monitoring eot and ect Head gaskets again?

[05spudman]

How can I monitor my eot and ect, without buying an insight? I have pillar gauges and really don't want to buy an insight. I have recently done a complete bulletproof on my truck and afterwards i flushed the cooant with restore and restore + and installed a cooant filter. I am running the cat elc1 coolant also. All that work was done 6 months ago and the truck ran great until recently I noticed it puking out the cap and alittle white smoke on start up. You could smell antifreeze in the exhust sometimes in the morning also. The truck was using about 1 to 2 quarts of antifreeze a week. It does not leak a drop of anything, trust me I spent plenty of time looking for leaks and trying to convince myself that it must be leaking somewhere. Pulled heads again to replace gaskets and sent heads off to be checked. Did not see anything wrong with gaskets. Shop did a complete rebuild of the heads and did not find any cracks and milled .003 and .004 off when resurfacing. My question is was that my problem or did I plug my brand new oil cooler up when flushing?

Any help would be great. I will have the truck back together soon and don't want this problem again.

[NYC F-350]

Got an egr cooler on there or a delete? You did not mention this....

[05spudman]

Yes the egr was deleted. To help, the work performed 6 months ago to a stock truck was

arp's
black onyx
egr delete
powermax
coolant filter
exhust
oil cooler

[colo_dually]

You need to monitor ECT/EOT over just about anything else on that motor. What gauges are you running now, that you feel are more important?

I would look at possably a ScangaugeII, that would be about the only other thing you could buy and do it cheaper than the Insight via the OBII port. Your other option, take her down and have the dealer get the numbers for you. But you might not have control on how they run the truck to test that.

Did you flush before or after you rebuilt the oil cooler? If you flushed after the rebuild, its not looking promising.
What bullet-proof method did you use for the EGR cooler (delete/upgrade)?

[05spudman]

colo dually, I am running the same auto meter gauges as you (minus the voltage) where do you have your insight mounted? I do have access to a snap on scan tool. I don't know what one it is just that they paid about 6500 for it last year. Would that tell me. Can i check it every once in awhile or do i need to monitor on a daily basis. I guess i am not against buying an insight i just don't know where i am going to put it.

thanks

[NYC F-350]

Originally Posted by 05spudman

Yes the egr was deleted. To help, the work performed 6 months ago to a stock truck was

arp's
black onyx
egr delete
powermax
coolant filter
exhust
oil cooler

Hate to say this but you wouldn't be the first one that had a repeat failure of head gaskets using those. OEM seem to be the ticket for replacements.
Adding some type of monitor would be cheaper than doing this job again... just sayin
As an edit:
I have an older style Insight that is mounted on the dash. This type of mount might interfere with the pillar mounts though.
The cts uses a suction cup mount onto the windshield, doesn't it?

[05spudman]

Well that just sucks. I finshed torqueing the heads about 2 hours ago with a new set of black onyx gaskets. I have never heard that before. Always a day late.... As far as the insight goes, there is no room for it by the pillar. Has anyone ever seen one mounted on the trans hump on the floor. That is about the only place I have left as i dont really want it on the windshield.

[colo_dually]

Originally Posted by 05spudman

colo dually, I am running the same auto meter gauges as you (minus the voltage) where do you have your insight mounted? I do have access to a snap on scan tool. I don't know what one it is just that they paid about 6500 for it last year. Would that tell me. Can i check it every once in awhile or do i need to monitor on a daily basis. I guess i am not against buying an insight i just don't know where i am going to put it.

thanks

I don't look at my Insight all the time, it sits up in the driver's side visor. Biggest things I monitor with it are FICM voltage, ECT/EOT, and ICP Press. I have EGT under the grab handle and the other 4 gauges above the rear veiw mirror.

The Snap-on unit should be able to do it for that price, but without a model there's no way to tell for sure other than hooking it up. As for the Black Onyx gaskets, they are causing repeat failures more than OEM.