Safe horsepower
 

How much horsepower will a 6.0 handle until you starts breaking stuff. I have arp heads studs new head gaskets.

auto tranny or manual

After you get injectors,turbo,airdog you will have to worry about your trans

It is a auto tranny

You can call a tuner and get it de-tuned probably, that would help :c:.

Seriously though... we need more info about the headgasket job and any mods you have now. What are you looking to do with the truck, how much money do you have to spend and what power do you want the truck to make?

~700hp is where you're going to need the bottom end built, but that's past a daily driver anyways so if you need to DD this thing no need to worry about that power.

When you say "break stuff" what kind of stuff have you had in mind? The top end valvetrain and stock cam have been spun up near 1200 rwhp without issue. Rods need upgrading around the 650-700 hp mark. Trans will need a build up nearing 550rwhp and more. The weakpoints are always the headgaskets on these, so more info on the build there would help, like who did it, how it was done, what gaskets used, etc...

Then of course there is the ever common oil cooler and EGR cooler issues, if those haven't been addressed yet.

The head gaskets are ford oem head gaskets it was all done by ford dealer I am getting ready to delete egr cooler have the delete kit just waiting on some free time. I am wanting around 500 550 horsepower. Not planning on doing it any time soon but definitely would like to in the future. And what I am saying about breaking is what do I need to upgrade so the truck will handle 550 horsepower. The mods are just straight pipe sct tuner with stock tunes.

stock trans can handle around 500hp but getting a built one will be good even if you dont buidl it for awhile. Other than that make sure your FICM is good, get a FICM tune, custom tunes, airdog 2, whatever injectors you want(depends on how much you tow), and a powermax or bigger turbo to go with it. 6.0s will hand 500-550 all day with good Hg's and ARP's, good oil cooler, properly functioning egr cooler or egr delete.

ok thank you for the info my ficm is only 8 months old would i still need a ficm tune

Because now you can get 58 v FICM from swamps and there is another company that currently reflashes the FICM

:tu:

Hopefully when you had the dealer install the head studs, they sent the heads to a machine shop to be checked out for flatness, cracks, and pressure tested.

Even with head studs, if the heads are warped, the gaskets will fail.

Exactly what lilpooh said. Chances are if the dealer did it, you'll be re-doing it again down the road. I had ARP's put in by my dealer once. That was the shortest amount of time headgaskets lasted in my truck. I think they might have made it 10k miles. They don't deck the heads and their procedure and specs for checking flatness on the heads plain old sucks.

With that said, 500rwhp is pretty easily attained. Still need to know what you're doing with the truck before making recommendations. Will you tow, at all? If so what's the heaviest you think you'll tow? Race truck? DD? grocery getter? Need to know everything the truck will be expected to do. For 500+, stock trans is fine. Just need a good headstud/gasket job, egr cooler delete, and some preventative maintenance like oil cooler rebuild, coolant filter etc. Other than that, some 190cc/100% injectors and a powermax would get you there. Turbo option could go a few ways though, could also do a 62mm S300 based turbo too. Another new option guys are trying is the powermax upgrade from RCD, 68mm powermax.

All this plus injectors. Stock injectors wont get you over 500rwhp.

Is it a new Ford FICM? It will too fail at some point. A FICM tune is just something to help take control of the firing of the injectors, and there are a few options. This is just to add to SCT tuning...

Bill @ PHP does this
Eric @ Innovative
Mike @ KEM
Vivian @ Quicktricks...

155, 175,or 190 :tu:

155 or 175 if he tows heavy

One of those cases I need to read more and type less. I read so many posts in a day a lot of times I just scan over the posts looking for important info, in this case my eyes were looking for one of those numbers and I didn't see it. My bad! :c:

The heads were pressure tested. The truck does pull sometimes not very often heaviest i pull is usually 8000 lbs i do however need to be able to still use it if i need too.