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6.0 Hydrolocked need help please.

14K views 8 replies 6 participants last post by  AshevilleEngine.com 
#1 ·
Hey guys, long time lurker here. I am having some issues with my 2005 6.0 and am a little stumped at the moment. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I had a bad injector, injector was changed and all was well. About 2 weeks later I started to get a little intermittent miss that would go away if you rolled into the throttle. The miss only appeared under very light load situations. If you allowed it to progress it would get bad enough to barely run, but as long as you rolled into the throttle right away it would go totally away. I assumed another injector was on the way out, so no big deal, the truck has 250K miles on it. 3 of which are still original injectors.

Fast forward another week or so. I changed the oil to Delo 400, new motorcraft filter, and new motorcraft fuel filters. On that same day I did short coolant flush.

Shortly after this I began getting what I thought was a bad spot in the starter upon cold start cranking. It would crank fine once warm. As I now realize it wasn't a bad starter, it was partially hydrolocking. The hydrolocking has gotten worse and worse. I did the BB mod on the fuel spring and it seemed to get even worse. So today I pulled the glow plugs to try and find where the hydrolocking is taking place. Nothing came out of the cylinders.... literally when cranking it over no fluid came out. There is a milky mixture on the charge pipe going into the intake manifold that appears to be oil and coolant. There is also fuel or oil in the degas bottle.

Now here is where it gets interesting. I am studded, black onyx, and egr deleted. It was an MKM customs kit with the sinister egr delete. The truck makes great power and runs fine once started other than the minor stiction. Gets great fuel mileage (20+) highway. I currently have the Hybrid Race tune from the free Spartan tunes loaded.

Does anyone have any idea how I can be hydro locking with the EGR deleted and studded? Obviously it could be head gaskets, but it just seems odd for the coolant to end up in the cylinder instead of it all being pushed out of the cooling system. I am losing coolant from the degas bottle, and it is under a lot of pressure when I remove the cap.

I did a contribution test and all is fine other than when I drive very light load to get it to cause the problem with the injectors on purpose. When doing that I get about -50 on number 1 at idle and -25 on number 2. The only other irregularity I saw was when cranking 7 would occasionally show some small negative. I ran a Buzz test and it would only buzz 3 times? No idea about that one.

It is all very strange, it could be a combination of problems I guess. Did the flush clog the oil cooler and lead to the coolant issues? Is an injector sticking open and causing the hydro locking? It only hydrolocks when it sits off.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer guys, I would really appreciate it.
 
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#2 ·
its probably the head gaskets, there have been alot of problems with the black onyx gaskets failing. and what kind of studs did you use, ARP or h11's?
 
#3 · (Edited)
^^ X2 Black Onyx are a waste of money for these trucks and from reading it sound like you not only have blown hg's, but since you have fuel in your coolant it also sounds like you've got a cracked valve seat in one or both of the heads. when you got your hg's done last time did you have them deck and magnaflux and pressure test your heads for this? fuel in your degas bottle almost always goes hand and hand with cracked heads, whether it be from a cracked valve seat or the head is cracked itself. sorry to hear about your problems I too am currently putting together my pile o parts to do my studs while my truck sits in my driveway rotting away. hope this helps

edit; your injector cups could possibly be cracked as well this can cause fuel in the coolant.
 
#7 ·
It is most likely excess fuel that is causing the hydrolock situation. The injector o ring(bottom) probably got cut or knicked on installation and the fuel is leaking past the o ring and into the cylinder(s). Also if the injector didnt seat all the way or get tourqued properly it could cause damage to the injector o ring.

An injector cup on the 6.0L will not cause diesel fuel in the cooling system. That was correct on the 7.3, but not the 6.0.

If you have diesel fuel in the cooling system then you have a cracked head.
 
#8 ·
Injectors are not your problem here. If you have OIL in your degass bottle you either 1: have a cracked oil cooler now that is leaking into your cooling system, or 2: the oil cooler cracked before and was replaced and someone never flushed the cooling system with fleetgaurd restore to remove silicate gel and oil and fuel from the cooling system.

If you have fuel in your coolant then you have a serious problem as either your injector cups are cracked and leaking, injector seats are bad or even worse yet your heads are cracked allowing fuel to get into the water jackets causing this problem.

The milky residue in the CAC is from the oil being added to the CAC system by means of the CCV (crank case ventilator tube) right before the inlet of the turbo, thats where its getting the oil from. However if your getting coolant in there you likely have a blown head gasket allowing coolant to get pushed into the intake causing the milky residue. I hate to break it to you bud, but you should start saving your pennies cause this repair is not going to be a cheap one. Hope this helps. And let us know what you find so we can help you out more also post up your truck details, year mileage mods etc. That way we can better help to diagnose the problem.
 
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