i dont have studs on my 03 6.0 with 95k miles im gonna get an egr cooler or delete and am thinking about a sct tuner my question is, is there a tune that wont potentially blow my head?

what part of a tune is the culprit of blowing head gaskets?

 

I've read that putting your foot in it before it reaches operating temp is a good way to pop an HG. 55K of tuned 6.0 on original HG and bolts tells me I'm either lucky or right.

I've run a few different tunes without issue to mine. For now I'm happy with Matt's SRL tune.

 

timing timing timing. a tune with a bunch of timing pushes the cylinder head pressure up and that stretches head studs. I would imagine MDub will chime in on this one too. I cant recommend a tune to you because these things have the possibility of being ticking time bombs. I will say i ran a looney tune on mine before the headstuds for appoximately 5000 miles and ran it pretty hard but make your own judgement call. if you got the cash set aside for studs run whatever tune you want until it pukes. whatever you choose good luck.

 

You get guys like Karl here who seem to have no problems what so ever. He is also very strict on his driving habits and doesn't hot rod the truck until everything is up to temp. Papachuck is another that comes to mind, he's got something ridiculous like 100k miles on a race tune on a stock 03 with no issues...

Yes, timing is huge. What most people fail to grasp is that the SCT is one of the safest, even on the hot tunes, but it's still not a guarantee. Generic tuners have out of control timing. They have very minimal control on what is going on in there, and the star pattern on top of the pistons proves this. A fuel pattern spraying outside of the bowl will increase timing and cylinder pressures dramatically. Unfortunately we as consumers don't really have a great way to measure this, so we rely on our tuners to do a good job with our tunes.

You then have guys like me... About ready to push past my 3rd set of headgaskets (all Ford jobs). I can't seem to catch a break. She's holding right now, but I've got a race tune back on and every time I've gone to a hot tune, I've popped gaskets somehow. The last time I popped them was mostly my fault. Hot tunes, 3rd gear burnouts, boosted launches, etc. I am much smarter about how I drive and it seems to be holding, but when it does pop (fully expecting it to) I am ready to build this thing the right way.

No one can tell you what is safe and what is not, I've seen 100% bone stock trucks blow gaskets.

Knowing what I know now, there are a few preventative things I would do before tuning a 6.0. A full EGR cooler delete. A coolant filter. A coolant system flush, and an oil cooler rebuild. I would then monitor ECT and EOT to ensure my temps are in check, then I would tune. I also wouldn't go higher than a street tune for DD'ing. I think that would be safe with good driving habits. The street tunes are still a ton of fun. Almost no smoke to speak of, still almost a 400rwhp tune, just lower torque (timing is pulled back, but that's what keeps it safe). and a butt load of fun to drive daily.

 

This star pattern, could you see it if you took out an injector and used a bore scope? Maybe not even a bore scope, some video cameras are getting pretty snappy these days. Anyway, if you could get a camera in there, could you see it?

 

I don't see why not, usually those bore scopes have very poor lighting though. I have seen some with some LED lighting though, don't see why not. It's hard to tell though, there will always be some sort of a small burn out there even with SCT tuning, but it depends on the tuner, and the tune. After you've seen a few you can kind of tell exactly what is going on and what it should look like. Stock shouldn't have any pattern at all so to speak. I've also seen some bore scopes that had attachments small enough to fit down in the glow plug hole too Karl, that'd be a LOT easier than yanking an injector.