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Message: [QUOTE="Gearhead2012, post: 831931, member: 12934"] I won't try to convince you...but just FYI all the big rig diesel motors have valve seat inserts from the factory, the ever popular 5.9/6.7 Cummins has valve seat inserts installed from the factory, the duramax and new 6.7 ford have hardened valve seat inserts from the factory...OE Caterpiller, international dt466, Detroit diesel, john deer, Cummins...any of them. Its actually another cheap point of the 6.0. Think about it...32 seats per motor, if each seat only cost a dollar, and they sold a million motors, that's 32 million dollars they just increased the cost of the plattform. I don't care what you think, just throwin it out there. Yes sometimes the oem motors that come with them do drop valve seats, but normally only when something else has gone horribly wrong...blown head gaskets, broken valve spring/dropped valve whatever. Some engines are more notorious for dropping seats than others, like a 8.3 liter Cummins that has a shallow .165" deep valve seat and only .006" press fit. I can say I've personally installed more than 30k valve seats and never ever...ever....ever had one come out...I install mine at .009" press fit or more depending on application. Again, I'm not trying to argue with you or anyone about it, I'm not trying to convince you, it sounds like you've made up your mind, in which case I'm not going to waste any more breath, but just so others know that installing valve seat inserts is not a ghetto patch job fix, its a common practice that navistar skimped out on when designing the 6.0. In order for the integral cast iron valve seat area not to wear out they had to harden the piss out of the seat area in the head...when you make iron really hard its also brittle, hence the cracks. Cracks in the fuel rail or down into the injector hole or glow plug hole are a different story. We don't use those, we scrap them. Most cracks in the valve seat area are only .125" or so deep (1/8" or so)...I install a .250 (1/4" deep) seat that effectively cuts out the crack. The new insert is an alloy (satellite) that takes the abuse far better than cast iron could, and further more prevents further cracking. BTW, "staking" the seats in is ghetto. If you have to mushroom the iron over the seat to keep it in you're not using adequate amounts of press fit, or doing something wrong...because rest assured, the OEM's don't have some dude with a hammer and punch "staking" the seats in at the factory so they don't come out. [/QUOTE]