6.0 vs 6.4, which to purchase?
 

I'm considering purchasing another truck mid to late October and I'd like the opinion of those who have owned both or had dealings with both. I plan to use it as a daily driver when it is too cold to ride my Harley. It will also pull a 28' horse trailer w/2-3 horses a few times a month prob around 6-7k. I have read on here a lot of horror about the EGR on the 6.0 and other basic mods to keep the thing working. On the other hand the 6.4 has the dpf to get rid of... I will ultimately be tuning which ever I get. Which truck has more potential w/o the headache ect? I also don't need a truck I WANT it! I'm really not concerned about the price diff of the two just a good deal atonomous of the other. Thanks for any input. I am just posting this in the 6.0 section should it go in both?
Tim

Welcome to FTE :)

The 6.4 is quite amazing tuned, a late 2006 or 2007 MY is good also. If you want extreme, the 6.0L will need head studs.

thanks, what is puking, I've read a bunch of posts about it and see that it is associated with an imminent head gasket failure. How long of a job are head gaskets on a 6.0?
thanks,
Tim

The headgaskets are a pretty time consuming job if you can do it yourself, the cab has to be pulled off of the truck. The dealer had my truck in for a couple weeks doing a bunch of stuff under warranty but they sent it back with ARP head studs in it. But typically I think it takes about 2 or 3 days of actual work to get it done.

Oh and puking is where it pushes coolant from the degas bottle, it could be head gaskets going out or egr cooler failure.

If you are going to buy a used truck, get the VIN and request an OASIS report. This will tell you any dealer maintenance performed on the unit. As long as it comes back with no powertrain issues, I'd trust the truck.

I've got one of the first 6.0s that hit the market...and outside of an early re-flash to take care of a acceleration lag mine's been great.

Welcome to the FTE...you'll find it a great place to learn about your truck.

Joe

Thanks for the clarification dustball8504, wow I did not realize HG's were that time consuming on it or a cab off required. Finding time would be rough it once took me 6 months to from start to finish on a Pontiac Head Gasket!! lol
Thanks again,
Tim

If you do not have the available equipment to do a cab off the engine will come out the front. Each method takes time and some have done the heads in the truck but that is really difficult with limited space.

Thanks for your Opinions guys, any more out there?

The market being what it is for trucks now, I think you can get a late model 6.0(2005-2007) fairly cheap considering what they should be going for. What you save in price versus getting either a totally new or very fairly new 6.4 you can have the headgaskets studded, egr welded shut and bypass plate welded in the up-pipe and that would take care of the most imminate shortcomings of the 6.0. Only other thing would be dealing with the VGT, but you can exercise the truck to help maintain that if you didn't want to swap it out with a non-vgt.

If you plan on doing anything else engine wise(injectors, bigger turbo, RR Kit(another recommendation as that helps with dealing with the deadheading of injectors and a must if you go with bigger injectors) etc) I would also have that done when your doing the headgaskets if your having someone else do that as typically they don't charge labor for the other mods just the price of the mods themselves if they are doing a headgasket job as well.

I think out of the two, there is more potential for higher hp, tq and speed out of the 6.4 then the 6 liter.

I completely agree with this considering the 6.4 is a common rail engine and that fueling system has already been proven on the cummins and duramax as to how much power they can get out of them with little work.

That's not exactly that much of a stretch considering that the 6.4 is already rated higher with those numbers at the flywheel then the 6.0.

My tendancy is always to be leary of new technology. Even though there hasn't bee much compared to the 6.0 as negatives, I still tend to wait just incase something takes awhile for it to rear it's ugly head up.

I agree with you 100 percent on this one.(thats one reason I still have my ol 7.3!)

I was just offering another point to ponder :D

I'm certainly not a bandwagon jumper (I still have a 97 7.3) but the 6.4 had been out almost two years how much longer would you wait on one of them?