over heating issue

[JTA]

I just bought a 2001 F-450 for parts, it has a freshly rebuilt 6sp. Any way the guy I bought it from said that the engine had been cooked because it had been over heated, I thought that the computer would of shut the engine down before any damage could occure from overheating. Any thought on this would be very helpeful, O and the guy said that thay had thrown the serpentine belt off. Can you over heat one of these engines? 7.3 powerstroke

[JTA]

Anybody? My only thought would be if it was ran out of antifrees.

[vitalidle]

Sure if he threw the serpentine belt that drives the water pump and that would cause it to overheat.

[dieseldan2005]

Like Vit said, if the belt goes and your not paying attention you could overheat her. Especially if the belt snaps and tears off the upper rad hose.

[JTA]

Thanks for the replies, I'm just suprized there isnt a safety in the computer to shut-down the engine if it got to hot. If the engine overheated enogh to ruin it what would need to be done to rebuilt it. mashine the bors, new piston rings, cracked heads, HPOP?

[dieseldan2005]

Yeah thats the only tough part is knowing what might be trashed. The good old iron blocks will usually survive an overheat, but it depends on how long he ran it hot and how "hot" it actually got. I know on the 6.0s they have a speed limiter when the engine gets hot. My brothers truck got warm when his head gaskets went, but not in the red and his cut him back to 40mph i think. If the engine oil got super hot also, there could be turbo damage as well. So i would say have the block and heads inspected and go from there.

[JTA]

I bet this engine got about as hot as you could get one without puting it through a fire. The pickup does have 200K hard miles and abuse on it. It is a F-450 oil rig truck, they through the belt so they called the bosse to bring them a new one and it has never ran since, Ford looked at it and said it had been over heated. It's a good thing I only bought the pickup for the freshly rebuilt transmission.

[dieseldan2005]

Sonds like shes had a hard life. it was probably running a pto pump or someting and threw the belt like you said and it was ignored until the truck just got so hot it shut off. I drove a cement mixer one time that the previous driver had blown the lower rad hose and kept driving until it just shut off. It melted the temp sending unit right off the block. The engine started up after it cooled, so all they did was inframe the engine and she was running again. That was an L10 cummins though.

[JTA]

I just tried to pull some codes from the pickup but my code reader kept saying error so I tried to pull codes from my other powerstroke and it worked, is the computer any different on the F-450 than the F-250. I also got the engine to turn over by hand, thankfully it wusnot loked up. I'll keep playing with it and see if I cant get the thang to run. There is no oil in the antifrees so that is a good sign and later I will see if there is any water in the oil.

[dieseldan2005]

Well the only thing that i know of thats different on the computers is that the 450's and have a speed limiter at like 85 or something. Someone else can probably elaborate on that a little more. The other thing is that maybe the 450 has a chip or a tune programmed into it. The only way to erase the memory would be to have a dealer re-flash the comp. Check and see if there is a chip in the PCM.