Hey Guys! New to the forum, new to diesels.

Just bought myself a 2005 F250 Lariat 4x4. As far as I can tell, its bone stock besides having Dick Cepek wheels and tires. I don't have any grand plans to deck it out or anything, just want a leveling kit and 6-7" dual stacks. I don't want to "roll coal" like the "cool kids". Im military and work hard for my cash, so I dont want to throw it in the air in the form of unburnt diesel. I found the leveling kit made by Sinister and seems to be a good deal

I know guys get tired of the same stuff over and over. I have been reading through the threads here for the past couple of weeks. I see alot of guys doing delete kits and head bolts..etc.

My first question as I am just getting my feet wet, what should I add/remove/change first? What should my first priorities be? I am aiming to make my truck dependable and decent on fuel, as well as sound/look great. My truck has 139,xxx miles on it. I don't have a whole lot of knowledge on the maintainence history, but it has a clean Carfax and runs well, starts right up on the 22-25 degree mornings we have been having. I plan to change the oil this weekend and perform the other maintainence such as other filters and whatever the manual called for at 100k. Any suggestions for the things I should check or clean?

 

If your tackling basic maintenance this weekend, stick with Motorcraft filters and use a diesel synthetic oil.

http://youtu.be/uvnTwCujBJE



Next, before you go spending your hard earned money (Thank you for serving), get yourself a monitor solution to check the health of the motor. The 6.0 has issues with the oil cooler clogging and causing the EGR cooler to fail from lack of coolant flowing to it from a clogged oil cooler. When the EGR cooler fails, coolant enters the cylinders and can/will cause your head bolts to stretch, causing gasket failure. When the delta between ECT and EOT spreads above 15* apart, it's an indication that the oil cooler is clogged. So while your digging into the motor to replace the oil cooler, it would be a good time to upgrade or delete the EGR cooler. Now while you have the motor apart, you can update the OEM parts that are prone to failure. This would depend on the year of the motor, stuff like STC fitting, turbo feed lines, turbo drain tube, ICP and/or wiring, and so on.

Checking ECT/EOT delta requires your to have motor upto operating temp (190* +/- 3*). Drive her at 65mph on flat road for a little while to let the temps settle, then take your delta reading.

To check FICMv, you want to be sure the FICMv don't drop below 46v while cranking to start and while running. Anything below 46v is an indication of FICM going bad. Be sure your batteries are healthy for this test, weak batteries can cause false FICMv readings. Have the batteries load tested to be sure they are good, and if you need to replace one battery then replace both at the same time. A weak/bad FICM will destroy your injectors, and they ain't cheap!!


Low Fuel psi will also destroy injectors, any psi below 45psi is asking for injector damage.



This is where a monitor solution like DashBoss, ScangaugeII, or Edge Insight CS/CTS can show you what's going on internally. You will use one of these monitors to check your ECT/EOT delta, FICMv, Fuel psi. These are the three top PID's to check. You will have to add a Fuel psi sending unit to add to the DashBoss or Insight, the ScangaugeII will require a separate analog gauge and pod. Now, any of these three monitors will come in handy later on to trouble shoot other issue that may arise.


After you have monitored and checked/repaired any issues, your ready for the BLING!

Welcome to DB!!

Edit: forgot to mention, get a coolant filter installed. This will help filter out some of the crap floating around in the coolant system and will help prevent oil cooler from clogging.

 

Since you doing the filters/fluid this weekend, pull out the EGR valve and clean it.

http://www.forddoctorsdts.com/articl...icle-06-12.php

Also recommend cleaning the EBP tube and MAP hose/fitting.

 

Get some sort of gauges and monitor your engine oil temp and engine coolant temp. If oil temp gets more than 15 degrees warmer than coolant while on highway cruising around 65-70 then it's time for a new oil cooler. If you do an oil cooler you might as well do egr delete and possibly some other things. I'm sure there will be several more knowledgeble guys chime in. But I'm also certain they will tell you gauges! Also the ford gold coolant should really be relaxed in favor of some quality elc, such as cat or rotella. My advice would be not to mess with coolant and flush till you determine the health of the oil cooler though because you could clog it up worse with a flush.

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Replaced not relaxed.

 

to DB!

 

Welcome, Lilpooh hit the nail on the head. Check out your oil cooler health, coolant flush and coolant filter, that will help tremendously with reliability. EGR delete would be a great idea too, but just know that you'll probably need an SCT tuner with custom tuning to shut off your check engine light if you go that route.

Sinsiter leveling kit? Ok I just looked this up, it's just the leveling coil spacers. Just as an FYI, you'll need F350 stock blocks to truly level your truck out too. All of those leveling kits are made for F350's, and the F250's have shorter blocks in the rear. Not a big deal, but just something you should know. You can usually find the stock F350 blocks and u-bolts on the forums. Also, just as an FYI... you can get no-name coil spacers on ebay for less than 1/2 of that cost. Not to say the Sinister unit is bad... they make good stuff and they're stuff is really nice looking. I made my own, and found a guy to trade my stock 250 blocks for his 350 blocks... so mine was free, with the exception of the grade 8 bolts I bought to bolt the spacers down.

Thanks for your service!

 

Thanks guys for the advice. I am going to post every now and then, but I tend to just sit back and read more than post.

Thank again for the help!