Cavitation Article
There is an article about it all...
Cavitation
There are all the pictures from the engine tear down. They are in the article too a bit. Anyways, 7.3L IDI do indeed cavitate and do it fairly quickly. 100,000-150,000 miles without SCA protection and you could be screwed.
I actually need to go an reword some of the explanation to the cavitation. When I go back and reread it after all this time I don't really like it. I think a phase diagram along with the engine animation would be the best visual aid.
