More so, there is absolutely no reason to replace the head gaskets unless you have a leaking one. We have seen bad head gaskets be diagnosed when the real problem was a bad degas bottle cap, plugged heater core, unrelated coolant leak, plugged oil cooler, or our next topic: the infamous egr cooler. But do not just resign to the fact that the head gaskets are bad every time you take it into the shop. If you are buying or own one of these trucks, my advice would be to keep it in the back of your mind that you may be putting head gaskets in it sooner or later. Most owners who are confronted with a possible head gasket issue usually just bite the bullet and install new gaskets and head studs to be done with the problem once and for all. Of course as many know the solution to keep the heads clamped to the block is new gaskets and ARP head studs. I am a firm believer that there are many head gaskets that get changed that have absolutely nothing wrong with them. And so the stories get started about how bad these engines are and how bad the head gaskets are. And the dealer who just got a $7,000 job dropped in their lap that had a guaranteed paycheck from Ford was all too eager to do the job.

Of course any owner still under warranty took their brand new truck back to the dealer for service after removing the programmer. This created too much cylinder pressure which caused the heads to lift immediately. Every one blamed the weak bolts and bad head design, but in the end we came to find out tuners were running too much timing. It was not uncommon for someone to put a programmer in and immediately see head gasket failure on the hotter tunes. Like I stated they had some problem head bolts, but also the aftermarket had not exactly figured out the tuning on these trucks yet. The first couple years the 6.0 was out is where the bad name for the head gaskets really started. It just isn’t as robust of a design as the 7.3 before them. The 6.0 only has four bolts holding down each cylinder and two of them are shared with the next cylinder. The early years had a different design for the head bolts which led to heads lifting and causing problems. Are the head gaskets a real issue on these trucks? Sorta. Equ8 anti cheat unknowncheats.The first thing people hear about a 6.0 Powerstroke is head gaskets, head gaskets, head gaskets.

Extreme injector not opening