This 6.0L Powerstroke Part Changes Everything

The world moves fast, you work day, even faster, pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing

data.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work, built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint,

and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create, and summarize.

So you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work.

Learn more at Microsoft.com slash M365 Copilot.

Jeff and John, I look forward to chatting with you guys today about 6-Liter stuff, which

is really popular on the Diesel podcast.

You've had a resurgence with popularity and there's a lot of things driving it.

And you guys have a 6-Liter head there.

So welcome back to the podcast.

Look forward to learning about this new product you guys have.

Yeah, thank you, Patrick.

It's good to talk with you again.

And this 6-Liter head project of ours has probably been one of the longest in development.

Yes, for most of the reasons.

We say that, you know, we say that, I guess tongue in cheek, it's definitely been a product

that we saw a need for, I mean, as far back as four or five years ago when it first started

it.

We've kind of had our eyes set on this thing for a while, like Jeff said, several years.

But due to lots of different circumstances, we just either haven't been able to get to

it or, you know, didn't have the capacity or had other higher value add products that

we were working on at the time.

Once we really got into it, though, I would say it's been an interesting ride.

Really starting mainly with the castings themselves.

You know, we wanted to create a cylinder head much like our Cummins and Duramax heads that

we feel like we've failure-proofed.

You know, we wanted to use a specific type of valve seat.

We wanted to incorporate some things that, you know, I had seen in my previous life working

in the top fuel space.

So we really want to come at the market with something that we could stand behind, something

that we trusted.

And much to the dismay of a few people in our building, we had to get a six-liter.

And we had to really get into it.

And, you know, the funny thing is with the 6.0 platform, not only is there still a huge

cult following with that engine, but there's just so many of them still on the road every

day driving around, you know, to support that product or, you know, that application is still

a very viable thing for us.

And in fact, as we got into it, I realized it's kind of a group of people and trucks

that I feel as if the industry is kind of left behind to a degree.

There's a couple of people out there that that's their main discipline, but for us,

it's a new market.

So again, like always, we're going after the things that solve problems and complement

what our business is designed to do already.

So, in our heads being one of the most obvious.

If we were to start with the factory six-liter head, what are some weak points that that

they have that you guys are able to address in the Fleece Performance six-liter head?

You want to talk about maybe some of the the course that we started?

That's a good place to start.

So going back to the very early, I mean, again, this goes three, four years ago.

I'm not exaggerating in that.

And when we were first starting this this project and it's similar across

a number of other projects as well, like on the Duramax cylinder heads and on the Cummins heads,

those those programs, we always seed them with with used core material to get it started.

And we thought we could do that on the six-oh platform.

And we had acquired, I think, close to four or five hundred.

Well, it turns out you can get them free.

People were giving them to us, you know, they didn't even want them.

So we had hundreds and hundreds of these core heads that we started with in the processing.

Take them through cleaning, pressure testing, magnet fluxing and a lot more that good.

We built some products off of that and that we put into our own test fleet.

And some of those didn't have the longevity that we expected and needed out of it.

Now, our customers would expect from that matter either.

And so it pretty quickly drove us down the the path of needing to when we make this product,

it has to be a new casting and there's no other way to do it.

And so that was one of the law.

That was the hurdle to get it to market was really the development of a new casting.

And to answer your question, one of the biggest downsides in the six-oh is the casting.

Yep, one hundred percent.

Yeah, the amount of cracked castings.

Is crazy.

I don't know how many of these engines exist.

I don't know how many were produced, but millions and millions.

I would say castings, core castings that we received more than half of them were just scrap.

Obviously, getting replaced for a reason.

Unfortunate side of that is a lot of remand programs.

You can you can repair a casting, you can fix it, you can, you know, reuse that part by.

Solving whatever the actual failure mode is on that on that part.

But with these six leaders, we just realized, look, we got to go at this thing a different way.

We've got to develop a casting, something that we can trust and rely on.

And in fact, we've gotten through the first testing stage on a new casting.

We've gotten all the way to production and we've received, not afraid to say it.

We've received a lot of castings, got them here and realized, oh, my gosh, we've got a problem.

We had a wall thickness issue and ended up happening to scrap and start over again.

And at that point, we really dug into the the casting itself.

We needed to make sure that we had the proper wall thickness everywhere across the part.

To make sure that we didn't run into a premature issue or a failure.

And this kind of segues into a whole another part of this conversation.

I'm just going to take us there right now and we can then come back around

and get in the specifics on our six leader heads.

But about two months ago.

So we acquired a foundry.

So this is a foundry that's local to us that we've been doing work with for several years now.

And, you know, the stars aligned and it was the right time for us to to go ahead

and jump into the the foundry world.

And our intention is to keep creating jobs in the United States of America,

but in particular here in Pittsburgh, Indiana.

So taking on the Foundry is going to be a really cool thing.

It's going to be exciting.

It's going to be a lot of work.

But our intention is to cast these cylinder heads here ourselves.

Going forward, so it's going to be a wild ride.

But what that allows us to do is to really control the whole process.

We want to make sure that, you know, when we make a part,

we put a part out that we understand exactly what went into that part.

We can make changes to that part in real time.

If there's something inside the development of a part like a cylinder head,

we're able to make tweaks and adjustments and and and do it to our own terms.

Patrick, you before we hopped on the podcast, you said

I think it was Kat from Cisco diesel had a couple questions around the Foundry.

Perhaps you want to let us know what the questions were.

You didn't pull us in yet, so happy to get on it.

She was super excited about it.

And then she said, next time you got the guys on from Fleece,

you should ask them about that because it's going to increase their

capability to be able to be able to address a lot of the issues

that are in the marketplace.

And so when we were talking about doing, you know, podcast about six leaders,

it's it's just kind of all it all came together in a sense.

Because what I hear from people who have six leaders is they know

that there's head gasket issues, they get Myla, John, or it's just hit or miss.

Like John, you'd mentioned that the factory castings.

Well, some people have problems, you know, just right away with them

and trying to be able to find a solution.

And knowing that the factory castings can can be lacking.

Like Jeff, you had mentioned all the cores you guys see

where there's just issues with them as a six liter owner.

If I had one, I would want to start fresh.

And I'd also want to know, like, where where are they being cast at?

So I loved how you touched on that, John, with it being local to you guys

and being able to control the whole process.

But to go back to Kat, she was just really excited about it

for what she can offer her customers as a diesel shop owner

with the quality that they come to expect from from Fleece Performance.

So I think I think being able to offer that.

That complete solution from design, engineering to casting to finishing

to machine work to it going in a crater box that a shop is going to order

from you guys is massive for that market.

Well, I think, you know, you did the podcast with Brayden a couple of months back

and he took you through a lot of our machining operations.

Yeah. So you get to see a lot of how, you know, we take raw bar stock

and work that into a final product.

But I would say one of the things that's really important for us here

is to be as vertically integrated as possible and control as much

of that production process of a product from beginning to end as we can control.

And you saw a lot of that before.

And for anybody that's visited here and seen our operation,

we do that across the board.

So even from our electrical products, we produce all of those those products

here in house, all of the fittings, all of the cap components,

everything we start from raw bar stock and machine to produce a

built product today is made here in in house.

And for us, the casting element was another opportunity for us

to continue to vertically integrate and be able to control all the elements of it

so that we can control and produce a high quality product

and the quality product that we demand of ourselves and that the consumers expect.

Castings is, you know, such a huge part of our business now.

All the cylinder heads, turbo chargers,

you know, we've got a new cast aluminum intake horn kit that we've talked about.

You know, you start looking at all the different types of castings

that are incorporated in our kit, and it only makes sense to try to do it here.

Again, it's going to be it's going to be probably a two to three year plan

to really get the foundry where it needs to be for us to support all of our different products.

We've got a great group of people that came with us with the acquisition.

And so it's pretty cool.

It's cool to see the energy and the excitement in our building.

You know, everybody is super pumped to get this thing kicked off.

We're going to have some new products that we can't talk about yet.

They're going to be coming out here in the next couple of months.

But can't wait to be posting videos of us pouring

pouring material in in our FFPC foundry.

That's so cool.

Yeah, I can just imagine all the.

How it would expand the things you guys are able to address with failure points on trucks,

but to bring it back to the six liter heads for a second.

Like, are these heads designed to be able like as a stock replacement,

it could be a bone stock truck, relatively stock.

Is that the market that it's fitting?

100 percent.

So this this product serves as a replacement item.

This is a part that, you know, if you're need a set of heads, you've blown a headgast it.

We've got you, you know, if your truck's turned up, this will still function for that.

These are not ported, they're not designed for a high performance application,

but they will support, you know, some power if needed.

And to kind of get into the nitty gritty, the six liter head for anyone who's used

our Cummins heads or Duramax heads, you're pretty familiar with their fleece quality.

We wanted to come up with a part that would serve everybody.

Again, to simplify the purchasing and the stocking point of this product,

we have one part number for an 18 millimeter dowel

and one part number for a 20 millimeter dowel.

All heads will be o-ringed, so you don't have to choose do I need them or do I not.

We just do that standard.

And then every single one of these cylinder heads comes with our proprietary valve seats.

That same material, same structure that we put into all of our Cummins heads.

You know, we believe in that recipe so much we want to incorporate that into this part

because it gives us something that we believe in.

If we don't believe in it, we don't want to sell it.

And that was one of the most common areas where I saw cracking in the core heads.

The valve seat area is just machined into the casting,

so it's very common to take apart a six liter Ford part

and see the valve seats are all cracked up, you know, the seat area is all cracked up.

And again, that makes for a bad casting.

So kind of hitting on the hoops a little bit in the o-ring.

We sat down with around a hundred dealers.

I think it was about two years ago, was that about the right time frame?

Yeah.

I've been two or three years ago.

We asked them, hey, we're going to release, we're working on a product for 6-0 head.

What do you think?

Should we make them standard with o-rings or make it optional?

And, you know, we wanted to try and limit the number of part numbers,

so we wanted to make sure that we made the right part for the market.

And it was a pretty overwhelming majority.

I mean, I think it was nine out of 10.

I'd say over 90% of the dealers that were installing 6-0 heads said,

we only want them with o-rings.

We want to provide our consumer with the most reliable product and they don't want comebacks.

So that was how we kind of ended up with an o-ring design that we stuck with.

And all that, John explained this, but one unique aspect to our hoops is they are a single piece o-ring.

And I'm not aware of anybody else that does a single piece hoop o-ring.

I see that.

What is the takeoff of John's time in the nitromethane?

Yeah, in my former life, I worked for a top fuel race team.

And then once I stopped traveling with the team, I actually worked in our shop repairing

and manufacturing new top fuel cylinder heads.

So one thing that we did in that world was we had a single piece hoop or an o-ring

because we couldn't have seams in that ceiling.

And you could imagine the cylinder pressure on a 12,000 horsepower nitro car is pretty high.

But when I started thinking about how are we going to do this part,

it kind of made sense because from a manufacturer ability standpoint,

it's easier for our technicians to just take a hoop and press this into a groove,

a receiver groove that we machine into the part.

Then they used to try to feed wire.

Maybe they don't cut it right.

Maybe you get too big of a gap.

So this really made a lot of sense.

And I think this is going to be a nice feature for anybody looking for a good set of six-liter

heads.

Hey, diesel fans.

I wanted to chat with you about diesel fuel.

It's something we've talked about a lot on the podcast and specifically ways that it can

lead to a lot of costly repairs.

And the main reason that we have these issues is a lack of lubricity.

Our friends over at Hotshot Secrets have developed a formula that boosts performance

and then addresses this issue.

So whether you have an old truck, new one, something anywhere in between, we all face this issue.

Hotshot's EDT is a six-in-one formula.

It cleans injectors, boosts C-tane, and it has four times the lubricity as our leading competitor.

So it's a great way to be able to stay ahead of the maintenance curve,

avoid those costly repairs.

And the best part is it does the work for you.

So all you do is add it to your regular fuel-up schedule and it's doing all the heavy lifting.

So you don't have to worry about some of those issues that just come with diesel fuel

anytime we buy it from the pump.

If you go to HotshotSecret.com, use code dieselpod20.

It'll get you 20% off your order.

We really appreciate the team and our friends over at HotshotSecret offering this discount

code just for you guys.

So if you're in the market, head on over to their website.

Use code dieselpod20 and get 20% off your order.

Hey, diesel fans.

Let me ask you something.

Who's got eyes on your online life?

You probably think it's just you, but it's not.

There's shady data brokers, advertisers, even your internet provider.

They're all watching you.

Every site you visit, every order you make, every video you watch,

it's all tracks stored and sold.

And in the diesel world, we know privacy matters.

You wouldn't leave your shop wide open for anyone to walk in, right?

So why do it online?

That's where ExpressVPN comes in.

It reroutes everything you do on the internet through secure encrypted servers.

That means your IP address, which is your digital license plate, is hidden.

Nobody can use it to track you, target you with ads, or worse.

And here's the kicker.

ExpressVPN works on all your devices.

Phones, tablets, desktops, even your smart TVs.

It's one click and you're locked in.

Up to eight devices at once, so your whole family's covered.

Plus, if you're like me and you hate when Netflix blocks certain shows because of where you live,

ExpressVPN lets you watch shows and movies from other countries.

It's like having a giant toolbox of content that's usually locked up.

Right now, diesel podcast listeners can get four extra months of ExpressVPN for free

when you sign up for a two-year package.

Just go to expressvpn.com forward slash diesel.

That's expressvpn.com forward slash diesel.

Protect your privacy, protect your family, and take back control of your internet.

As far as the quality control, because you guys are going to be able to control the whole process,

I think one of the questions that a listener would have is how, like when I get a set of heads,

one of the big things, I think when they go to a machine shop or they have somebody local do it is,

are they going to get the heads true?

Are they going to be square when they go on the block itself?

How seamless is everything going to install?

Can you talk a little bit about the quality control, the manufacturing side of producing this,

and how you're able to have the tolerances where you want and expect them?

Yeah. Well, for everybody who's watching, I'm not just listening.

We're in our production cell here on the production floor right now.

So that's a perfect place to ask that question.

Yeah. So on the QC side of things currently today, so when we receive material in from the foundry,

we take those castings and they actually go through our quality inspection prior to ever being

presented to the build cell. So we'll take those parts. Some parts will get sections.

We'll run them across our CMM. We have a cool tool. It's called Spectrometer.

So when we're casting the part, we're able to actually do a material analysis of that pour

to make sure that the chemistry is correct on the material we're actually using.

And these are all things that we've really learned a lot about over the last few months.

Typically, you get a casting, you got a casting, right? And making sure that the

base material structure is correct is so important. From there, once that material flows

into the cell, the guys start to machine those parts. And every single part has a

traveler sheet that goes with that part through every single station. So we document the step,

every step, all the way through the build cell from surface finish to

valve depth sizes, pressure checking, the assembler, installed depths on valves and springs,

and really just document every single serial number as it comes through the cell.

And that information is stored in our database. So in the event anybody calls and has a warranty

issue on cylinder head 479008, we can pull up our own internal documentation and then really

study and make sure like, okay, hold on a second, your issue that you're talking, describing,

we know that this and this and this was all in line. So that opens up the CSR rep to start

asking questions like what camshaft is in your, a lot of times we deal with warranties,

we're actually finding out more about the, the truck side and there's, there's more to this story.

But you know, we have a pretty stinging QC process through every product, but in particular,

our cylinder head department is set up in a way to really utilize a common practice,

which is blunt piece workflow. So we try not to batch parts, we try to run one part at a time.

We feel here that that lends the highest quality at the lowest cost and, and delivers

the, the finest throughput. So again, to put product on the shelf is what we're in business

doing to do, but we don't, we don't want to create problems in doing, in doing just that.

So inside of our cylinder head department, we have lines built for each product offering.

So like we're staying in the six litter department right now, and the way we have this set up,

again, to kind of speak to the quality material is introduced into this cell

at a certain point in a certain way, and then moves through this production cell

in a certain way. We try to create good line balance for every part moving through the cell,

so that, you know, every single operation is timed out to be as close to one another as possible.

Again, all of that lends itself to the highest quality product we can make.

I think this is going to be huge for, huge for shops, because like we talked about in the beginning,

six liter market has not slowed down and it has expanded from what I remember it being. And I

think being able to get, being able to have a quality product like this for a diesel shop that's

repairing these trucks would just streamline that whole process so much. And especially with your

strong dealer network, distribution network, that constant flow would be there knowing the

process you guys go through to produce these heads. I can get them in, you know, get the,

you get a six liter, you know, back up and running, get it on the road and just being

able to replicate that. It's going to be massive for the market.

Well, it's a good point. And honestly, that's how the cylinder head department in our business

was born. You know, for a long time, we had built cylinder heads. We had built engines,

but everything was custom built to order. So you could say, Hey, I need a, you know,

six liter head, but I want to run this spring or, you know, I don't want to spend any money on

valve job and can you just surface it? We always struggle because that's, that's not necessarily

what we do. People call me all the time and say, Hey, what do you think about this relative to

like machine work? And I always say, I'm the wrong guy to ask. I'm the machine shop. It should

be done right. Don't call me if you want to do it halfway. Call me if you want help doing it the

right way. And what, what the idea was when we started our head department is we saw a need in

the market to help the shops or the individuals who didn't have a good machine shop in their area.

Uh, we quickly understood that the, the downtime of a vehicle in a shop for a head gasket

is just, you know, damning to a, to a business trying to move trucks in and out as quickly as

possible. And so when you can offer a part to a shop and they know, Hey, I've got a truck scheduled

for head heads, you know, next week, they can bring those cylinder heads in, they can bring all the

supporting parts in the truck comes in, the tech never has to stop. So you can start and finish

a job in real time and get to the next thing. And that's, that is really what made this department

successful. Think, you know, thinking back to a 2017, 18 ish is where I had a customer that

sent me us just a stock cylinder head. And I asked him, why are you sending this thing all the way

across the country? And he said, because I do not have a good machine shop in the area.

And that was kind of our light bulb moment. What if we could try to be everybody's machine shop?

We have to do this at a high level though, and we have to mitigate as much risk as possible.

And so again, building the part wasn't hard. It was everything else that went into it.

We need to build a good workflow. We need to build good documentation. We need to build a

good warranty structure. We need to build a sales structure. We need to arm our team

with the information they need to support the customer. And then we need to tool up with the

best equipment we can buy to make sure that it's consistent and perfect every time.

I think that's going to be massive, massive for the market. Like,

for my limited knowledge of like cores and shopping for cores, if you have just a failure

with, you know, the heads that are on your truck, like the expense and the headache of it, or

they can only be made as good as they start out, right? So if you're using OEM cores and you

have to sift through them to find a good one, that's kind of a nightmare process in itself.

But being able to start with a fresh, quality controlled

component would just put that whole process so much farther ahead. One thing I'm really curious

about is what kind of questions have you guys got from some of your dealer network shop partners

out there in regards to this? When are they available? When can I get it? How many do you have?

You know, you'll get questions like, hey, can I get this thing with a, you know, a higher,

you know, spring rates, valve spring, or, you know, are you guys reusing valves? Or like,

what is, what does the rest of it look like? And so a lot of times people are more interested in

the component parts, the valvetrain side of things, like what, what all goes with this thing?

More so than like super technical, like what is the, what is the material composition or,

you know, how much does it flow? I don't, I don't know if I've seen the cylinder head that is

maybe as poorly designed as this one, just from, you know, just a simple, you know, design.

And it's, it's interesting to see, I mean, we've seen this through the Duramax cylinder heads,

you know, an LB7 to an L5P cylinder head, the amount of design improvements that have gone

into those parts over the years is huge. And you're seeing that too with some of the older trucks,

you know, it's no different than going from a 12 valve Cummins head to, I don't know if they

call it the sixth gen, but the new 2025 cylinder head, I mean, they're, they've obviously keep

pushing the design improvements through all the different generations in these engine platforms.

But, you know, as we talk about starting out, there's just so many of these things still on

the road that need to be supported. One of the big questions I'm sure people are going to have

is when are we going to see these on the market? I'm not holding you guys to particular, you know,

day or release, but I know there's going to be a lot of interest from shops and just six

liter owners out there that want to start with quality products. Yeah, these, these both, both

part numbers, the 18 millimeter and the 20 millimeter dowel heads, Patrick have been out for about a

month now, and that's allowed us to start to move that product out into the distribution channels

all around the U.S. and Canada. So if there are any shops that are listening and they, they need

some six oh heads, they are on the shelf at, at your favorite post-ailer, as well as they're

available on fleeceperformance.com or folks can give us a call and we'll be more than happy to help

them out. People are going to love hearing that they're ready to, ready to go and get headed to

their, their diesel shop to install while we're on the topic of cylinder heads. Are there some other

products you guys are working on for other diesel engines or different models in years?

Oh, yeah. Yep, for sure. So one of the first and foremost, one of the new products you're

going to see this year is going to be a Fitchin Cummins cylinder head. So it'll cover 19 to 24

ram trucks. We are, we have already released an L5P cylinder head, which covers 2017 to 2023.

Like we talked about earlier in the podcast, we seeded that program with cores and we paralleled

that with developing our own brand new casting. And those new castings have gone through all the

different testing and we're going to be putting those out probably sometime early spring. And then

yeah, our focus is to really keep hammering down on the Ford product line.

I love Ford trucks and I want to keep making parts for them. So I would keep your eyes out for

another highly used and popular cylinder head in the Powerstroke platform.

In the next 12 months or so. This is really cool. I know the market is going to love this with

the quality and the process you guys have, but being able to keep these trucks on the road is

so crucial to not just business, but just people get attached to trucks or they don't want to go

spend, you know, 80 to 110,000 on a brand new one. They want to keep these trucks on the road. And

you guys offer so many different products to do it, whether it's the Ford GM, Ram. I know this is

going to be huge. And so I look forward to chatting with you guys more about some of these other

products that you guys have. I appreciate the manufacturing, the quality control, the engineering,

the thought that goes into all of this. So it was really cool to chat with you guys today about

six liter heads. And I just, I know it's going to be huge in the marketplace. So it's cool to

chat with you guys today. I appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks a lot for having Son again. It's always a

good time. Thanks as always, Patrick. We do appreciate it. So I want to give a shout out to

some of our Patreon supporters, Robert, TSW, Diesel, Brian, John, all of our other Patreon

supporters, all of you who subscribe on YouTube and podcast apps, follow us on social media.

We appreciate all your support here in year nine of the DS podcast and look forward to bringing

you more of the content that you want to hear in 2025. Until next time, keep the shiny side up.

And right now get $100 just to try us.

Limited time offer for new clients. Participating locations only. Details at JacksonHewitt.com.

This 6.0L Powerstroke Part Changes Everything

About this episode

cylinder head

Cummins

Duramax

valve seat

top fuel

cult following

turbo chargers

cast aluminum intake horn kit

head gasket

o-ring

Ford 6.0L

6-0 head

single piece design

nitromethane

cylinder pressure

receiver groove

diesel fuel

lubricity

Hotshot Secrets

Ford

GM

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from The Diesel Podcast