I'll chime in on diesels.
It made by Navistar, to start, and put in Ford trucks. Like Isuzu makes the Duramax Chevy puts in their truck. Also, after 2004, it had the kinks worked out and was just fine. My friends in industry all run 2005-2007 6.0 engines in F4-550 trucks and they're fine.
Navistar 6.0 Powerstroke-Tons of injector problems, EGR, overpressure and overheat due to EGR, those engines were a mess. I had a 2003 F450 service truck with one for... Six months before I had all those issues which were common for those years of that engines. They were designed for medium duty trucks, not pickups. The dynamic from medium duty to pickup engines changes massively. There's a reason the ones in the F450 and F550 chassis cabs, even in between have their engines rated 325/625 instead of 400/800.
Cat 3208. It's a great marine or water pump engine, but it can't cope with spurts of high RPMs or torque requirements. It's a large displacement V8, which is always a no-no. It was very underpowered for trucks. The cylinders were sleeveless, which meant no in-frame rebuilds. These things lead to short life. As in 80,000 mi in a dump truck.
And as much as the 7.3 Navistar is revered, before it was a turbo diesel with the HUEI injectors, was essentially a slightly smaller 466 which was a tractor/bulldozer engine. It was terribly unsuited to be a pickup engine.
And finally, the Chevy 6.5... Dear god. No. The worst diesel engine ever made. Ever. Ever.
And while I seem to be a Ford/Navistar hater, I can assure you I'm not. I have a 2002 F350 with a 7.3, a 2010 F550 with a 6.4 and now a 2013 F450 with the 6.7. And they're all great. I don't one anything else. And I probably won't
