Recommendations!!

[Kayson26]

Recently bought my first powerstroke and I believe I need to do the head gaskets anyone in the Chicago area have any recommendation of a good shop!

[dhanna6powerstroke]

Originally Posted by Kayson26

Recently bought my first powerstroke and I believe I need to do the head gaskets anyone in the Chicago area have any recommendation of a good shop!

Any reason you think the gaskets need to be replaced? Any problems?

[Karls03]

What makes you think you need head gaskets? 104k on the OEM gaskets and bolts here.

sent from a dumb guy with a smart phone

[Kayson26]

First noticed a problem about a month ago while changing the oil, found the coolant was low so I added a little. Then on Friday of last week I was stopped at a light when I noticed my heat started to blow cold air, again coolant was low. Then when I was telling my buddy about it he mentioned that the other day when he was following me home from work he noticed I was blowing a little white or grayish smoke out the tail pipes

[Karls03]

If the oil wasn't milky, I would suggest looking into the EGR cooler. These are prone to failure and can push coolant into the cylinders via the intake manifold and eventually out the tail pipe.

I'm sure that there are other ways to determine a bad HG, but checking the easy stuff never hurts. Besides, hate to see you drop the $ on studs/gaskets and then put a bad EGR cooler back on.

sent from a dumb guy with a smart phone

[dhanna6powerstroke]

Most likely an EGR cooler failure due to a restricted oil cooler.

[Kayson26]

Like I said this is my first diesel so I'm still learning a lot, but from what I'm learning seams to be best to do the egr delete, is this true? Also seams that alot of guys are sayin that the studs will need done sooner or later so wouldn't it be best to do it all at once, I.e BULLET PROOF it!

[Karls03]

Yeah, kinda dropped the ball on that again. Grrrrr.

Do you have the means to check your oil vs coolant temps? If it's greater than 15* cruising unloaded say 65~70, it's oil cooler changing time. For best results do a flush, add a coolant filter, and may as well address the EGR cooler while it's all apart. Been there, done that on my 2003 recently.

While I won't discourage studding etc etc etc, I'm sitting on 104k with an SCT and a high 13 time slip on OEM bolts/gaskets. As expensive as it is, I'll wait till I push a gasket to do it.

sent from a dumb guy with a smart phone

[dhanna6powerstroke]

Originally Posted by Kayson26

Like I said this is my first diesel so I'm still learning a lot, but from what I'm learning seams to be best to do the egr delete, is this true? Also seams that alot of guys are sayin that the studs will need done sooner or later so wouldn't it be best to do it all at once, I.e BULLET PROOF it!

If you have the money, go for it. A good coolant flush, switch to EC-1 rated coolant, coolant filter, new oil cooler and EGR delete would most likely keep you problem free. Also need a monitor of some sort like an Edge Insight or Scangauge and an SCT programmer with custom tune to shut EGR system off so you don't get a check engine light if your truck is 05 or newer.

[Kayson26]

Truck is an 04 Harley,will I still need a monitor system? I guess would be a good idea no matter what at this point I only have factory Gauges