Buying a used diesel - 7.3L, 6.0L, 6.4L. Opinions?

spongecop · #1 Thu, October 25th, 2012, 05:55 PM

I just went thru this last year when I bought my 2001. I paid $15k for my truck with 189k miles. Lariat CC 4wd auto. In Texas the 7.3's sell for around 3k$ over blue book. Everyone I spoke to said stay away from the 6.0 unless you know the ENTIRE history. Even a couple truck dealers said so...they have them blow on the way back from auction. I like the 7.3 becasue I can work on it and its reliable. Not the fastest or the strongest but reliable.

6.4's were out of my price range and the fact you need to pull the cab off to work on it scares me.

cj45lc · #2 Fri, October 26th, 2012, 02:16 PM

JMHO but I wouldn't hesitate to get a 7.3 in the 150k mile range if it was kept up pretty good, oil changes, filters exc. What spongecop said is pretty much how I feel but I'm hung up on my 7.3 & don't much want to fool with the others at this time.

As far as what you are talking about doing with the truck I believe I'd be hard pressed not to get a gas job just for the maintanence cost involved with the diesel....JMHO

TwinTurbo · #3 Fri, October 26th, 2012, 09:43 PM

I've had a 7.3 for 13 years been an awesome truck 350,000 miles wouldn't hesitate to own another one, but I also just got a 6.0 with 84,000 on it. Here's my take on the 6.0's -so far I really like mine, if you can work on it yourself and not afraid to learn, there can be some pretty good deals found because of there bad rap. (paid 15k for mine - CC, Dually, Lariat). Most of the problems stem from the egr/emissions stuff which can be deleted if your state doesn't require testing or there are companies such as bulletproof that make better replacement parts. Just budget that in when your shopping, then get the FICM programer for the better throttle response, I hated how slow it would take off from a stop till I did. My brother has 220000 on his '03 and a few injectors have gone but no EGR issues yet, and his oil cooler is not as plugged as mine - checked the diff in oil temp vs. coolant temp should be within 10*, mine's around 30 so guess what i'll be doing soon? I would recommend running a synthetic oil. Either way you could end up with a good one or a bad one though. Good Luck.