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06 F350 6.0 - Old Farm Truck

treegump

treegump

Romans 3:22-24
Messages
2,299
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983
Location
Martinsville, IN
Traded my 04 Suburban + $1k for an 2006 F350 Lariat supercab flatbed 4x4 auto with 212k miles. It's a cab & chassis body with the fuel tank behind the rear axle.

According to the PO - motor has been bulletproofed, egr deleted, and couldn't get started. PO thought it was an injector driver but my buddy popped an injector plug into a back injector and it fired right up! Drove it an hour home without a front wheel-well cover or title and with an upper radiator leak.

Inside cab smells like farm and mouse droppings. Plan to clean it up and vacuum out as much as I can before driving it. Armorall the entire thing since it's all vinyl.

Changed batteries when we got it back into town. Ran to the car wash and washed it down good. Shifted funny after that - turbo kept winding up. Friend said that he may have gotten water in a sensor somewhere.

It's sitting in my yard until I can do a trans fluid top off, oil change, and fuel filter changes. Also ordered a 04 solid aluminum radiator for $300.

Will need front tires relatively soon - but I think I can wait till closer to winter for the rear tires. Will also need a carrier bearing.

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THEFERMANATOR said:
The 6.0L got a bad rap. Make sure it is PROPERLY upgraded, and it should be a decent truck. Just keep in mind, there is a reason 6.0's are so cheap to buy. In stock form they have numerous problems and it isn't cheap to upgrade them properly.
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And there are a shitload of aftermarket parts that are a VAST improvement over the POS OEM parts they replace which were the cause of most engine failures that necessitated engine rebuilds/replacements.

Many of those were unnecessary due to a misdiagnosis of a blown head gasket because of the EGR cooler failing. Basically, need to go with an aftermarket EGR cooler, higher power injector control module for cold starts and better idling and an upgraded, larger engine oil cooler retrofit, I can't remember if it's from a 7.3 or 6.4, or what, but it is a direct bolt in replacement. Head studs.
 
btfarm said:
Looks like you're all set to get to work Forest. Hope you get it all working and you're satisfied with it. Far more practical than the Suburban.
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Way more ability to haul hay, fertilize, firewood, many other things, even if it's just hauling the trash off.

I know a guy that lives around here that must own the twin to that truck. His is the same color and about the same year model. He has done upgrades on his, I heard it one day when he left Tractor Supply, towing a big New Holand tractor on a big equipment trailer. I know he had to have been grossing 25000 pounds or more. Truck took off pretty good with that load. It's at least had a different exhaust put on it. He was in there buying fencing materials, said he had a big fencing job going on. He farms and he also does grading work, so I know he works that truck hard.

I know alot of people that had trouble with the 6.0's around here. I imagine they can be built into a reliable engine like the other guys said with the correct improvements.

I hope the truck works out for you, treegump.
 
Thank you everyone.

I tell people I'm not a gambling man but here I am with a 6.0 and I've owned at least 2 6.5's so far. Both engines are quite infamous because they're misunderstood by the masses.

My friend Wayne owns 2 6.0's and before he was only into non-turbo IDI's, haha. Quite the jump. But he works on diesels and heavy equipment for a living and has done significant research on the 6.0's, along with having a significant amount of resources at his finger tips.

When we were looking at it, as soon as it fired up and after he gave it a quick look over, he was itching to get it out of there before the seller changed his mind. He said that he's a bit jealous because the motor has everything done to it that he has been trying to do to his own truck(s).

Should be receiving the radiator in the next day or 2. Might be able to drive it with the leak - at least to and from work, but hoping to get it replaced before I use it as a daily.

Driving it over to Wayne's tonight while I take his truck up north this weekend to cut up some trees at the in-laws. Taking dad's splitter (on a utility trailer so it can handle 80mph speeds) so that the wife and in-laws can help split wood. Wayne said he'd clean up the harness and fiddle around with it some.
 
I may have mentioned this already - but I wasn't looking for a dually, nor really interested in it. However, that's a small trade-off for what's under the hood and the rest of the truck.

I don't know how often I'll use it, or if I'll ever use it to it's full capacity. However, I do like to be prepared and if I have the tools, than I'm more likely to use it, haha.

I have an idea of building some sides for wood work. I have an idea of building a roof for those sides for when I need a large enclosed hauling solution. Hopefully neither will look terrible, but also will be easy to work with.

Also thinking of getting a truck crane for my truck and another for dad's truck. I'm thinking it'd be nice if I could pick up the wood splitter and put it into the bed of the truck, instead of having to pull a trailer just for the wood splitter. Might also be nice to get other things in and out of the truck - since I don't like asking the wife to help me for fear of her getting hurt.
 
Liftgates may work better for you than a crane.

If you haven't owned one we need to keep an eye out for a "early non roller cam" Olds 5.7 diesel for you. 🤪 Make your collection of misunderstood diesel disasters complete.
 
WarWagon said:
Liftgates may work better for you than a crane.

If you haven't owned one we need to keep an eye out for a "early non roller cam" Olds 5.7 diesel for you. 🤪 Make your collection of misunderstood diesel disasters complete.
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Forgot all about Liftgates. Or - if we get dad's '45 Farmall B running, I may just have to try to build a removable dovetail and ramps for the truck and get a rail/winch system. lol

Not sure what you are referencing with the Oldsmobile 5.7 diesel though... I think I recall hearing something about an old chevy gas motor being made into a diesel but it not being able to sustain the compression. Can't remember much other than that.
 
GM used the two-bolt main Oldsmobile 350 block as the base to build a 350 (5.7L) N/A diesel to improve the CAFE average for large passenger sedans. On the face of it, an Olds 98 or Buick Lesabre 4DR sedan getting almost 30mpg on the highway and 20+ around town in 1979 to the mid-1980's sounded pretty appealing. Too bad the bottom ends on them just couldn't take the beating and were lucky to make it to 30,000 miles before detonating. Then there were the glow system issues, head gasket issues, and the TH200-4-R OD automatic issues. My soon to be father in law had a 5.7 Diesel Olds 98 sedan he bought new in '82 because of the long highway commute to work, and by the time I was engaged to his daughter in fall '85 he was on the second diesel replacement motor (#3 motor in the car!), which crapped out in the summer of '86 and GM replaced that with an Olds 350 gasser and the car had only 68K on it.
 
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Now, the 4.3L V6 Diesel introduced in 1982 didn't have any of the problems its V8 brother had. Both were discontinued in 1985 when GM introduced the 6.2L N/A Light Duty diesel to replace them. The rest is history we all know.
 
Worst part was that by the time they quit making them GM had done enough improvements to them that they weren't terrible anymore, but it was too little too late and it had gotten a horrible reputation so no one would buy one. Way worse than the 6.5s. I knew a couple of guys up here that sought out the 5.7 with the DX cast into them, they drove them until parts started to be an issue.
 
Yeah, the last generation of the 5.7L Diesel did have the bugs worked out pretty much and the bottom ends held together. The biggest improvement was tightening up and making uniform the main and rod bearing clearances. The 4.3L V6 Diesel had none of the problems of the 5.7 for the three years it was produced. What a shame. Imagine a turbo 4.3 in mid sized GM's like Regals, Cutlasses, Monte Carlos, Skylarks or Grand Prixes of the 80's. Or a square body Blazer.
 
iirc they balanced the lower end on them. Not super accurate like a machine shop, but weighed pistons and rods and used them in newr matched sets. Crankshaft went unmodified. Didn’t the later ones get 4 bolt mains also? At least they learned to hat for the. 6.2.

My understanding was it helped meet numbers like mentioned above, but also was experimenting to see how many people would buy diesel cars. Can you imagine if they had made a 500,000 mile turbo engine? So many people would have switched to diesel.
 
The major difference in the 6.2 Detroit diesel engine over the 5.7 olds was enough damn head bolts. The 6.2 had it's own factory line to be built. The V6 olds diesel with enough head bolts may have made it. Would not have been superstars for reliability, but, wouldn't have been a disaster of making Lemon Laws. As it is GM ignored Detroit Diesel saying use a forged 6.2 crank opting for a cheaper cast crank. The 6.2 almost was as big of a disaster due to bean counters at GM. Only because of the Olds 5.7 Diesel does the 6.2 have a better reputation and not a good one at that.

I sit back and watch history repeat itself with GM's hand in the 3.0 Ecodiesel "zero or hero" engine and the 2.8 baby Duramax breaking wrist pins. GM is too bean counter centered to have any business designing a diesel engine on their own. Apparently GM is still too blindly stupidly cheap to understand this. The Isuzu Duramax was an accident GM won't repeat. GM should. The 6.0 Ford may be a warning, but, Cummins and Isuzu were very successful.

The GM Bean Counters fell in love with the "Use the same tooling as gas engines" cost savings for the Olds 5.7. Other better diesel engines were proposed at the time. Specifically the tooling for gas engine head bolts and head bolt count was it's major downfall. So there were not enough head bolts for the 22:1 compression. TTY head bolts were used for more clamping force than standard gas engine bolts that no one knew **** about at the time. TTY bolts were not enough to overcome the lack of bolts. A head gasket failure was a quick 2nd failure due to reuse of TTY bolts. Usually the HG blew from a TTY bolt stretching out. Even the latest "fixed" blocks were still lacking in head bolts.

Same tooling? Yes, run the thicker block with the IP drive cast changes made down the same machining line as the gas engines. Change the torque for the fasteners and other minor adjustments. Save the cost of a new factory line, workers, machine tools, etc, to build diesel engines. GM Bean counters were overjoyed to also cut R&D and testing out.

The V6 diesel had more head bolts but that design was too little too late with the V8 Olds Diesel Hand Grenades reliably going off.

Drygas, we have forgotten about now, ruined IP pump governor rings till 1986 as people used to this for gas cars dumped drygas in their diesel cars.

Getting typical dirty wet American diesel ... and one of the first recalls was to put a Water In Fuel light on the Olds Diesel cars. Yes to insulate consumers from diesel GM left off things like a WIF warning. Further filters and water separators used for ~30 years were not up to the job. GM and other OEM's ignored yellow iron and big rigs that had filters figured out.

Bad filters: The IP would bind up on rust/dirt from water, snap free, and advance the timing for the next cylinder so much it would shatter a cylinder.

One of the first engines to get a roller cam because it needed one. Later Olds diesel engines had a roller cam. The roller lifters are the same part number as the 6.2 and 6.5 lifters. (GM Olds gas engines of the 80's era also had trouble with failing camshafts.)

One of the oil samples my dad sent in from a 1980 Olds 5.7 (non roller cam) got a call from the lab as it was "critical engine is failing" with wear metals in it. Once the lab figured out it was in a 5.7 Olds diesel: "Oh, they are all like that." Small oil filter on it as well and very short change intervals. Did I mention it needed a roller cam from day one?

The diesel vibration broke the alternator bracket on ours under warranty. They were also known to fling fan blades off from vibration cracks: recalls for fan cracking and failing.

CA, CARB, banned the sale of them for 1985 as they would belch smoke badly on a grade. The 5.7 diesel engines would not last long enough to pass the longer CA emissions certification for 1979-1980.

The Olds 5.7 Hand Grenade Diesel was so unreliable that it put Lemon Laws on the books. You simply can't fix that bad of a reputation. GM never added more head bolts to fix the fatal design weakness on the Olds 5.7. They couldn't due to the assembly line constraint. Only The Ford 6.0 diesel even came close to kicking the Olds off the unreliable diesel hill, but, the 6.0 can be "fixed" esp. by aftermarket parts.

There was a 4.3L V8 Olds Diesel that had main bearings bigger than the cylinder diameter. Simply a small bore version of a 5.7L: WHY Bother? Never rebuilt and failures got a 5.7L replacement. MPG improvement may be the reason.

I tore one of the Olds FWD V6 diesels down for a class on engines. GM had donated it to the school for education. I was the ONLY one to touch it in 20 years. It was for a FWD 1985 Olds 98. To keep weight down it had aluminum heads that had a Styrofoam texture. Some of the head bolts required some special tools as I recall. The IP had a yellow varnish in it from sitting so long. The engine itself would have quickly failed had it been put in a vehicle and run: one of the pistons has occlusions in it from casting. Specifically air bubbles in the skirt. At the time, 1999, I had no idea it used TTY head bolts. GM service training has come a long way since the Olds 5.7.

drivetribe.com

Sooty Scandal - 1978 Oldsmobile Diesel V8

Smoke on the water.
drivetribe.com drivetribe.com
 
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My cousin, lives over near Sacramento Cali, one of the main competition in the stock car races at Roseville, He always raced the Oldsmobile platform. One day He was at My brothers, brother called, Al and I got to talking. he was telling Me about converting the olds diesels back to gas and had an engine with a crank that could last a lot of races, except for one thing, the pistons were melting down above the top ring land.
I told Him there was not enough meat there to dissipate the heat. He mentioned there was not enough room above the wrist pin to make more room in that area. I told Him to move the oil rings below the wrist pins then move the compression rings down. He said, cant be done, I told Him it surely can be done and He could put two sets of oil rings below the wrist pins and it would stabile the the pistons in the bores even better.
A couple of years later, made a journey over to Grass Valley to my brothers, Al was there when we arrived, he came walking down the hill right at Me, got in front of Me and exclaimed, IT WORKED !, I replied, what worked, moving them rings down below the wrist pins.
He did race while We were there, almost the last lap, the curfew whistle blew, al was coming around the number four corner, the left rear of the car dropped to the asphalt, the left rear tire passed Him going down the straight away, the tire had some real speed going for it, went up over the embankment in the no1 corner, must have been fifty feet in the air at the top of the trajectory and landed out in the pit area. IDK how far or what damage that tire created after it landed nor how many times it bounced but I bet it must have been something to see. LOL I was just happy that it was not reported that someone was injured from that incident.
Edited to mention, Wisco Piston company was one of His sponsors so it was no problem getting whatever kind of a piston he wanted.
 
Was the axle still attached, indicating he lost a C clip on the axle? He wasn't using knockoffs instead of lug nuts, was he? I have definitely seen those come loose and lose a tire back in the days of Sprint Car racing back in the 60's. I also saw a tow truck towing a beautifully restore, British Racing Green mid-50's Jaguar backwards with the ass end on the lift down the highway at about 50mph a couple of years back. Pulled out behind him after noticing the left front rim/tire wobbling as he went by, and watched the knockoff spinner launch off into the ditch, followed by the rim coming off the hub a hundred yards later and the rim/tire bouncing down the shoulder and sidewalk for about 5 blocks before jumping a chainlink fence and landing in a trailer park where it finally came to rest after bouncing off the side of a trailer home. Meanwhile, the knuckle and tierod dropped to the ground when the rim came off and was throwing sparks as the car was being drug along by the tow truck. It took me almost a half mile to catch up and pull along the driver side of the tow truck. As I caught up with him, the heat from being drug caught the tierod boot and grease on fire! It took several seconds of waving, signaling, gesturing and mouthing "You lost a wheel, the car is on FIRE!" before he pulled off into a driveway along the road. Then he noticed the fire and grabbed an extinguisher. After he got the fire out, I asked him what the hell he was thinking, you NEVER run knockoffs backwards. He replied with, "But I made sure they were tight before I started towing." Face palm. I told him I knew where the tire and rim wound up, I'll go back and get them and look for the spinner (which I couldn't find in the 4-5' tall weeds down in that stretch of the ditch). When I returned with the tire, he had the driver's front up on a floor jack to slip the rim back on the hub, and the tow dolly (which he should have used in the first place!) ready to slip under the front tires. My parting shot to him was, "I hope the company you work for has damn good insurance, because parts for that Jag are hard to find and damn expensive, that is if you still have a job!"
 
Husker6.5 said:
Was the axle still attached, indicating he lost a C clip on the axle? He wasn't using knockoffs instead of lug nuts, was he? I have definitely seen those come loose and lose a tire back in the days of Sprint Car racing back in the 60's. I also saw a tow truck towing a beautifully restore, British Racing Green mid-50's Jaguar backwards with the ass end on the lift down the highway at about 50mph a couple of years back. Pulled out behind him after noticing the left front rim/tire wobbling as he went by, and watched the knockoff spinner launch off into the ditch, followed by the rim coming off the hub a hundred yards later and the rim/tire bouncing down the shoulder and sidewalk for about 5 blocks before jumping a chainlink fence and landing in a trailer park where it finally came to rest after bouncing off the side of a trailer home. Meanwhile, the knuckle and tierod dropped to the ground when the rim came off and was throwing sparks as the car was being drug along by the tow truck. It took me almost a half mile to catch up and pull along the driver side of the tow truck. As I caught up with him, the heat from being drug caught the tierod boot and grease on fire! It took several seconds of waving, signaling, gesturing and mouthing "You lost a wheel, the car is on FIRE!" before he pulled off into a driveway along the road. Then he noticed the fire and grabbed an extinguisher. After he got the fire out, I asked him what the hell he was thinking, you NEVER run knockoffs backwards. He replied with, "But I made sure they were tight before I started towing." Face palm. I told him I knew where the tire and rim wound up, I'll go back and get them and look for the spinner (which I couldn't find in the 4-5' tall weeds down in that stretch of the ditch). When I returned with the tire, he had the driver's front up on a floor jack to slip the rim back on the hub, and the tow dolly (which he should have used in the first place!) ready to slip under the front tires. My parting shot to him was, "I hope the company you work for has damn good insurance, because parts for that Jag are hard to find and damn expensive, that is if you still have a job!"
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YUP, snapped the axle shaft. LOL
 
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