All of a sudden no power and white smoke

[DieselFam]

Hey all, I need some direction here. My truck is sitting in a local parking lot. I was off to the store this morning and motoring down the highway around 65mph. Then all of a sudden the truck started sputtering badly and white smoke blowing out the exhaust. I barely made it up the hill and into a parking lot. It idles fine, no smoke, but if you give it the slightest throttle it sputters and blows smoke. Any ideas? I don't know if its worth towing to dealership or bringing it home to try and fix. The truck is a 2006 6.0 liter with 105,000 miles on it. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
David

[alwil]

not sure but here is a bump to the top.

[wlsmithjr1960]

Sounds like the EGR is stuck open, happened to me before, just take the two bolts out and pry out the EGR valve and clean or buy a new one and you ought to be good to go.

[DieselFam]

Thanks and if you could give me a little help on what and where the EGR valve is. I am farily familar with the engine compartment and have worked on the 7.3 liters a little but this seems to be a different animal. Thanks again.

[wlsmithjr1960]

Look in the tech files and you will find everything you need on removing the EGR

[TEX-NARDI]

Sounds like a possible turbo failure!

[DieselFam]

First off I want to thank all who helped me through this. It was the EGR valve. It is relatively simple to remove with a big pair of channel locks. As far as I can tell its not a EGR cooler leak. I am still monitoring the tank level. I will tellyou this though, the old Valve had sooooooo much soot on it that it wasn't even worth cleaning. I just bought a new one. I do have some tricks on cleaning out the soot and the removal and reinstall if anyone is interested. Thanks again.

[wlsmithjr1960]

so whats the tricks on cleaning out the soot?

[DieselFam]

It was beyond caked all over the EGR. So the dealer told me to pull it and then plug the wires back in and fire up the truck. Then lay on the throttle. I went one better. I shined a light down the hole and took a dull screw driver and scraped off as much soot as possible. Then I took a vacuum and sucked out all the soot I could. I did this 3 times. Then I took my Dremel with a wire brush and cleaned up around the edges. Again with the vacuum. I looked in the vacuum and I had about 2 cups of soot!. Then I took the old EGR valve, cleaned it a little and pluged it back in. Started the truck which took a minute and slowly put fuel to it. It sputtered a little and eventually caught up and ran at high rpm's. It blew soot all over the place, out the tail pipe big time and all over the engine compartment from the open hole where the EGR valve was. I then turned it off and did the dull screw driver, vacuum again 2 more times. Then start the engine and blow it out. One more time with the screw driver and vacuum. Then the new EGR valve. Start the truck and drive it in 2nd gear to keep the rpm's high and not be going 100 mph. It blew black and blue smoke all over the place. But after some hard accelerating it finally ran clean. A little black smoke right off the start, but then clear. The dealership guy and a guy who owns his own shop told me that I am letting it idle too long in the morning and driving too easy. They both said that 2 minutes for warm up on cold mornings and hammer it at least once a day to blow everything out. That plus run some sort of Cetane boost and it will help keep the soot away.

[WEWILLE]

Glad ya got it fixed up. The cetane boost will definitly help! Also make sure your using high quality fuel. You could also completely eliminate egr...