--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have 2 Ford E450s with 6.0L Powerstroke. The 2006 is the biggest problem, but they're both headaches. These are 22 passenger luxury minibuses, so they were expensive, (over $100,000 each) and we need to get life out of them. Obviously, the routine maintenance is not enough, they are constantly broken, and needing ficm and injector replacements. Any suggestions of extra preventative maintenance, mods, gauges to add, etc. to get more life out of these and keep them running. FYI: they do idle and perform tours at low speed, which obviously doesn't help, but cannot be avoided. Please help!!!

 

Get gauges id suggest, fuel pressure at least. Also a auto ingenuity with the ford bundle pack would be a great investment for you. Id also recommend the Egr delete, coolant filter mod, and upgrading your ficm, mdub on here does the ficm repairs. Im sire he'll stop by and chime in to.

Sent from my dumb phone!

 

So i ordered the Sinister kit with the egr delete, coolant filter, and oil cooler. I've also read about rerouting the ccv through a canister, and changing or modifying the air intake. Are these good improvements as well?

 

the parts you bought are a good start I don't know about your other questions. I believe the 6.0 intake ia auffecoent enough. Don't know if there different on vans or not.

Sent from my dumb phone!

 

Why does it constantly need FICM's and injectors? Take the FICM's off the truck and send them out for repair, that will solve that issue and it's a fraction of the cost of a new FICM.

Injectors don't just go bad, so either there's a lack of maintenance on the oil side, or a low fuel pressure issue. Both are easy enough to resolve.

What are you using for oil and oil filters right now and how long do you go on changes? How often on fuel filters? What kind of filters do you use? Stick with Motorcraft or International for oil and fuel filters ONLY. A lot of the aftermarket fuel filters don't have the water membrane for the separator, so water gets by. A lot of the aftermarket oil filters don't fit right, and some even come with their own cap. A lot of these don't fit properly and don't push the release button down in the oil filter housing and starve the engine of oil.

Stock intakes on these trucks are great.

An exhaust would help reduce EGT's, but I'm not sure how much that'd help you and you probably don't want a big honking exhaust on a limo.

By chance, does the 06 have the upfitters from factory? They are 4 switches down by where the brake controller would be? You could easily wire up a high idle switch to it for long idle times, this would help a TON.

I would highly recommend some EGR deletes, immediately. You might want to talk to a tuner like Innovative Diesel, tell them what you're doing, and I bet they can write you a good tune to keep that thing going good. They can write a tune with stock power characteristics, or maybe even something like their aggressive tow tune to get that thing up and moving. It has to be laggy as all heck with all that weight.

Any idea what one of these things weighs?

Tell us a little more about your maintenance routines. What is the year of the other 6.0? We can certainly help you out here though, your problems are not uncommon.

Welcome to DB! I think you're our first limo 6.0 member haha

 

Thanks for the welcome. I realized that the only way to deal with the 6.0s is to get help from people who know how to make them run right, not just keep repairing the same problems, and it seems that you guys really know your stuff! The other one is a 2008 E450. As far as the routine maintenance, we have a large fleet, so we get all motorcraft filters, since we get a big discount. We do oil, oil filter, and both fuel filters at 3500 miles. This particular bus has a fast idle that was installed by the coachbuilder whom turned it into a bus. The fast idle seems to increase the rpms for only about 60-120 seconds at a time. Also, i didn't realize that the FICM could be programmed in various ways, we buy them pre-programmed from Garden State Diesel in central New Jersye, but i think they are programmed to factory specs. It's got chrome whels and trim, so i dont think a chrome exhaust would look bad at all. Is there ont that is recommended? Also, does that involve cutting the catalytic converter out? I've been told that that is helpful. The oil is shell rimula super engine oil 15w-40. The Gross Vehicle Weight is 14,050 lbs.

 

OK, you,re running dino oil try switching to Rottella T Syn 5W40 and stretching out to about 10,000 miles, with changing out just the filter about 5-6,000 miles.

Do the Zoodad mod for the air intake, basically just look at the grill where the air intake tube comes to and open that fiberglass peice up to match the air opening.

This should help with mpg and power(a little).

Crabber0001

 

I agree with the synthetic oil, it will help tremendously with a 6.0. I still wouldn't go more than 7,500 miles on it, on a truck that was DD, but for your application, stick to 5k miles intervals for oil and filters, and for fuel you can probably go 10k easy, I usually change around 8000 or so. For you it's probably just easier to do all service work at one time.

The programming isn't even the issue with the FICM's, and honestly for your application I wouldn't go crazy with it, it can build some extra heat that you need to worry about with a 14k lb rig, that we don't. It's the hard parts that fail on the FICM's. They have almost NO solder holding some components down.

2008 E450 should have the same basic components as the 06 luckily so that should make this easier.

My guess is where ever is doing the work on these is needlessly replacing injectors that don't need to be replaced. All gets back to that mis-diagnosing. Way too common with 6.0's.

For what you're doing, I would invest in AutoEnginuity with the enhanced Ford bundle. It's ~ $350-$360 shipped and worth it's weight in gold. Just need a laptop to run it, but man is it awesome. You can start doing your OWN diagnosing, and it's quite simple to use. You can do your own injector buzz tests, and cylinder contribution tests and actually verify whether an injector is bad or not.

I would also look into doing your own high idle. The only problem is going to be getting the drivers to actually use it. The Ford high idles will actually bump it up to 1200rpms and lock up the torque converter to build some more heat in the motor for a proper burn and stop carbon build up.

What about an EGR delete?

How many miles are on each unit?

I'd really like to see the spread between oil and coolant temp on these motors. You use yours way different than most of us. We can definitely help you out though. Hope you stick around.

 

About the AutoEnginuity thing....we have a Rotunda scanner that we bought from Motocraft last year that hooks up to my laptop. It was pretty expensive, and we don't know how to use it for a large # of features, but I'm guessing this could do some of the things we need if we knew how to correctly use it? And i did order the Sinister Egr delete with coolant filter and oil cooler. I know that the turbo is coked. Is it true that the only way to clean it is to take it apart and use a scotch pad on it? I'm also looking for the canister for the ccv reroute.

---AutoMerged DoublePost---

and Mdub, the 2006 has about 165,000, and the 2008 has about 170,000. We're going to rip the 2006 apart first because it has the most issues.

---AutoMerged DoublePost---

i'm also looking at getting the three guage pillar unit from glowshift. Would this be a good buy, and if so, which three gauges are most crucial? Thanks for all the help guys!! I'll keep you all posted as we move along, and with the end results.

 

Ok your scanner is probably already way better than AE haha.

Turbo cleaning found here:
DTS Articles - Turbocharger Reconditioning

You can also find the "coffee table book" for your engines here:
DTS Articles - Coffee Table Books

Download it and just read, you'll learn a ton right there.

I wouldn't bother with the CCV re-route, but that's just me. I'm not quite sold on them actually helping anything.

I'm not a fan of glowshift myself, though some guys have luck with them. Gauges are one thing you get what you pay for, big time.

I'd go with:

Fuel pressure
Engine coolant temp
Engine oil temp

The reason for these gauges... Fuel pressure is vital to injector life. Ford says 50psi plus or minus 5. They say below 45psi is damaging. Ford has also released updated fuel pressure regulator kits, which I would recommend for both rigs, cheap upgrade. Part number for that is: 6E7Z-9C165-B This P/N includes just the spring and the o-ring, all you need. Tousley sells them for $38 each.

Now for EOT and ECT. The biggest issues everyone hears about with 6.0's is blown headgaskets and egr coolers rupturing right? Less commonly talked about is the oil cooler, which is actually the root cause of all these failures. The oil coolers job is to regulate the temperature between oil and coolant in the motor. Imagine it like a fine radiator. There are a few different school of thoughts as to why they clog, but we know they DO clog, so we'll save that discussion for later. The coolant side eventually clogs, and slows or limits the flow of coolant. Now coolant sits in spots it shouldn't, like the EGR cooler and will flash boil. This causes the failure of the egr cooler and eventually headgaskets. So, we can check the life of the oil cooler by monitoring the two temps. The rule of thumb is if the spread becomes greater than 15*, it's time to replace/rebuild the oil cooler, which you are doing. So good call on that. In the future, you can monitor the condition of it by watching these two gauges together. I would also highly recommend a full coolant system flush, a coolant filter (dieselsite.com sells one, so does Sinister, both do the same thing, pick your favorite color), and some new coolant. Most guys switch over to some sort of ELC (extended life coolant) from the likes of Rotella, or CAT, or who ever you want. These steps should help eliminate the issues others face without knowing.

Also if you pull the turbo out, I would recommend the upgraded turbo drain tube for both trucks too, P/N: 6C3Z-9T515-A Tousley has them for $21.45 each. Tousley Ford Parts Depot

Depending on how far you tear into these, a couple other good ideas would be the updated STC fitting off the HPOP, it is a known point of failure in all 05+ 6.0's, and will eventually lead to hard starts when warm, though in some cases it could cause a no start as well. I would also do the updated stand pipes and dummy plugs, as they are also areas that can leak high pressure oil, just do it once and do it right.

STC fitting (05+ only): 4C3Z-9B246-F
Stand pipes/dummy plug kit (for late 04-07 only): 6E7Z-9A332-B