04 Engine Blowing White Smoke

[04f350CC]

Hey guys,
New to working on diesels but i have had my truck for approx 2 years now. I've put approx 50,000 miles on it during this time. I've been adding coolant to it for almost my entire ownership time due to it puking coolant under mid to high acceleration/load.
I bought the truck from a chevy dealer with 96,000 miles. It was in the chevy shop twice the first 2 weeks of ownership and they fixed some stuff that was obvious (no 4x4 working, bad ball joints, bad hubs, vaccuum leak, etc) At about 98,000 miles I took it to 3 different ford dealers to diagnose a intermittant no power situation. One thoguth it was bad EGR valve but wanted $100 extra for "additional diagnosis" so I told them no and took it with me. The second dealer said they could not replicate my issue. The third said they think the fuel pickup in the tank is sucking air and is making the gauge read incorrect (The issue only happens under 1/4 tank of fuel)
I bought a new fuel pickup/sender, but have yet to get the courage to install it.

When I had about 100,000 miles I read that the powerstroke had a 100,000 mile warranty and called the first dealer to see if they could get it in for "additioal diagnosis" under warranty and they said no I would pay the $100. The other issue was by then I had 100,235 on the odometer so they said no coverage for anything. I was sorta frusterated and called ford customer care they said the dealer was right. even if it was 5 miles over 100,000 it's out of warranty.

I just put it on ice and figured i will keep the fuel above 1/4 tank and keep adding coolant every week and keep my fingers crossed.

Fast forward to yesterday. I finally got the fuel filters replaced and did an oil change with 15W40. Last week tranny got serviced at ford and filters replaced there as well. I figured everything was happy until last night. I drove about 200 miles round trip mostly 60-65mph highway. As I was getting off the exit at home i stopped at the ligth and saw white smoke pouring from my tailpipe. The truck felt to be stumbling slightly. I was low on fuel so i figured it was sucking some air so I drove it 3 more miles and added fuel. When I got home and was idling in the driveway before shut down it was smoking a little bit. This morning I started it and it smoked a little then smoked accelerating down the street. Stopped for a bit then made heavy white smoke at the redlight. After that it was ok for a few miles then coasting it was doing it again. I went out a few hours later after I got to work and started it and had no smoke and it run fine.

I have no check engine light on either.

Last week I started noticing coolant on the passanger side of the engine dripping off the trans cooler lines normally i just see this on the driver side leaking from the degas bottle. Was thinking something leaking on or around the egr cooler?

I'm just freaked out by it smokeing and dont want to risk damaging it worse. When I get home tonight I will pull the egr valve again and check for water. I checked it approx. a year ago and it was just sooty...but no water at that point.

The only other thing different was the last tank of fuel I ran Biodiesel B-15. I actually got really good fuel mileage out of it (470 miles/tank), but I dont know if this impacts what is going on now or if it is a coincidence.

The truck is stock except for a drop-in K&N.

Thanks for any suggestions on what I can check/test next.

[dieseldan2005]

Sounds to me like egr cooler. You should delete it if you can and get a rebuild kit for your oil cooler as well. Almost sounds like the cooler has been your problem this whole time and now it finally went 100%.

[04f350CC]

I didn't know the oil cooler could get rebuilt. Would replacing the oil cooler and egr cooler with OEM parts be dumb? My Dad has a connection to get the parts at cost. I know they have upgraded egr coolers too that can retain factory emissions, and was considering that too, but this option looked to be the more costly option.

[dieseldan2005]

For now it would be ok, but there are upgraded egr coolers if you need to have one. This is a better than factory cooler. Check it out. And yes you should replace the oil cooler if you can afford it. I think there are now rebuild kits for them.


Ford_Power_Stroke_EGR

[04f350CC]

Well, I am in the process of trying to buy a house before april 30, so I cant really afford any of this, but I cant sell the truck as it sits so I'm kinda screwed. Wish it would have held off until mid summer when I had some money...

[dieseldan2005]

You can just do a delete kit. RCD sells them on ebay. You can do it yourself so you don't have to pay someone.

[VeeDubTDI]

Do an EGR delete, ditch the K&N, and for God's sake don't keep driving it the next time it does something like that... you're lucky you didn't hydrolock it. Replace/rebuild the oil cooler while you're in there.

[04f350CC]

Whats the K&N have anything to do with it? I just installed it last month because it's cheaper then buying an extreamly expensive ford oem filter over and over...it's a full drop-in filter that retains a full airbox and such like the factory one. it's not the open filter type with a tube...
just curious...

[04f350CC]

Update:
Pulled out the EGR when I got home from work and it's wet. There's not like standing water in there but it's wet and a lot cleaner then last time i had it out...I guess the coolant cleaned some soot off

This pretty clearly means EGR Cooler?

[VeeDubTDI]

Yup.