Alright, inquiring minds want to know, here it is. I have been through 3 motors and 3 transmissions. Working on buildng my 4th 7.3, have over 30k invested and still not done. My third 7.3 was basically a stock rebuild bottom end with OEM forged rods that had been shot peened and smoothed to remove any surface imperfections. OEM pistons were used, a full rebuild on the heads using 910 valve springs. I used cometic headgaskets, ARP headstuds, a GT38R turbo, swamps 250cc injectors, Swamps Gen3 dual HPOP, a DI cutom camshaft, and of course DP tuning.

I went through a lot of trials and tribulations trying to get everything working right. I have blown more intercooler boots then I can count. Gone through several programmiog changes as well. Finally got the truck mostly dialed in and had more fun then should be legal for about a year and 30,000 miles. I was to the point that I almost always exceeded 40psi everytime I drove my truck. At one point I had it dyno'd on local dyno but the RPM pickup was broken so I couldn't get a torque reading. But it dyno'd higher than any Ford he had ever seen, about 487hp. (Plenty more stories there- ask about SEMA 2007 sometime) One day I noticed my coolant level was low. Don't think too much of it, and add more coolant. Couple days later coolant reservoir is empty again. WTF? No drips in the driveway or obvious leaks. Truck still runs great so can't be a blown HG. So after removing and tearing down the motor It was discovered that I had cracks across 3 cylinder walls and cracks from two of the main journals up to the cam journals. The block was a boat anchor. The truck ran and idled perfectly when taken apart. I was always towing, driving, showing off, or just having fun with the shear torque. Nothing had catastrophically broke. The point is the harder you push your truck, the sooner something is going to let go and cause problems be it rods, crank, turbo, etc.

I firmly believe no replacement for displacement which is why I have dumped so much money into the newest motor, but from my experiance anything north of 400hp o a limited budget needs to be treated very respectfully or you will be in line to drop a fummins real quick.

 

See, now that's the kind of stuff that makes me scratch my head. Jason went through three motors and is now on no. 4. All presumably forged engines well under 500hp, since the top number was 487. And all along we've been hearing how forged engines are "good" to 500 rwhp. Are you all with forged rods *still* okay with pushing them that hard after this prime example? I don't think I'd have the patients or desire Jason has shown up to this point -- after the second one I'd be seriously thinking about de-stroking.