05 6.0 125,000 been super lucky up till now. Never had not one problem with this motor, its been super dependable.
But the last few weeks on real cold days 15 degrees or so the motor barely starts ,when it does finally gets going after sputtering and running real rough with blue smoke,& black smoke. it clears up and runs good but not like it used to before all this crap.
I have been using amsoil 15-40 since new, but after this started to happen i tried rotella 5w-40 to assist with the cold condition.Also I never got a cord for the block heater, because did not have the need for it till now.
last night i had the block heater hooked up and made a difference , but not 100 %. The truck has AIRAID a/cleaner, sct tune, (put ot back to the stock setting for now) 4'' straight pipe w/ dual tail pipe splitter. Egr delete w/ plug only.
ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEAS, DON'T HAVE ANY GOOD DEPENDABLE FORD DIESEL TECHS IN MY AREA IN PHILADELPHIA

 

Mine had most of the same symptoms, Dealership replaced FICM and did the new reflash, problem solved.

 

Refer to this thread, and get the voltage on that FICM tested. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/8...procedure.html

If the voltage shows bad, refer to the FICM repair procedure in the tech folder. Most likely you can fix the problem yourself with a soldering iron and a little flux. Let us know what you voltages are.

 

ok just tested mine for the hell of it. i have the 4 screw and for the 4a. test my meter said 48-49v. for test 5a. my meter went from 48 and slowly went down to 26v. it slowly went down in voltage as the injectors or glow plug mod. started to get faster dont know which one it is. after the the noise went away (injec. or glow plug) the voltage went up to 46v. For test 6a. the voltage was 46v but it did go down to 39 on one startup.

Is this a serious problem?? the truck runs like a champ and start ups are fine just a litle white smoke on cold days. now this is when it is plugged in. when i dont have it plugged in it does start a little rough but it has to be b/c of the oil being to cold. on some occasions whe it is not plugged in when i dont start my truck for the weekend and go to start it up for work on mon. morn. it doesnt start. Keep in mind i keep my sirius stiletto on. when i jump it it starts right up no need to let it charge for a long time it seems like it needs just a little boost. Is this b/c of the FICM??

What are the symptoms of a bad ficm?? what will it do??

 

Welcome to the Bad FICM club. Your Volts should not be dropping that severely. You can solder it yourself or have an Electronics "guy" do it for You, You can send it out to one f the many vendors who will solder and tune it for You or if You still have warranty You can take it to Ford. In any event You are going to need to get it repaired so You dont get left out in the cold.

 

will a bad FICM affect performance

 

Yeah, mine ran like crap, sputtering and carrying on. I also had 2 inj going south, but the answer is yes. Get it fixed before it craps out completely and leaves you sitting. Might also be a good idea to turn off your Sirius, batteries are taking a beating and the charging system/batteries in these trucks needs to be in top shape

 

as far as when it is warmed up and running for a while will it give you less HP or bad throttle resp.

 

When it wasn't quite up to temp it would sputter and miss a little especially at lower rpms. When warm I could still feel a "miss" in high gears and OD, just cruising along.
EDIT: that is what led me to test the FICM, and found low voltages

 

Have your batteries load tested and alt. output checked. Bottom line make sure Your electrical system is healthy.

 

cold start issues on 6.0l are alot of times the ficm. FOrd Spec is that your ficm mpwr shouldnt be any lower than 46V with at least 11.5V vpwr. bad batteries can also lead to low ficm mpwr. to do a proper test of the ficm you need to eliminate the glowplugs from the system by undoing the cable on the passenger side pos battery cable. Cold start issues arent alwasy a ficm though. Injectors are a very common cause of a hard start. but if your looking into replacing injectors you need to make sure that you have good fuel pressure (at least 45psi) bad fuel pressure can scrap a new injector in just a couple hundred miles. fuel pressure and oil change level are huge factors in saving you injectors. the fuel injectors are actually actuated by oil pressure so if you have really dirty oil you are just running that through your injectors.

 

I have been having some cold start issues as of late too. My truck will run a little rough for maybe 5 seconds. What concerns me is there is a puff of blueish smoke, but just stinks of raw diesel, and then it clears up.

While driving, as the truck warms up it has like a haze of blueish smoke comming from the tail pipe. But again it stinks like raw diesel. Its intermittant, which is why I havent brought the truck in, I dont want to waste the techs time.

I am using Rotella 5w40 full synthetic, 4k OCI, only MC filter, also changing my FF about every 5k, with only MC filters. I do put 15qts. in when I cange the oil, but this brings me right up to the full mark on the dipstick.

I had the truck in in November because it would somke like a chikney when stopped at a light. It was a white smoke so I thought the worst...EGR cooler, but I have never had any coolant loss. The tech found heavy carbon build up in the intake, so there was a TSB out to remove and clean the intake, install some scoop, and recalibrate it...ofcourse I missed out on the newest one. They also replaced the turbo center section cause the seal was bad.

I was gonna replace the EGR valve thinking this may help. My thought is that maybe some of the carbon that couldnt be removed loosend up and is causing the EGR valve to stick a little, giving me the smoke. Am I on to something here, or just fooling myself with an injector going south, I already had the FICM replaced a year ago this month.

Sarge

 

sarge, just a thought as others have posted similar issues. try a few cold starts in the stock setting and see if it corrects.

 

a stuck egr valve will cause lack of power and smoke issues. if you have an issue with a really dirty intake that will make your valve stick open. a fast simple test for that is when the issue is occuring pull the two 8mm bolts out of the egr valve and pull out your valve. smack it shut on a hard surface and reinstall it. if the problem goes away then you have pinpointed the issue. An egr flush is available from BG and I have actually found this flush very effective. Installing a new egr valve may fix the problem but if your intake is still full then it will effect your new valve very soon. If you suspect an egr cooler failure a fast simple way to test that, is to pull 20 inches of vacuum on the cooling system and monitor it. if it holds vacuum for at least 15 minutes then you cooler is fine. if the vacuum drops then you have a faulty cooler. white smoke is either going to be an egr cooler or headgaskets, but greyish smoke from injectors will sometimes be confused with white smoke. if you have a faulty injector sometimes instead of dropping out they can actually be overfueling. this will cause alot of smoke out of the tailgate, and also should not be ignored because this condition can melt down your cylinder causing need of a motor replacement.

 

If you are having cold start issues that is most likely caused by an injector. especially if you have had your ficm replaced, then it is most likely an injector.