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So Confused any advice appreciated

2K views 16 replies 6 participants last post by  cemiii 
#1 ·
I think my 6.0 hates me....

So after months of saving and wrenching i finally got my New HPOP, Dummy plug and stand pipe seals, injector orings, oil rail ball tube seals, New oil Cooler, Icp Sensor, New Ficm Power supply.

Anyway the issue hasnt seamed to improve and in some ways gotten worse. The one thing im at a loss about is that after i got everything back together and was running the vehicle to check everything with my AE.

Checked oil level and it was low (Just changed oil) added a couple quarts and then i noticed where it was going.

My degas bottle is FULL of oil!!! not coolant/oil Mix Solid oil :dunno: I have not drained the system yet to see how much in total but i dont know what i could have did wrong to cause that much leakage. The other strange thing is that the level in the degas isnt high which leads me to believe coolant is going the other way... (There goes another 14.5 Quarts of Rotella T6 and filters :(

I could barley afford all this crap in the first place (wife has had 2 surgeries and needs 1 more next month so not having a vehicle has been difficult to say the least and now after 6 months the truck has finally beat me down.

On top of it i still have the same problems i started with oil dummy gauge drops to 0 after warmup at idle but even 100 rpms it jumps up to normal. after warmup it wont start. i have noticed it will only start when after cranking for a while if the oil gauge comes up otherwise nothing.

Any suggestion greatly appreciated I dont know what or where to go from here.:please::please::please:
 
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#3 ·
There are guys with a lot more knowledge than me that might be able to help but it seems that the only thing you messed with that has both coolant and oil would be the oil cooler. Could be a gasket or o-ring issue. Second, is a high pressure oil leak somewhere. That could be a number of places and there is a test that can be performed to help locate the leak(s) by applying air to the ICP. Of course the reason behind having oil in the coolant could likely be the cause of the low oil pressure, long crank, no start hot.

OEM oil cooler?

New IPR o-rings and screen?

Did you replace just the o-rings or the actual standpipes and dummy plugs? Assuming you have the updated pipes and plugs? I read somewhere that when replacing the o-rings (or d-rings I think) that they need to be put on and then let them sit for like a day before installing.

Is there coolant in the oil? Have you looked at the oil filter, any coolant?

I could be way off here, sounds like the oil cooler needs to come back out and check for proper installation, damaged o-rings and gaskets. Of course once the problem is found you're looking at a coolant flush and changing the oil and filter again. Sorry, probably not much help, just throwing some things out there.
 
#5 ·
Pretty much everything he said. If you didn't have a oil in coolant condition before and you just did the oil cooler I'd suspect something has happened there. Unfortunately you're going to have to pull it all apart and see. If you don't see anything with the o-rings then I'd suspect a faulty oil cooler.

Have you pressure tested the high pressure oil system with shop air and looked for leaks? Have you verified that you have good low oil pressure present?

What year truck is it and how many miles?
 
#4 ·
This is a quote from 2008. Nothing has really changed on what is probably going on. It seems your new oil cooler may have been damaged before installation! M-Chan is a Ford Master Mech.

For this kind of problem, definitely A LOT more than 10 hours depending on the severity of the failure. If it has gotten to as bad as described above, it will most definitely require an oil cooler replacement to start. That alone is worth about 12 to 14 hours labour, let alone the multiple flushings required to clean out the entire cooling system, and the additional parts that will need replacing more likely than not. The worst case of this type of failure I've encountered persosnally had Ford telling me to outright replace the engine and EVERYTHING that coolant passes through. This meant both the heater core and rad, as well as ALL rubber coolant hoses, EGR cooler and the degas bottle. The justification for this, once that substance gets baked onto the coolant passages in the engine block, it hardens up and cakes on there to the point where you will never be able to flush it all out. On a couple of these failures, I elected to replace the cooler and flush out the entire system using just straight water and two Cascade dishwasher tablets about 6 times, while driving it under a heavy load in between flushes. After the 6th flush, I refilled system back to proper spec with the gold coolant only to have still a slight film of oil on top of the coolant by the time the trucks returned for their next oil changes.
 
#6 ·
Thanks for the replies guys. The Truck is a late 2004 with 114,000 miles on it. I have done the shop air test many times. and i do still have a leak somewhere in the passanger side oil rail/ injectors I have replaced the seals teice during the project once was a falure due to the oil rail not seating right and damaging the injector seal and bal tube. 2nd time around everything went well and replaced all the seals just to be safe. After speaking with the tech @ alliant diesel he advised me to test the injectors themselves for a spool falure that could be causing the leak.

As far as the coolant in oil I had a feeling it was possibly a bad cooler looking at the way it gets installed and the amount of oil in my degas bottle i couldnt see where a bad seal or so on could cause that amount of transfer. I am thinking i can pressure test the cooler ports with shop air to see if it is leaking....

As fot eh low pressure side i have checked and cleaned the regulator. I had previously tested the LPOP side on the EOT port and the gauge if i remember right was 8-12 at idle and high side was 20 under throttle. If i remember correctly it doesnt shop any pressure under cranking but i need to test again to be sure.

Is there anyway with the oil cooler having those double orings i could be getting that much fluid transfer unless it was bad cooler out of the box?

I checker ipr screen before i ever tore into it and there was a small amount of gunk on the end but the screen was in good condition so i cleaned it. When running the IPR is at about 28% and goes to 85% at cranking no start.

Im going to tear into it today and will post some updates on what i find and the test results.

Thanks again for the responses
 
#7 ·
Did you find any issue with the old HPOP? Like the ball was out of the side of it? That would cause the low oil pressure issues you had.

Hard to really check low oil pressure right now though with it all going in the coolant. I'd fix that then retest.

If you fix everything and still have issues I'd think you have more of a low pressure issue then a high pressure problem.
 
#8 ·
As far as i could tell everything looked fine on the HPOP ball was in there.
The only thing i was a little leery about was the J tube coming off the pump.I didnt like the way it wobbled left to right. The o-ring was nice and tight going on but in my opinion something that's intended to handle up to 4000 psi id think it would be a better fit.IMHO
 
#9 ·
Gotcha. Yeah they seem pretty cheesy but I've never really had an issue with them. Plus that side of the leak is on the high pressure oil side so it would normally cause different issues then the low oil pressure dropping off.

I'm kind of leaning towards a low oil pressure issue. I'd fix the oil cooler issue, then try and investigate the low oil pressure more. I'd pull the oil filter and see how long it takes for it to fill up when cranking. You might have something going on with the low pressure oil pump/front cover.
 
#10 ·
First thing, STOP running it or doing anything to pressurize it and push more fluids to the wrong place. Based on your description it seems likely that something in the oil cooler ruptured, cracked or was not correctly welded. Someone may know of other possibilities but given what you've done that seems almost a certainty. Even the low pressure oil side is higher than coolant pressure so most of the flow is oil to coolant, but some usually goes the other direction after shut down so you may see both.

And yea, the bad news is that a lot of things are difficult to flush clean if you ran it much that way, but it sounds like you have little choice short of dumping the truck or writing a very large check.

The hot start is something to figure out along the way, eliminating what you can as you fix this big problem. But if it is the classic case of consistently starting slowly when cold and not at all when hot, that makes some things far more likely than others.

What part of the country are you in?
 
#11 ·
I haven't been running it since I discovered the issue with oil and coolant. Some techs had indicated that a large hpos leak would cause the gauge to drop but my thought was if that was the case it wouldn't stay running when it goes to zero on the.

If my memory serves me I wanna say it was like 6-10 second of cracking to fill the housing. But I want pushing the valve in the housing at the time.

I'm gonna tear the cooler back out tomorrow monsoons permitting. And go from there.

My thought from what I remember on the low pressure needle gauge is maybe the system is weak enough that idle it drops below the 5psi gauge switch but a small rpm fluctuation and it jumps back up. I dunno
I'm in prescott arizona
 
#12 ·
Good. International sells a good coolant system flush specified for these engines. A bit pricey and some work to do correctly, but it is what I would try once the main problem is solved. Although that would be after trying to clear as much out as possible with water. I wonder if an alcohol flush would make sense to get most of the oil out, followed by a liquid dish soap flush, and finally the Inter stuff. I would not skimp on this step even if it takes an entire day and >$100 in materials.

Oil gulch should be simpler if you really got just a trace amount of coolant in there and/or didn't run it much. I might start with a lighter oil than normal pouring a quart straight through to carry what it can, then run briefly (while doing first coolant flush with drain open and t-stat out). Then drain that and if it looks pretty good refill for the remaining coolant flush process. Depending what you see, maybe change once more. Filters are expensive but this will take at least a couple.

LPOS should be easy to confirm or rule out but if course check everything you can in the V while you are in there.
 
#13 ·
Use the cascade to flush/remove the oil residue. Using solvents can damage the seals and hoses. In any case, it is highly recommended to replace, yes I said replace, all of your coolant hoses. You may be able to remove and clean them, but depending on how long it has sat with oil in the system, the long-term damage to the hoses may already have been done.
 
#15 ·
My first concern is finding out what caused this in the first place. I guess a new cooler could be defective and cause said problems. But on the other side i still have the other troubles to figure out why the low/no op. This entire thing started out of nowhere on new years drove home and never the same.

I notice it starts so easy when cold but degrades quickly with warm up.
 
#16 ·
But it is possible that they are two issues, not one. The reasons for crank-no-start, hot and/or cold, are mostly well known, very common, documented and most importantly non-fatal. Mixing of oil and coolant is pretty much the opposite on all counts, especially the fatal part.

I understand your frustration and desire to fix the original problem, but determine the failure point causing the bigger (more expensive) problem. If that proves to be related to the high pressure oll system and also caused your other issues then great, and if not then carefull inspection/testing of all the known issues will reveal it as well.
 
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