The O ring on my fuel pressure regulator started to leak recently, and while researching part numbers I came across a bunch of posts on the 6.0 blue spring. I had seen these topics before on the truck 6.0, but never really given much time to researching it.
Anyway, it transpires that the van can suffer from the same issue as the truck, in that the spring can weaken over time and not provide the correct PSI to the fuel rail which will cause injector failure. Under 40psi or over 70psi seems to be the numbers.
So since I was there replacing the O ring I decided to install the ford rebuild / upgrade kit. The van kit seems to be identical to the truck kit except the truck includes a new external valve body and the van doesn't. Both kits are the same price though.
Anyway, the point of this post is the fuel pressure regulator is on the top fuel filter housing, and isn't much more work to do than changing the filter. So seems for those of you who change your filters it *might* be good insurance to pop this kit in at the same time you do your next filter change. Prep is to remove all the same stuff you would to gain access to the filter, move/lift the wiring harness as normal, then remove turbo intake pipe that runs from intercooler to alternator area, and remove the intake pipe from air filter to intake.
Van part# is 4C2Z-9T517-AA.
Dealer MSRP is $75, can be had for $50 from many places. Took an extra hour to install over the normal fuel filter, real mechanic time probably 30mins or less.
BTW. I've been fighting a faint diesel smell in the cab for quite some time, it's been very on one day and off the next so very difficult to trace down, I'm quite sure this is the culprit.