07 6.0 oil leak

[bluestroke06]

So my buddy has an 07 6.0 with an oil leak. I put dye in the oil and told him to drive it for a day. We checked it out tonight from top to bottom, seems as if the dye is coming from the rear corners of the left and right head gaskets. some slight wetness is above the head gaskets on the heads themselves. Lots of dye was pooling on the block and running down both sides of the bell housing. We took off the ficm, intake from air filter to turbo. removed ficm bracket. inspected the valley and found no oil/dye. He has also said he noticed a smell of diesel fuel after shutting down and it seems as if the dye/oil/fuel has mixed at some point, (in the cylinder) and is making a good 6" diameter wet spot just to the left side of the bell housing, while also leaking just oil spots about 3" diameter on the right of the bell housing, after each time he drives and it sits. I noticed his coolant jug was quite low and he said he hasn't really payed much attention to it. I am going to pressure test the cooling system monday. He also has a dtc p2291 = Injector control pressure, engine cranking-pressure too low. He said quite a few times after the truck is hot, it will not start unless he uses starting fluid. Once the truck starts, the dtc goes away, not sure if its in history or still fails for current ignition cycle. he only has a code reader. Could the hpop be sucking air causing it to not start hot while the oil is "thinner", or does he have 2 different issues? Has anyone else had the head gaskets leak oil? Or is the cooler plugged causing intermix and its really puking coolant?

[sinner6.0L]

Your friend may have a blown STC fitting that has seperated and cracked the rear engine cover. That would explain the oil leak and the hard start.

[jvest]

Originally Posted by sinner6.0L

Your friend may have a blown STC fitting that has seperated and cracked the rear engine cover. That would explain the oil leak and the hard start.

I agree! This cover goes out over the rear engine plate, which was a little lower than the engine block on mine. Mine wasn't leaking, but looking at the design of the original fitting I beleive it would direct the leak towards the back of the engine which would explain why you only see running down the back instead of in the valley. Although I had my cab off changing headgaskets when I put the upgraded fitting on, I think it would be pretty easy to get too once you remove the intake & turbo.

Jim

[mhatlen]

Well it doesn't sound good,like sinner6.0 said he more than likely has a hpo leak.
Is it tuned?

But if it's puking you have other problems too possibly. These caps are known for failure, hopefully that is the issue there.

What you need to do is put a scan tool on it and take down the values for:

1) coolant temp
2) oil temp
3) icp pressure@ cranking,idle,1500,2000 (check these hot and cold)
4) ipr percentage@ cranking,idle,1500,2000 (" " ")

If you are running hot with high coolant pressure odds are egr cooler or head gaskets or both are compromised.

[sinner6.0L]

The STC is tricky with the EGR cooler in place. If you have a delete it's much easier.

With the EGR cooler in place you will need to loosen the y-pipe at the manifolds and push it back towards the firewall. This will give you the clearance needed to remove the heatshield, which is bolted to the HPOP cover and the back of the left head. After that there will be 3 cover bolts under the EGR cooler. 2 will have to remain in place as the cover is lifted and slid out. Be careful not to drop these into the engine.

[bluestroke06]

Thanks for the help, He has a super chips cortex programmer. He has never gotten it tuned and he said he usually leaves it on performance mode. He bought it out of state, It has a 6" lift with 37's. So I am assuming the owner before him had a programmer also and who knows how hot he was running it. Sinister, to change the rear engine plate, do I have to slide the transmission back or is it above the bell housing? We had the intake tract.coolant bottle and ficm/bracket off, while looking around that stc fitting looked ok, looked ok as in from what I could see there was no oil/dye anywhere near it.

[sinner6.0L]

You won't be able to see the STC from outside of the engine. It's connected to the HPOP and feeds high pressure oil to branch tube which is located underneath the rear engine cover. What can happen when the STC fails is it can push back hard enough to crack the rear engine cover. We're talking thousands of pounds of oil pressure it's holding back so when it lets go it can be violent. I frequently see rub marks on the rear cover from the STC but it's much more rare to have it crack.

You need to find out where the oil leak is. The STC is behind the upper right side of the rear engine cover, you may or may not be able to see if that's where your oil leak is if you look up past the downpipe all the way to the top of the engine.

To get the rear engine cover off you will need to remove the transmission and remove the HPOP cover. I would be pulling the hpop cover first to see if that's the issue