Anybody old enough to remember the good old days?
Yes the old 7.3 was a pretty good motor back in the day. 1999 was probably the best year. In 2003 the fun began. This is my buddies diesel fuel injection shop . It was the same size for 25 years with the same staff. Since 2003 he had to expand twice to keep up with the demand . I will take a pic of all the trucks sitting in the parking lot waiting for service. With the new DPF and urea systems he is preparing for another business boom by buying a expensive dpf burner/cleaner. When someone idles their truck to much in cold weather those things plug right up tight.
That looks fairly easy to work on now john compared to the new mack engines. I would work on that any day with the right equipment and garage like that. On the new mack engines the timing gears are all on the back of the engine tucked under cab. Plus all the other stuff they are sticking on there now a days in the way like the emissions stuff etc. Instead of on the front of engine like most. If it was easy to work on these things women and children would be doing it.
Looks like destiny has met up with me. A few months ago this van refused to start with the usual failed injector blowing compresion into the fuel system. I spent about a week doing what is near impossible and replaced the right banks injectors. Then it ran fine again until last week when it started blowing its coolant out under full load. I asked our local diesel shop how common head gasket failures were on the 6.0 . He just laughed and said its about 50/50 the heads are cracked verses a head gasket. They sent 9 heads in for inspection and only 4 came back serviceable. They also quoted us a price of $6500 to pull the engine out of our van and replace the head gaskets or heads . A minumum 40 hours labor due to the fact that the engine can not just be removed by the comparatively simple cab pull like you can do on a truck. In the van you need to disasemble the front of the vehicle and pull the engine half apart just to get it out to remove the heads. This adds several days to the job.
Needless to say we were seriously considering junking this 2006 van with 90,000 miles on it. Since the work load has been light lately we decided to do this in house and save several thousand in labor. My hats off to the engineers who figured out how to stuff 20 pounds of crap in a 2 pound bag.
First thing is to yank the bumper ,grill,and substructures to get at the cooling system .
Needless to say we were seriously considering junking this 2006 van with 90,000 miles on it. Since the work load has been light lately we decided to do this in house and save several thousand in labor. My hats off to the engineers who figured out how to stuff 20 pounds of crap in a 2 pound bag.
First thing is to yank the bumper ,grill,and substructures to get at the cooling system .
Now we can see the engine.. well just the front. After removing the fan we can see the accessory drive system. Count up how many pullies are on the front . Yes there are 15 of them . That has got to be some kind of record. They figured out a way to cram an unneeded alternator and vaccum pump in there. By the way the vaccum pumps sole purpose is to provide vaccum for the blend door in the heating system. Instead of a cheap cable or electric motor to do the job they are still using old school failure prone pumps to provide the gas engines vaccum. Just amazing. 
You know whats funny . The 2005 model had on alternator and one drive pulley system. Since you cannot see either one of the 2006 models belts due to being buried under a mound of shrouds,hoses pipes, and rezzies we had no idea it even had a second alternator untill I took the top one out to get at the valve covers for the injector replacement.
You know whats funny . The 2005 model had on alternator and one drive pulley system. Since you cannot see either one of the 2006 models belts due to being buried under a mound of shrouds,hoses pipes, and rezzies we had no idea it even had a second alternator untill I took the top one out to get at the valve covers for the injector replacement.
I remember back when dirt wheels called the cannondales exposed wiring and hose system a plumbers nightmare. Not even close. When you have to crampack a huge engine in a small engine bay everything needs to be remote located . On regular vehicles the PCM and ECM are mounted on the engine . On this one there is now room under the doghouse so they remote the ecm under the brake booster and then remote the PCM behind the headlight. LOL
After about 8 hours I worked my way to the doghouse and got most of the rear and top assemblies like the turbo and exhaust pipes removed. Tomorrow I crawl under to get the tranny ,oil pan and remote oil and fuel filter systems out. Then we can figure out how to get a cherry picker in to remove the engine. Ive pulled hundreds of engine and trannies out of a wide variety of vehicles but this one will set the record for the most layered and complicated amount of items removed just to do a simple job like head gaskets. It might also be the last as we quit buying Fords and have switched to GM . But who knows the new diesels now have the added complicated advanced EGR, SCR and DPF systems which are also causeing a lot of breakdowns . They will still be under warranty for a couple more years before I get to deal with that . Personally i think with these new systems required to meets EPA standards I think will spell the death of diesels. Relaibilty and low cost of ownership went away years ago. I could imagine some private owner of a van like this to cough up $5000 for what used to be a one day $500 job. Then guess what a little while down the road the turbo ,egr cooler ,water pump or even a belt drive bearing will fail and you will need a couple thousand more to fix this and that. Its not nickle and diming its hundreds and thousanding if thats a word.LOL
I will give props to Ford because they seems to do a better job with the 6.0 engine externals which is in the international chassis and those need far more attention to keep them running.
I will give props to Ford because they seems to do a better job with the 6.0 engine externals which is in the international chassis and those need far more attention to keep them running.
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cannondale27
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- Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2021 10:41 pm
It has gotten to the point that I tell people that diesels in light trucks are only for people that trade in after the warranty is up. I made a good twenty year career off of working on them and have never owned one so what does that say! They do have their uses if you are towing with a gvwr over 25,000 but other than that even if you know how to work on them and maintain them they are not worth it.