove me crazy until I found this site. Other than that and an average of 21 mpg, I cannot complain. The truck has been quite dependable.

You can see the minor mods I have done in my signature. None requires the use of an egt gauge. Any mods that require chips will require it. But that is in the future.

 

Becuase most of these trucks are under warranty still and Ford believes you don't need an EGT guage (on a stock truck). So if the truck were to melt because of uber-high EGTs, I wouldn't care. Ford deemed it not a problem enough to warrant a guage on a stock truck so hell with it, it's Fords problem.

 

Ask on here how many people had bone stock trucks that blew head gaskets from overheating.

Either way I was proving my point with a guy like 30 pages ago that said the v10 flying spark plug was user error.

But my opinion, I think the gauge is important even in stock form.

 

I got an OBD II gauge set so that I could watch EGT's and I am running stock trim on my 6.4. Why? Because I tow trailers and I feel the engine PCM doing things to keep the EGT's in check but I wanted to see what was going on while driving this truck around.

So now I see, EGT's hit 1300 or so and then I feel the "wall" and watch them come down to 1200 or so. As the 6.4 does it's regen cycle the EGT's run around 1200 regardless of engine load.

I don't have any reliability problems at all with my engine but if I ever see EGT's running high, oil temp, etc.... I will know it and maybe I won't blow the EGR and hydrolock the thing. This is what gauges are for and I also think that Ford should include them in stock trim.

 

The rho value of the air doesn't matter nearly as much to a forced induction engine as it does to a n/a engine. The ONLY scenario where a forced induction engine will lose power at the same rate as a n/a engine is if the turbo has no excess capacity at sea level. PSD turbo's do have excess capacity which is managed by a waste gate in the 7.3 and variable vanes in the 6.0. The only argument you can make that a psd loses power at higher elevation is that more of the exhaust gases are being used to spin the compressor so the "exhaust restriction" reduces power. Whatever amount of power is lost is nowhere near the amount power lost by an n/a engine. Without doing any math, it would be interesting to know whether the power loss is equal to, or close to, the amount of reduced drag due to the lower rho value.

What are the odds of someone buying a horrible V10 and 6.0? My bet is that you do something to your engines to impact their reliability.

 

Yeah right. Something I do? Probably not. Both vehicles had all scheduled maintenance performed by the dealer at or within 500 miles of thier intervals. I rarely towed with the 6.0 as it grenaded itself without any warning. Please, keep the insults to yourself.

If the 7.3 and 6.0 turbos were able to produce excess boost, why can you remove the wastegate completely and the engine survives???? Because the turbo is sized to the capacity of the engine.

And yes, effects of altitude DO affect forced induction engines if the turbo is already pushing near it's max efficiency at sea level, which most new diesels already are. What purpose would replacing a stock turbo with a larger one have if the stock turbo was large enough to sustain higher HP levels? Duh, this is a no-brainer. Its because the stock turbos don't provide enough capacity.

 

Wow. If that was in insult than maybe we should just all sing the Barney song together. We wouldn't want to offend anyone's sensibilities. My point was that if you ended up with a horrible V10 and a horrible 6.0, you should play the lottery because odds like that don't come along very often. The odds are higher that...well...I don't want to offend you.

I enjoy turning a wrench or two on my truck and removing the waste gate sounds like a fun project. If you wouldn't mind, please post instructions on how to remove the waste gate from my 6.0. I can't wait for all the extra power.

As for trucks with the waste gate removed, what other mods have been done? In addition, what gain would there be to removing the waste gate? After all, according to your theory, the turbo does not have excess capacity, so the waste gate should never open anyway. If it opens, then guess what...the turbo is producing excess boost and therefore, has excess capacity.

I would argue with you that a psd stock turbo does not have excess capacity. The number I have heard over and over is that a psd can maintain sea level performance up to 11,000 feet. You can't do that without excess capacity. I can substantiate that with my own experience that my psd's pull the same at high elevation and low elevation. I could tell a huge difference in my gas engines without a trailer. I'd love to see some actual data on this. If you know where some is, please share it, because I can admit when I'm wrong.

I know a couple of people that have put different turbo's on their trucks. Their engines were nowhere near stock even without the new turbo. Aside from that, there are always more efficient ways to compress the air, thereby reducing the deleterious effects of the compression process itself. You can't get something for nothing, but you can try to get something for less.

 

Please, spare me. It's not uncommon to get two bad apples out of the same basket when both are picked from the same tree. Both of my trucks unfortunately have the "1st generation" of each powerplant. The V10, '99. The 6.0, early 2004. So in all actuality I could buy all of the tickets in the lottery you speak of, and still lose.

Here you go. There are several how-to threads in the 7.3L forum on how to do this too. When you bypass the wastegate you get just a few lbs. more boost pressure as the 7.3L stock turbo is already at ITS MAX EFFICIENCY and cannot produce enough boost to severely damage the engine. I'm not saying that this wont damage the engine over time, but it has, and can be done.

Waste Gate - Diesel Bombers

This is just one. Do a search here for yourself, you'll find it.

That would be because 7.3 and 6.0 stock turbos under heavy load reach thier max rpm (efficiency limit). The purpose of the wastegate is to limit boost pressure in ALL engine situations, not just at full throttle. So if one was to remove the wastegate from the system, the turbo would be performing at max boost with a small amount of exhaust pressure. Since the 7.3 and 6.0 stock turbos are MATCHED to the engine, the output s limited as the turbo can only spin so fast.

I can substanstiate that my 6.0 had power loss (albeit a small amount, but was noticeable) at 9,000 ft. I guess we should agree to disagree then.

The reason they put on the new turbos was that they maxed out thier stock turbo which is quite easy on a modified 7.3L.

 

TeamViolence how many miles were on your truck when it had all these problems?

EDIT: forgot to say which one i was asking about. i meant the 6.0

 

16k when it hydro locked. Cant remember the others, but the truck was bought back by Ford at 21k miles.

 

21k is alot of miles for only owning the truck 7 months. that could have been the problem in some way. did you break it in really hard by towing heavy with it right from the beginning? im just trying to think of some ideas you'd have to be really unlucky to have all those problems happen so close to one another.

i know alot of young kids who's parents spoil them and buy/hand down powerstrokes to them because the kids think diesels are cool, and they never tow with them or use them for work and none of them have had the usual 6.0 problems

 

the wast gate is for when you are standing on it and suddenly let all the way off the go pedal that little bit of overboost without fuel would get ugly after a few times

 

If you were to delete the wastegate, you'd experience performance loss with elevation because you'd be running at max all the time. However, you just made my point about a performance at elevation with a stock truck. The only question is, how much is "a few lbs. more boost pressure"?

In order to maintain sea level performance, the turbo needs to have enough excess capacity to overcome the pressure loss as elevation increases. In a standard atmosphere, sea level pressure is 29.92 inches of mercury, or about 14.7 psi. Pressure loss is equal to 1 inch per thousand feet, or 0.5 psi. So if you get "a few lbs. more boost pressure" by deleting the wastegate, then it means that a few pounds is being dumped by the wastegate. Assuming that "a few lbs." is at sea level and "a few" is equal to three, the truck will demonstrate the same performance up to 6,000 feet. I'd say that it is more in the neighborhood of 5 psi which would maintain sea level performance up to about 10,000 feet. Other factors also come into play such as air density and the effect it has in the compression process which would be specific to each turbo. I'd be interested to know what the actual number is.

By the way, you can't do a wastegate delete on a 6.0 because the engine has to have a wastegate in order to delete it.