Need to resurrect a 2004/06 6.0L

blowre1

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My daily driver pickup recently got stolen and I need to fix my dad's King Ranch 6.0L to have a truck again. It's either a 2004 or 2006; he took the paperwork out of it and the batteries were dead yesterday when we checked in it.

He got so fed up with local Ford dealer changing "bad injectors" he parked it and bought a new ford diesel this summer.

I'm not a diesel mechanic, but I have fixed lots of little things. I found these websites for troubleshooting 6.0L:

http://www.internationalpowerstroke.com/6.0L-powerstroke-problems.html

http://performancewise.net/ford/ford-6-0l-power-stroke-problems/

Real quick history: Bought used with 80,000 miles and no maintenance records. Truck went through 2 reman sets of injectors then one new ford set. No known aftermarket products. We had long periods of time between problems. Started losing power slowly after new injector set, then would start cold and die when warm, and now won't start at all. Has ~200,000 miles.

The first thing I'm going to do is get it to a Ford dealer or other fancy code reader to have all the codes and such pulled.

Any other great ideas? Do we have a 6.0L troubleshooting algorithm for such cases?

Brooks
 

FordGuy100

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First thing I would do, is put fresh batteries, and see if it runs obviously. If it does run, I would scan it for codes. Low battery voltage will kill the FICM (lots of money), so if its cranking slow due to low batteries/low voltage, stop.

Low FICM voltage (when FICM goes bad, usually due to extneded low voltage situations), can harm the injectors. 3 sets in that amount of time is crazy though.
 

Ilovejunk

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new batteries, check FICM voltage w/ key on - engine off, while cranking, and while running (if it will start).

my bet is either FICM issues or injector harness.

my fathers truck burnt up three injectors within 4 months, got tired of paying shops who didnt know what they were doing to fix it, started digging deeper and found the injector harness directly below the FICM had melted internally. looked fine on the outside, even ohm checked fine- but after the FICM started throwing odd codes i tore into it and found about 8 wires in the middle of the bundle that had no insulation left on them at all, how it never caused a dead short and fry the FICM is completely is beyond me.

anyway replaced that harness, and the short harness' that pass through the valve covers and the truck has been trouble free ever since. that was about 18months and 40K miles ago.
 

79jasper

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What you explained sounds like the injector orings. Could need a new IPR now also.
But something else could be causing that many sets of injectors, or could still be cheap orings.

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tbirdfiend281

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I was heavy on 6.0s in 2007, almost all of the injector failures coming through the dealer then where related to low base fuel pressure. I did have one bad ficm that was causing a random misfire on a truck, but that was 7 years ago. I know the trucks now may be seeing a bit lower voltage output from the FICM. Isnt there a company doing a high voltage and reseal upgrade for these?

The heui systems with the 6.0s get a bit tricky. I am not saying its impossible, but typically a failure on the heui side would not cause the injectors to go bad, just weak actuation, and performance issues across all cylinders. There are troubleshooting tables for figuring the trucks out there. I can dig up a VT 365 sheet from navistar for you if you would like.
 

rjglenn

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I wish someone would give me a King Ranch...

+1 on the fuel pressure. If the fuel pressure is below 45 psi. the injectors won't fill completely and the high pressure oil will beat them apart internally. The fuel cushions the parts from the impact of what can be up to 4000 psi of oil pressure going into the injector when the spool valve opens.

You will need a couple of things right from the get-go. Some type of monitor to monitor the PIDs for the high pressure oil system, the FICM system, and the oil/coolant system. I use a scan guage II but there are many others. Google it, lots of information on how to monitor the 6.0 Powerstroke. Secondly you need some way to check the fuel pressure. There is a port on the secondary fuel filter that will allow you to connect a mechanical guage. If it is below or falls below 45 psi. then you will need to replace the spring in the fuel pressure regulator. Hell, do it even if your pressure is at 45 psi. Google "blue spring mod" for details.

Google 6.0 deltas. This is the difference between the engine oil temperature and the coolant temperature. If it is more than 15 degrees then you likely have a restricted oil cooler. There is a specific test to look for this. If your oil cooler is restricted then it can rupture causing oil and coolant to mix, but more importantly if the oil cooler is restricted, then the coolant flowing to your EGR cooler will be restricted and cause it to fail. When it fails coolant will leak into your intake and cause you to blow head gaskets because water will not compress.

Many will say to delete the EGR cooler, but if you live in an area that does emissions testing you will likely fail and have to put it back in. There are some reliable aftermarket solutions for EGR coolers.

The FICM needs to run at 48 VDC or you will have hard starts and injector failures. There are a couple of places that do FICM repair that have a good reputation.

Expect to pay a couple of thousand dollars to get this truck to be reliable, but once you do I would imagine you will be happy with it.

Edit:

I completely overlooked the comment about the hot no start. This is an issue with the high pressure oil system. The PCM must detect 500 psi of oil pressure before commanding the FICM to send fuel. Hot oil is thinner, so any type of leak in the high pressure oil system will cause a no start when hot. If it is a 2006 then your snap to connect fitting on the high pressure oil pump may have failed - this connects the output of the high pressure oil pump to the branch lines that go to the heads. Your injector control pressure regulator may be bad, or you may have some other oil leak, or it may be as simple as a bad sensor. There are air tests that can check for leaks, but you need to monitor the ICP pressure & the IPR duty cycle to help determine this.

This forum is the best for information about the IDI, but sadly there is little information about the 6.0 and you are going to have to go elseware for specific information and advice. Google is your friend.
 
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tbirdfiend281

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Almost all of the base fuel pressure failures I had where from the fame mounted garbage fuel pump just dieing out. I had only a handful of FPR fail vs the mountain of base fuel pumps going boom.

About half of the EGR cooler failures I did were unrelated to the oil cooler. When those situations arose it was usually related to hauling heavy loads on a regular basis. You would have good relationship between your eot and ect but the truck would still use a gallon a day or would push out of the surge tank just a bit. I had a rare situation where a truck had a slight bais to the ICP sensor, it read a little lower then what it was actually making (just like some of the aftermarket chips do to make more power) and it popped the EGR cooler.

The stc did die often on the 2005-2007 trucks, most got replaced under warranty because typically they would only last like 20 - 40k miles. If an 05-07 truck has a hot, crank no start issue, the other common failure was the block off plug o ring in the rail. The o ring would rip for whatever reason and cause the hot no start. Completing an air pressure check DOES NOT require a scan tool to locate a leak. The system is meant to handle 4000psi and will handle well beyond that, so if an audible air leak can be heard you can usually determine if its your block off fitting, stand pipe, or snap to connect fitting. The only thing to note is that you have to actuate the IPR with 12 volts or a scan tool with the ability to active command a pid. If not you will hear an air leak right at the high pump. The procedure simply has you apply shop air through the ICP port, apply your 12volts or active command your IPR, then get a rough idea what item of the truck you are tearing apart. Be mindful of how long you apply 12volts to the IPR, you can burn it up
 
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