Diesel questions

I'm in the market for a used diesel. My price range has got me looking at the mid-2000s F250. How much mileage is too high on one of these. Should I be scared of 180k-190k if the truck is otherwise in great shape. I know diesels will take a lot more mileage than a gasser but not sure where to draw the line. Can I expect one to go over 300k with proper maintenance? Looking at the FX4s with the lariat or king ranch trim Also, I've never owned a diesel. What do I need to know?

I drive a dodge but have heard from my buddy that had 2 6.0's and 1 6.4 that they eat him up in repairs. One of the 6.0's had a factory motor installed by ford at 30,000 miles. Don't know about the 6.7 that's redesigned as he gave up and went with chevy's. Said you couldn't get him to drive a dodge.

I have driven many miles in all of them, the 6.9, 7.3's, 6.0, 6.4 and 6.7. Out of all of them, do yourself a favor and get a 7.3 if you can find one, or spend a little more on a 6.7. The little more you spend initially on a 6.7 will be lower than the repairs you will have on the 6.0 or 6.4. I have a friend in San Antonio that has a White 2000 model F250 Lariat that is in good shape. It has 190,000 miles and he is asking 17K. If you are interested, I can get you in touch with him.

This is from an economic stand point.

If you don't need a diesel pickup don't buy one. Fuel costs more, the current emissions can be quite spendy and problematic, if it breaks its gonna cost more, and maintenance will cost you more.

That said if you just gotta have one I would look for a lower mileage 6.0 and if its not already deleted get it done. I would never own a 6.4. The 7.3's are great motors, but they are not immune from problems either, and being that they are all getting older these days it makes it a less probably option.

I would consider looking outside ford. GM and Dodge had some great options in the mid 2000's.

We all have our personal opinions. IMO you cannot beat the 6.7 Cummins backed up by the Aisin Tranny.
159K on mine and it runs like a champ. Went to Rayburn and back last weekend (276 mi round trip) on 13.8 gal. Not to shabby. That said, when diesel is $.30 per gallon more expensive than regular, it is still hard to justify the diesel. On the other hand, had I bought a gas burner when I bought my RAM, it would probably already be traded off by now.

I have a 2015 F250 with 6.7 I love it 86k miles already and not a wrench on it, however if I had it to do over again I would have stayed with my gas F 150 V8. The upkeep on the diesel is very high oil change runs in the $130.00 to $150.00 range depending on what oil you use, air filters 70.00 fuel filters every other oil change 32.00 I originally bought the F 250 in anticipation of getting a fifth wheel RV, but after deciding not to purchase that Its way more truck than I need to drive back and forth to work and pull the boat to the lake. If you are going to pull RV's and goosenecks and stuff too then the F 250 with 6.7 is perfect, but most folks don't need one that big.

So im am one of those that don't need a diesel but have one because i used to tow my race car around plus my little aluminum boat. I have sold my race car and now only tow a little boat and on occasion a trailer to pick up cars but after having a GMC sierra gasser that i blew 2 transmission in, id never go to another gasser; 1) mine is a 5.9 cummins 2wd dually and i consistently get 16 MPG in the city and 16.8to 17 MPG highway just depending on speed.
2) can't feel a thing when i tow with my diesel compared to the gasser which had a hard time getting up hills with 2600 lb car.
3)Brakes! brakes! brakes! going down hill with a trailer on a 1/2 ton, i had to give myself a bus length to keep safe but with a 1 ton i can stop on a dime
4) my inspection is only $7.50 and visual only
There are some serious draw backs to owning a diesel like other have mentioned such as maintenance; 3 gallon oil changes, shops charge a premium to work on diesels, parts are extremely expensive, and these things are not meant to go off road by an means. I personally would stay away from the 6.0 and the 6.4 unless you have DEEP pockets and the same can go for Dodge autos prior to Aisin transmissions as mentioned above. I also can't stand all these emissions [censored] that the new than 05s have like DEF and EGR as mine has none and a manual transmission so it doesn't have issues like the newer ones. Hope this helped and i use mine to tow kids and groceries more than anything else and daily driven going on 230k (bought it at 170k)

I have a 2000 Cummins 5.9 Dodge that is not up to date by any means but for my use is superior to the new trucks in that it uses less fuel than the new diesels. It has just under 200k and a manual transmission.

If you're going to want a diesel, buy a Chevy. The ones in your price and year range will give you better fuel mileage and a better ride plus they have the Allison transmission. There I didn't endorse Dodge. If it was me I'd find a latter year 5.9 and buy another since they still got good mpg. KC's truck is one of the few that gets that good mileage.

I would drive my truck across country. Oh wait, I'm leaving tonight to go pick up an outboard west of Chicago. I hope to make it there and back by Monday morning. I plan on using under well under 100 gallons for the just under 2000 mile trip.

7.3 power stroke all the way! Only go 6.0 if it is already bulletproofed, stock is not reliable and it costs a lot to bulletproof one. 6.4 is xxxxxxx. The Ford automatic trans behind the diesel is very good and reliable.

Diesel trucks are built more heavy duty than gassers and if you tow or carry heavy loads a lot will get better mileage than the gasser with the same load.

Cummins engines and Allison trans are ok too, but I drove 7.3's and all the Cummins for years in company trucks for years in large step vans and bulk vans, many times pulling trailers, and STOCK to STOCK the 7.3 would hold 70 mph cruising in most conditions where the Cummins would not.

I also worked in the shop ordering parts, Cummins and 7.3 P/S both are very reliable, when the Cummins fails it is almost always catastrophic, as in holes in the block with rods hanging out.....7.3 is almost always rebuildable. Allison trans are reliable but extremely expensive to work on or replace....

The issues with the 6.0 are way overblown... They dont have to be "bulletproofed" to be worth buying.

DO get a test kit to test for combustion gasses in the coolant
DO get an OBD2 device that can read oil and water temp, if the split is more than 15 degrees at 65MPH on flat ground, replace the oil cooler.
DO delete the EGR valve
DO flush the coolant and put something other than ford gold in it (cat spec I believe)

DONT put some monster power tune on the thing chasing horsepower.


The 6.0 got a bad rep for a few reasons.

1. ford gold coolant has a lot of silicates in it.
2. people were way over-tuning the trucks for power.
3. the oil cooler has very small ports
4. the Exhaust gas cooler is downstream of the oil cooler
5. each cylinder shares 2 TTY head bolts with its neighboring cylinder(s)

So here is what happened... people bought the trucks and did tunes on them or just pushed them hard. The high temps in the EGR cooler caused the silicates in the coolant to come out of suspension. They moved through the system and eventually started to clog up the oil cooler restricting flow to the cooler and also to the EGR cooler which is directly downstream. Then as people would floor the truck and demand high power, the EGR cooler wasn't getting enough flow and the coolant would boil off and stress and eventually crack the EGR cooler... This resulted in engine coolant getting into the engine through the exhaust gas recirculating system. This raised the head pressures dramatically and since the head bolts are shared and TTY, they would stretch them and blow the head gaskets.

The Bulletproofing is removing the EGR system and putting in head studs. The head studs are not really necessary unless you are chasing ponies. Just getting rid of the EGR system and flushing the cooling systems and putting in a fresh oil cooler and proper coolant will make the engine last for a LONG time.

I have moderate mechanical skills and was able to do all that myself in about 10 man hours working alone. The truck had 95k on it and I am up to 140k now and she has been great.

That all sounds good, but I'm not buying a much of it. I had over 70 of them in my fleet at work, and maybe a handful of them were reliable. My personal 2003 model blew a head gasket at 85000. No tunes, no BS. It was worked like any truck can be expected to, and it gave up the ghost pulling a load of hay one afternoon. I will agree that tunes make it worse, but the ones without them are not immune to the same problems.

True, our trucks have daily maintenance and these are totally unreliable stock, but they are work trucks and get a workout.....but so do the same type trucks with 7.3 p/s and cummins and these are totally reliable.

I won't buy a new personal truck that I'm going to have to do major work on to make it reliable! Now if one was given to me I could justify putting the money into it to make it last but all the ones I have seen are broke and the owner owes so much on them they can't sell them cheap enough to justify the purchase plus upgrades...

of course they aren't immune... I didn't mean to imply that... all the issues I listed still obviously exist and the same chain of events happens WRT the head gasket failure.

Part of the problem is that those models didn't have any stock way to see the water temp/oil temp differential. If they had, people could have caught the problem early... When I got my truck, the split was 35 degrees when it should have been 7 (which it is now). HOw the head gasket was still in tack is beyond me.. but I was able to check prior to buying it with a kit.

I admit that if you get a good deal on a 6.0L diesel and do the upgrades, I would definatly do the head studs too, they run very strong and are reliable.... just a lot of extra work and money involved.....

Have a buddy that just sold a 2005 6.0 ford with 310,000 miles on it. He did head studs and the deletes with a mild tune and no problems.

If you delete them they make good trucks. I was shopping used diesels for a few years hoping to find just what I wanted(never did) but the fords with the 6.0 sell for darn near enough less than a cummins or dmax that you could still do the deletes and not be out any more money.

I would love to do a bypass on my 6.7.

I was a hardcore Ford guy for years all it took to break that was spending $44k on a new 2003 F350 6.0. Completely left stock Turbo blew at 4k miles, numerous injectors, fuel system issues on and on I tried to pull some fence posts with it and in 4 low wouldnt even spin the tires in dirt. At 26k miles the tranny was slipping after all the run around I got from Ford warranty I trade it for my first Duramax and never looked back. I now own a 6.7 cummins due to the fact my Duramax was stolen and totaled. I was in a pinch for a heavy tow vehicle quick. If it wasnt for the cummins engine the truck would be total junk. First chance I get I will go back to Duramax.

My dd is a late 99 f250 4x4 7.3l with 274k on it as of now. It has 3.73 years and the 4r100 auto trans. I get 15mpg average, but I have gotten up to 18mpg on long trips empty. The only weak link on the 7.3 is the 4r100. Mine is still factory original and still good, but my truck never pulled over probably 6k lbs before I bought it at 234k, and was never ran hard, and the guy had the dealer take care of any little issue. He even took it to the dealer to get it detailed. I had a friend that worked at a ford dealer and still have one that does. They say on average the hot shot guys go 200k on a 4r100 and 1 million miles before rebuild on a 7.3 if all has been serviced well. The only 7.3 from 99-03 that has any issue is the 02-03 if they are hopped up a lot because they changed to powdered metal connecting rods in 02 and they are not as strong, but no need to worry if you leave it relatively stock.

Thanks, needed a good joke on a Monday morning

I'm knocking on 300k in my personal truck, and it doesn't use or leak a drop of oil or fuel anywhere. I helped my friend move his tools when he quit the ford dealer, and that specific truck was actually in the shop. It was a green crew cab f350, a 99-01 model, that the back seat was converted into a sleeper. The truck had 1.2 million miles on it at that time about 9 years ago. I would go to the dealer and send you a printout on that truck, but the dealer has been bought out and moved since then. It had a new factory trans every 200k and the motor was replaced with a factory reman at 1 million miles and no telling how many hrs as he also slept in the truck. Will mine do that? Probably not because I don't run the highway in a pickup for a living. Could mine make it that far? I would think so. If you take good care of a good product it will last a long long time, but you might not be able to grasp that as GM has yet to make a decent Diesel engine( the duramax is an Isuzu and it has had its share of problems like head gaskets and injectors just to name a couple). I am glad that I mad you laugh though. Means you probably had a better day than mine. And just so we don't leave anything out, the cummins 5.9 is a proven million mile motor if taken care of. I realize many will not understand how a motor can last that long, but go talk to some truckers that drive 100-200k a year and ask them how long a well maintained diesel will last.

red chevy comes from my first pickup a 1/2 on with a 350 cid. I have nothing against a d-max but im very far from hung up on them too.

7.3 is a good motor will last a long time if cared for no doubt the part I laugh at is averaging 1,000,000 miles. Sure a few make it but it is no where near the average... more like the one in a million

So now that you have the 1/2 Dodge Diesel, what kind of fuel mileage are you getting, and how long does the DEF last?

Im only creeping up on 4,000 miles on the truck but so far I have really enjoyed it.

My best tank is 27 mpg, my worst tank of empty driving has been 25, and almost every empty tank I have driven is 26 mpg. I got an honest to God 14.1 mpg hand calc pulling our boat with a head wind in both directions doing 65-70. In my opinion the deep/wide 24' center console is substantially more to tow than your average bass boat.

I didn't know what to think of the DEF, but im slightly less than 3/4 of a tank of DEF, which is the original from the dealer. The DEF adds less than 1% if you lump it in with the fuel cost so is a pretty non issue to me.

This truck averages about 27-50% better (my real world combined) mileage than any other 1/2 ton pickup out there other than the 2.7 ecoboost and its mileage falls on its face if you load it. If it weren't for the fuel economy I would not have bought it.

You just lost me. Why would you not have bought it? I've actually seen diesel cheaper than regular this week, here in H Town. It would seem to me the little diesel will pay for its additional cost fairly quickly if fuel prices stay the way they are.

Maybe I used a double neg, not sure.

25 mpg was my cut off. If I didn't think I could average 25 back and forth to work I was going to buy another car. I feel like the price to buy a ecodiesel or any other none base motor option 1/2 ton is somewhat comparable. Im definitely saving some money on fuel, and while there are some other higher cost associated with it, such as oil changes you can do them pretty reasonably if you do them yourself. I was chaning my oil at 5k in my 5.3 and is what I would do in any other gas half ton. Ram requires some spendy hi grade oils for the ecodiesel and recommends a 10k change interval not sure if I will follow that yet or not, but will likely push it further than 5k.

I've been doing 8K in my 6.7 Cummins. I've got 160K on the Cummins without any problems with the motor and drive train.

I know of a coupe 6.0s 300k never been worked on. The truth it ford 6.0 was first
Diesel with emissions ford tried to get ahead of the new emissions laws coming out. It was a learning curve. But look at them now. 6.7 ford best diesel out

You've got to be kidding. The Cummins coming out with their 2 event diesel (common rail) in 2003 was good to go for emissions till 2008. The 6.0 if you read up on it was initially a 3 event and quiet diesel. What happened there was they did not meet the EPA guidelines at the time and in 2004 the EPA and Ford agreed to have all the engines coming in for any warranty work have the 3 event turned back which made them noisy.
Back then it was common on the Powerstroke forums to hear about people having buybacks and others afraid to take their trucks back in because their engines suddenly became noisy. Ford admitted in 2005 that it had already bought back 1000 trucks because they could not fix the engines in them. I heard from several people that had more than one truck that Ford let them turn back in.
Those were the ones which had so many bad injectors and leaking injectors into the crankcase.

Why do you think it's the best diesel out?

No way. Any Cummins is better.

Do explain.

Next you'll tell us dodge is getting great mpg after putting on emissions. They lost all there advantage as soon as they had to start emissions. 2004 was t even a emission vechile year,ford did out out there willing to help our world. emissions wasnt a federal law till 2008. Same year dodge lost all there mpg. Wonder why that happened?

Dodge started using cats in 2004. My neighbor had his cut out in his 2005. ULSD started coming out in late 2004 and by 2006 that was about all you could find.
Both the common rail Dodge and the Ford 6.0 came within months of each other.
The Dodge 5.9 had always been known to get better fuel mileage than the Ford or Chevy and after 18 years of that motor they made it larger by making the 6.7. Ford had by then had 3 motors and was in the process of putting their forth new engine size to work for them. Chevy the same with the 5.7 disaster, 6.2, 6.5 before their 6.6 Duramax.

I'm guessing you are trying to say the EPA was the reason the Dodge got worse mileage. Maybe by a little but the same happened to the Ford at the same time so theirs shrunk too. The Dodge went to the 6.7 mid year 2007 but if you compare the 5.9 to the 6.9, 7.3, 6.4 or 6.7 Ford the Dodge won that contest all the time.

Here is a little about EPA light duty diesels which which started Jan 1, 2003 and was not enforced until starting in 2004.
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/deer_2005/plenary/2005_deer_charmley.pdf

I was around to hear the complaints about the people having their trucks reflashed in 2003, you? Its not something I made up. Nor was the enormous amount of buybacks that Ford had to do. Thats part of the legacy of the 6.0. Sorry, not my fault.


Here is how you work on a 6.0 since we're insulting each other. I remember on the Dodge site they posted a pic of a full bay of Fords with the cabs taken off doing engine replacements from the crankcase filling with oil after their injectors leaked, "making oil".

I little bit of black majic with your numbers and so called emissions. A cat isn't only emissions. Ford put egr cooler in 4 years before dodge. Now that's emissions.thats one of the things that gave them trouble Sure they had problems. Guess everyone got to learn from them. . Every car had a cat for a very long time. I've owned both dodge and ford. I even worked at the dodge truck plant in Michigan. After awhile I wouldn't even use there employee discount to buy trucks I'd just go get a ford. Dodge has more computer problems and steering problems then you'll ever talk about. You get a computer problem has to goto dealer so they can send a satellite signal to Detroit and have the new one programmed by Detroit. Can't even be done at the dealer. Just the truck sits there. As for the cab having to come of so what. I did it in a hour and a half first time. Big deal. It's called a design advantage in some ways. It's not like ford thought they were gonna have to take it off. They did that so the cab room would be bigger. Every ford is like a mega cab. A dodge quad cab was more like a Chevy extended cab. I'm not trying to insult you. But your trying to make out like the dodge is best when really the motor is only thing descent rest of truck is junk. And that what dodge makes. The motor is built by cummins. My 7.3 got way better mog then my 5.9. Ive had 4 dodges and 4 fords. My last dodge broke a center link while towing a 40 ft 5th wheel. Almost killed me. Dealer had one in stock since they go out all the time.

A cat is only for emissions if thats what you're trying not to say. Ford put an EGR to meet emissions but the Dodge got the same result without it. They also went to urea later than both Ford and Chevy but only because they could.

I would not have said a thing except that you were trying to say the 6.0 was somehow a benevolent piece of work Ford did. It was not. Dodge and Chevy both owe a bunch to the 6.0 for their sales. The 6.0 was a disaster.

As far as mpg, whatever. Go to fuelly and make a comparison. I've only owned my Dodge but if your Ford can get over 22 mpg @ 70 mph its better than mine. My experience is that Fords only claim to get better. They rarely do.


PS. I can take off my cab. I just don't need to. Calling it a design advantage? Pure Ford talk.

I'd take a 5.9 cummins over a 7.3 ford, deleted 6.0, D-max, or any of the current production vehicles assuming good maintenance on the 5.9.

Everyone was chasing the 5.9 on fuel mileage and I don't think any ever caught em.

Oh and I have read that on my ecodiesel that they have to pull the cab to do some work maybe replace motor etc. also... that sucks.