Yikes. That's pretty low miles for a motor and an unenviable position you're in. My wife's Jetta TDI lost compression on one cylinder early in our ownership, and at low miles, due to a leaky injector repeatedly (and unbeknownst to us) semi-hydrolocking the cylinder. It actually bent the rod, which meant that piston never came to actual TDC, therefore not making full compression (plus it sorta egged out the cylinder wall, but only a little).
We just put a piston/rings in that hole after cleaning it up and she's steady smoking her away around town today. Point of my anecdote: is it maybe worth tearing into yours possibly just sorting out the one bad cylinder vs. whole new mill?
Bent (expensive) rod still hangs on my garage wall...6 digits of miles later.
If I could just tear into mine myself then I think that would be an option I'd consider. Problem is, while I have the skill to do that, I don't have the time. Oh, and pulling that head gets difficult without pulling the cab, which I don't have a shop setup to do now. When I've talked to the shops, none of them want to do it, and the cost gets up high because it's pretty much the same work (actually more work) than just doing the engine, so then it makes little sense to do. So I think I'm at the point of new engine or new truck.
Got to love a diesel. the advantage of new is you will have a warranty which is priceless when it comes to unreliable diesel engines. The down side is a big time payment and a truck that you likely will not be able to work on your self when the warranty ends. Keeping your truck and "bullet proofing" the 6.0 will give you many more years of service for a lot less money. Remove all the emissions garbage, upgrade the head studs and gaskets, rebuild the turbo while you have it off, and you may even consider the transmission too while the engine is out. At least then you will have the piece of mind that all of the running gear is brand new.
Back in 2004 when I bought my Dodge, a lot of people said the same things. Time showed they were wrong. The GM 5.3s back then were having lifter issues left and right, the Hemis weren't great, and the Ford gas engines were blowing spark plugs. The "impossible to work on out of warranty" worry has been around for 25 years or more, basically ever since computers came into play, and that's continued to prove not true. I don't see that changing. Companies quickly figure out workarounds for deleting emissions equipment, etc.
I do agree that bulletproofing the 6.0 should keep the engine itself good for a long time to come, but there's still the rest of the truck.
Financially, it's smarter to fix it, if the truck does what you need it to do (when operating properly). So, the question is: do you like the truck enough to want to keep it? If so, replace the engine. $10K isn't a ton in the grand scheme of things, especially in the diesel world, but it's still a lot for a mid-2000's truck that you might be able to pick up a functioning substitute for the same money. However, then you're buying another truck with unknown issues.
I agree that financially it's smarter to fix the truck, although that intelligence decreases to some extent with time and also reliability. As the truck continues to age, more and more things will break on it, especially with the poor maintenance I think it received for some period of time (probably a lot of its life) before I bought it.
I like driving the F-350, and if I put an engine in it it'll probably have more power than the new Ram with a Cummins would after the bulletproofing and performance bits that get done. But even with the work I've done to it, the lack of manual transmission will always be a negative.
I'd order the Dodge with a manual transmission, it's what you want. It'll have a warranty, and it'll be new. It doesn't seem like your truck was maintained very well before you got it, and that often leads to chasing one problem after another. You could easily wind up with way more money in that truck than it's worth, and still be having problems. I'm not saying that's what will happen, but it's happened many times before. The motor gets fixed, then it's the transmission, then the rear end, then the power steering, then the heater core, and on and on.
I already have more money in the truck than its worth, and if I put a new engine in it I'll have a lot more in it than its worth, so instant depreciation. The new Rams hold their value quite well for a while.
You are correct that a Ram with the manual transmission is what I want. I actually found a dealership that had one locally and went to test drive it today. The truck itself was a Tradesman, so not what I would buy. However the engine/transmission combo is no different so it drives the same. Yep, completely transformed the truck for me and it's what I want. It actually drove noticeably better than my 2004.5 did with the G56 transmission instead of the NV5600 (
@denverpilot knows all about the NV5600, too...)
But no matter how I slice it, it's another $30-35k to buy a new Ram than it is to fix the F-350 and payments for a long time, plus more expensive insurance, etc., which is a tough pill to swallow.
I know that if I get the Ram I want, long term I'll be happier with that. But that's a lot of money that could be put towards other things.
