Hey folks,

I thought I'd write this up for my own reference and share my experience with others. I bought a 2005 Limited PSD with 150K on it. It's black with dark tints all around, sunroof and has a 3" lift and 35's on 16's. Otherwise stock.

I looked over it thoroughly - the body and interior are in amazing condition, but I knew going in that the front end needed to be tightened up, needed shocks and there were some minor oil leaks that needed to be addressed. I did check temp deltas and was averaging around 5* delta @ ~195* when I test drove it for a good 10 miles - trans temp never got above 150* I feel that the engine is pretty healthy as it ever towed and didn't seem to be abused.

After a week of owning it, I checked all fluids and set of on a 1000mi road trip. Ran like a champ from Seattle WA to Sand Point ID. Two long steep passes and 95-100F eastern Washington long stretches. I monitored temps on the SCT throughout the trip (no tunes).

We were fully loaded with gear, family and bunch of bikes on back, but not towing. So should not have been taxing by any stretch of the imagination.

All in all, I think it was a solid buy for the price and a generally comfortable and super spacious ride for the price I pad.

Here's where the fun starts After 1000+ miles I inspected EVERYTHING!! And here are the repairs it needs:

In addition to the above, I'm doing the following next weekend while I wait for all the suspension parts

There might be 1 or two other things I'm missing, but needless to say I just dropped ~1k on parts, fluids, filters etc.

Once I have a good baseline and I'm happy how it drives and I have confidence that all service items are done correctly at a new set of intervals, I will look at doing the following:

At some point I will bulletproof it and delete EGR, but I think there's a lot more miles in it before I do that and I will only be doing very light duty towing.

I sold my old truck (younger than this one) and bought this for less that half what I got, so I don't mind spending the money to get it running solid. Didn't want to go into another car payment and there's nothing else out there as fun to drive!

 

Well I made my checklist to print out and have along side me so I don't forget anything.

 

The sunroof is a aftermarket product, as the Ex didn't come with a factory sunroof. It looks like you have everything under control.

 

Add a grease zerk fitting from either Snowseeker or Armylifer (see the brotherhood of the traveling zerk thread for more info) to grease your sealed front unit bearings. It goes into the ABS sensor hole and the bearing will take about 20/24 full pumps from a typical grease gun. This awesome workaround should help those unit bearing last much, much longer.

 

Nice excursion. Good luck with the repairs.

 

Nice looking truck in an awesome color!

Speaking from experience, keep the stock downpipe, do a cat delete, or just a cat back exhaust. I bought my truck bone stock with a bad oil cooler and egr. It still had awesome power even stock, but as soon as I got a 4 inch downpipe, I lost low end power and had serious turbo lag. I didn't matter if I ran the Atlas 40 or how hot I tuned the pcm, getting the turbo to spool when I needed it to was difficult. My fuel economy even suffered

I then talked to the engineer who wrote the programming on these trucks and his words to me were: "Unless you plan on racing the truck, leave the exhaust alone." He went on to mention that the stock downpipe was the best spooling compared to a 4 inch downpipe.

I eventually removed the 4 inch downpipe and went with a 3.5 inch downpipe. Once the truck adjusted, the low end power, power overall, and fuel economy came right back. My turbo now effortlessly spools even with the stock programming. It's then I learned that he was right. If I had to do it all over again. I'd do a cat back or cat delete exhaust.

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

@Toreador_Diesel I appreciate the feedback and experience - I thought a bigger down pipe would create more flow allowing quicker spooling. I guess what you're saying makes since a smaller down pipe would create higher pressure. Just seems counter intuitive...

 

Yeah it seemed counter intuitive to me too. The bigger the downpipe, the higher it moves the torque and power in the rpms. 3 inches makes for great low end power because it takes way less time to fill a 3 inch pipe with air than it downs a 4 inch pipe. 3.5 inches is the middle
Ground and my only choice since I didn't have my factory down pipe anymore.

A 4 inch downpipe is perfect for higher rpms when the exhaust is already moving and has the exhaust filled with exhaust. Near the bottom
It really has to work build the necessary back pressure to spool the turbo and vanes. With the stock 3 inch or aftermarket 3.5 inch, it doesn't have to work nearly as hard to get things down while still providing good low end power.

With the 4 inch downpipe I'd mash it to pass someone and I'd always say "come on, come on, come on" and then it would go. (This was tuned too) With the 3.5 inch downpipe, it goes when I need it to with no hesitation.

 

Pics of the sunroof? Never seen one on an X!

 

A few more things I noticed now that my brain isn't asleep...

-For greasing the hubs, use Lucas Red N' Tacky. It is some really awesome stuff that's been very good to wheel bearings and whatever I use it on. Believe it or not, Mobil 1's grease failed me

-For the oil, Delo 5w40 in the Silver bottle is better for these trucks and a much cleaner on than Rotella T6. The Silver bottle is also CJ-4 and meets Ford's standard.

-I'd recommend using Archoil 9100 in the oil as opposed to RevX as Archoil fixes stiction, whereas RevX simply covers it up. Also consider using AR6200 in your fuel. I've used both in my 6.0 with amazing results.

-Use two bottles of VC-9 to flush the block and forget the Ford Premium Gold. It was a "one size fits all" coolant that Ford started using for the 2002 MY. It causes cooling system issues in a 6.0, you want to use a Red ELC coolant like Rotella, Final Charge, and CAT.

-For the transmission, use the revised 2010 transmission pan and filter. The filter is a pleated filter that does a much better job of catching anything that isn't transmission fluid. As opposed to the stock meshed filter. This costs a little extra but goes a long way in keeping the trans alive.

-For the EGR Valve, use carb cleaner not brake cleaner per Ford and Navistar.

-For the coolant filter, I strongly recommend the Dieselsite coolant filter setup. The preformed hoses and compressed fittings tend to leak over time and you're up a creek without a paddle when you need new hoses. With the Dieselsite kit, if a hose springs a leak, you can go down to O'reilly and replace the hose yourself instead of having to wait for them to consider replacing the hose that's leaking

-For the front diff, 70w90 is what the front diff calls for iirc.

 

Well I completed all of my fluids and filter changes today (oil, fuel, trans, transfer, both axles) I had one snafoo and one odd thing happen.

The odd thing first. There was a molex plug on the back of the fuel pump that was disconnected. I noticed it when draining the fuel/water bowl. I plugged it back in and checked for codes when I was done with everything - no codes were thrown so I have no idea wha it was for.

The snafoo was that the previous owner had a wix oil filter and cap on it, which I didn't check beforehand. I obviously bought a Motorcraft filter. So I finished my oil change popped the filter in and screwed the cap down, but my truck is basically waiting in the driveway until I can get a new OEM cap. Lucky the weather is good - I can ride by the dealership on Monday morning and hope they have one.

All the fluids that came out were surprisingly good.

The trans fluid was slightly darker than I'd expect when I dropped the pan, but the magnet was pretty clean - it had some light fuzz, which I assume was just clutch material. I cleaned the pan so shiny inside and out.

Transfer case was fine. Front diff oil looked like it had just been changed, but it got changed anyway.

The rear diff was worse. Oil was darker and the inside of the cover was getting a little sludgy. I'm assuming the rear diff has never had an oil change and it has done some towing. The gears looked fine and there were no visible signs of wear.

I didn't do my coolant flush because I didn't want to run the truck with the wrong filter cover of there. I'll have to do that next weekend.

I do also have a small oil leak that seams like it's coming from the top rear of the engine following the oil trail, so I cleaned everything up real good and I'll try sniffing it out when I get my oil cap sorted out. The top of the engine around the oil cooler is bone dry - so I have a feeling the rear of the filter stem leaks. We'll see.

 

Nice looking Ex. Congrats!

One additional thing you may want to do might be to get a fuel pressure gauge to monitor it. I just got a 6.0 PSD recently and learned that weak fuel pressure could potentially damage the injectors. With 150k miles, it may be a good idea to make sure the fuel pump is operating to spec.

Make sure your FICM voltage doesn't drop down below 45V. Mine fluctuated between 48 and 44V, so I replaced it with a 6 phase power supply from Bulletproof Diesel.

 

Add the fuel pressure blue spring and Mishimoto T stat to your list.

 

Thanks guys - I did monitor the FICM voltage for a while and it seemed to always be pegged at 48V and occasionally went to 48.5V so I figured it was fine and used the real estate on the monitor for other temps.

I'll definitely do the blue spring mod next - there is so much to learn with these engines...