My wife has a 2005 F250 with 6.0 powerstroke, truck has 87000 miles,I've had no problems with the EGR cooler.I'm thinking of doing EGR delete before there is a problem & installing a tuner. Will the stock head bolts fail after the extra boost? Can the head bolts be upgraded one at a time with out changing head gaskets?

 

The EGR cooler isn't the problem. The oil cooler is. Get gauges before installing tunes. With custom tunes your HGs will like with the stock bolts on mild tuning. IMHO if your gonna stud it pull the heads and machine them then install studs.

 

If u read some of the other threads on this site, you'll c that the majority of us suggest doing it right by removing the heads n having them decked, then installing headstuds and new headgaskets. otherwise ur throwing money away

 

the reason 90% of people sugest pulling the heads is because of the design. all the diesel motors up till the 6.0 had 6 bolts around each cylinder, which equals greater clamping force. the 6.0 only has 4 bolts. so when u remove one bolt, it will allow the head to flex some. not saying that it will cause HG problems, but has a lot greater chance than any other

 

It just doesn't make sense to go through all of that trouble and NOT pull the heads. Why not just have them decked and start with a perfectly flat surface? Then you KNOW it's done right, instead of going through all that, putting them in one at a time, then blowing the gaskets in 10 miles of driving...

To answer your question, some of these trucks blow headgaskets stock, others run race tunes daily on stock bolts and have no issues. Russian Roulette.

It's not so much the boost that blows the gaskets (since boost is only a measurement of restriction anyways), rather the timing. Excessive timing will cause cylinder pressures to spike. You can tell this when the heads are removed, and you can see the spray pattern on the piston. A good custom tune on an SCT, most of the spray pattern is right in the bowl, where it should be. Some of the "other programmers" like diablo, or Edge or whatever, are often way out of the bowl, causing huge cylinder pressures, yet, still don't seem to make the same power...

I'm going off on a tangent here, but you get the point. Boost isn't the gasket popper, timing is.

 

Why is getting the heads decked so important? I would get that if you've already blown an HG, but if you're replacing gaskets as a preventative measure, why would you think the head isn't flat already?

 

Who's to say they're not flat sitting there? A stock 6.0 with slightly warped heads might hold up, add a tuner and pop. Simply putting studs in, wont get it flat again. It is just plain ol good engine building practice to ensure everything is clean and done RIGHT, which means, pull the heads, deck them.

Also besides the flatness, what if your head is devloping a crack? What if you have burnt up valves, or what about the valve guides? They crack a LOT on these heads.

 

Now that engine is out of warranty,I want to install a tuner because truck is slow pulling out in traffic. The info I was given, it will cause HG failure.

 

Not guaranteed, but probably a good chance with a hot tune.

 

This is his son talking, logged into my dads acct.
Im a Ford tech, cert in all 4 engines, but i dont do much work on them, mainly gas.

Im trying to keep the amount i have to work on the truck as low as possible
If the cooler fails, it makes a giant mess and can pop the head gaskets.
Int. the truck when hot would run rough at idle and low rpm. Ran all the tests; egr valve pos. test failed. My dad pulled the EGR and found it carbon-ed up big time. I told him how to clean it and to see what would happen. Turns out the ICP connector was causing the problem. Unplug and replug fixed it and i have a new connector for him.

Its possible the turbo is rusting. My mom doesnt ride it hard.
It gets all the engine maint. that it should get.
I have not driven it to see how bad the lag really is, but dad is pretty good about noticing/gauging it.

I told him to block off the cooler and take it out, in case he needs it for the sniffer.
take the baffle out the downpipe and take off the muffler.
If he needed more, put a programmer on it. But it could get him in to trouble; which is what were trying to avoid.

Most of the heads were flat enough according to ford spec, but when a rod lets go the valves are trash and so is the head so it got replaced.

I know what you guys are talking about with the flower pattern. I did not know it was from timing; i was told it was from too much fuel. When the 6.4 came around there was alot of that going on, along with toast bottom ends.

Dad, you might want to try the easy exhaust stuff before you tear into the engine to try and elevate the lag and if needed a low power setting from a programmer. SCT like someone mentioned.