Well guys, its been a while since I've been posting here regularly. Truth be told the old girl was running great for many years with nothing much more than routine maintenance. My PMax turbo failed at one point causing a leak so bad I thought my HPOP had gone out. I pulled the turbo and was going to clean it but discovered damage to the turbine wheel and that the rear seal plate had lost a screw and the other two were loose. As it was not easily repaired due to parts availability I simply bough a KC Stage 2 turbo and have been extremely happy with it.
Still, with getting close to 300k on the clock I thought she would run forever. Then in late October of last year she started having trouble starting. I knew the symptoms of a blown HG or cracked head and decided to run her as long as she would go. The first week of November 2022 she locked up on cranking. I knew it was a big job to do HGs and/or heads again, but thinking about the mileage I really thought I had a decision to make. I could do another HG job, but at this point it had a slight RMS leak and I was concerned about the rest of it just being tired. Keep in mind this engine had gone 180k miles making twice the power Ford/IH originally claimed.
I had no plans to get rid of the truck. The cost of a new truck is now completely absurd. Truthfully, the step backward in power would not be welcome either, and IMO the 6.7 is overly complex and the bottom end isn't stout enough to make serious power and be durable. So in the meantime I bought an 5.4 powered '07 F250 4X4 extended cab with an 8' bed that had 177k on the clock but had been well looked after despite needing some work I already knew how to do and having some rust I'd eventually have to address. At $6,000 I couldn't argue. I sunk a couple more grand into it and ended up with a nice daily driver for work.
Now I could formulate a plan to get my 6.0 back in action. I fairly quickly decided that given the mileage and how it had been used I did not want to throw good money after bad. This meant just addressing the top end wasn't going to cut it. I wanted something reliable for 200-300k miles, and of course if I could up the power beyond what I'd had that was something I absolutely wanted to do provided it didn't negatively impact longevity.
Making power I'd learned wasn't all that hard. It definitely wasn't cheap, but basically fuel equals power so long as you can keep the EGT down and avoid melting the pistons. Fuel I'd learned was easy enough to add with tuning and larger injectors. Keeping the EGT down was harder. A bigger turbo is fine until the point where the lag is worse than stock. A race truck might get away with a big single, because they have time to spool it, but on a real world, daily driver that's not realistic. Talking to the good folks at KC Turbo they confirmed what I already was thinking, I couldn't go bigger than my existing Stage 2 if I still wanted to be able to tow, and if I wasn't going to be okay with more lag. I was already running RCD 175/30 injectors and the largest KC recommends for the Stage 2 is 195/30s. I knew the night and day difference it made going from stock (135/0) to the 175/30s, but the cost of injectors is steep. If I'm getting a new set I'm going to want more than my current turbo would allow, but I couldn't go bigger with the turbo and still use the truck the way I wanted. This put me in a corner. There were airflow upgrades I could make to my new engine which would allow me to get more out of my existing combo, but if I wanted that next 100HP or more I was going to have to get more creative. If you want the best of both worlds the only real option is to add a second turbo. A compound twin setup isn't bound by the limitations of a single turbo setup. More air means you can burn more fuel, and make more power, all without any more lag than it already had. The only downside was cost.
Not to undersell it, that was a big downside. I was already looking at a fresh engine build, and given what I'd learned about what happens when a 6.0 HG fails, and knowing that one of the heads I'd used back in '13 was a Chinese casting; I knew I was buying heads too. I also wanted this engine to be the best it could, so I was looking at all reasonable upgrades which fit my goals and I wanted to use the best parts available. This meant that up front I decided against the twin turbo setup with larger sticks. From a complexity perspective its a lot more to troubleshoot on an already fresh engine, and the cost was a big hindrance to getting the truck back on the road. I therefore decided to build the new engine with the ability to as easily as possible upgrade to twins in the future. In the meantime I'd build a rock solid, fresh engine that was still better than my old one in every way. This is the build I'll be presenting in this thread. I wanted to do this because I really couldn't find much on the subject already out there. This way hopefully the next guy doesn't have as hard a time as I did coming by information. I spent a lot of time on Google and also on the phone and via email to various suppliers amassing this information.
Still, with getting close to 300k on the clock I thought she would run forever. Then in late October of last year she started having trouble starting. I knew the symptoms of a blown HG or cracked head and decided to run her as long as she would go. The first week of November 2022 she locked up on cranking. I knew it was a big job to do HGs and/or heads again, but thinking about the mileage I really thought I had a decision to make. I could do another HG job, but at this point it had a slight RMS leak and I was concerned about the rest of it just being tired. Keep in mind this engine had gone 180k miles making twice the power Ford/IH originally claimed.
I had no plans to get rid of the truck. The cost of a new truck is now completely absurd. Truthfully, the step backward in power would not be welcome either, and IMO the 6.7 is overly complex and the bottom end isn't stout enough to make serious power and be durable. So in the meantime I bought an 5.4 powered '07 F250 4X4 extended cab with an 8' bed that had 177k on the clock but had been well looked after despite needing some work I already knew how to do and having some rust I'd eventually have to address. At $6,000 I couldn't argue. I sunk a couple more grand into it and ended up with a nice daily driver for work.
Now I could formulate a plan to get my 6.0 back in action. I fairly quickly decided that given the mileage and how it had been used I did not want to throw good money after bad. This meant just addressing the top end wasn't going to cut it. I wanted something reliable for 200-300k miles, and of course if I could up the power beyond what I'd had that was something I absolutely wanted to do provided it didn't negatively impact longevity.
Making power I'd learned wasn't all that hard. It definitely wasn't cheap, but basically fuel equals power so long as you can keep the EGT down and avoid melting the pistons. Fuel I'd learned was easy enough to add with tuning and larger injectors. Keeping the EGT down was harder. A bigger turbo is fine until the point where the lag is worse than stock. A race truck might get away with a big single, because they have time to spool it, but on a real world, daily driver that's not realistic. Talking to the good folks at KC Turbo they confirmed what I already was thinking, I couldn't go bigger than my existing Stage 2 if I still wanted to be able to tow, and if I wasn't going to be okay with more lag. I was already running RCD 175/30 injectors and the largest KC recommends for the Stage 2 is 195/30s. I knew the night and day difference it made going from stock (135/0) to the 175/30s, but the cost of injectors is steep. If I'm getting a new set I'm going to want more than my current turbo would allow, but I couldn't go bigger with the turbo and still use the truck the way I wanted. This put me in a corner. There were airflow upgrades I could make to my new engine which would allow me to get more out of my existing combo, but if I wanted that next 100HP or more I was going to have to get more creative. If you want the best of both worlds the only real option is to add a second turbo. A compound twin setup isn't bound by the limitations of a single turbo setup. More air means you can burn more fuel, and make more power, all without any more lag than it already had. The only downside was cost.
Not to undersell it, that was a big downside. I was already looking at a fresh engine build, and given what I'd learned about what happens when a 6.0 HG fails, and knowing that one of the heads I'd used back in '13 was a Chinese casting; I knew I was buying heads too. I also wanted this engine to be the best it could, so I was looking at all reasonable upgrades which fit my goals and I wanted to use the best parts available. This meant that up front I decided against the twin turbo setup with larger sticks. From a complexity perspective its a lot more to troubleshoot on an already fresh engine, and the cost was a big hindrance to getting the truck back on the road. I therefore decided to build the new engine with the ability to as easily as possible upgrade to twins in the future. In the meantime I'd build a rock solid, fresh engine that was still better than my old one in every way. This is the build I'll be presenting in this thread. I wanted to do this because I really couldn't find much on the subject already out there. This way hopefully the next guy doesn't have as hard a time as I did coming by information. I spent a lot of time on Google and also on the phone and via email to various suppliers amassing this information.
