05 CC 4WD F350 6.0, 115k (~20k by me), stock motor/trans, no tune, no gauges, no cat, big exhaust.
ECT spiked, coolant out the bottle, oil in coolant. Took it to a dealer, verdict was truck needs head gaskets and he needs $4800. I don't doubt the disposition as the truck has always had a small coolant leak somewhere.
Don't have an itemized repair quote yet but he mentioned something about replacing the EGR cooler and rebuilding the engine oil cooler (I may have that backwards).
You don't have that backwards. Your EGR cooler failed and your oil cooler has developed a leak. Both failures are due to the heat. What caused your failures is the lack of maintenance on your coolant. Running the FORD GOLD coolant requires strict maintenance. The nitrite level must be checked frequently or bad things occur. The coolant will create this goo that plugs everything up, resulting in these component failures.
Does the quote sound reasonable? Or at least typical from a dealer?
Reasonable? No. It is high. I withhold any other comment....
What are the other things I should have done "while I'm at it"?
I was told that the updated parts (cooler, TTY bolts) no longer have issues and studs won't used in the rebuild. Is that true- about not having issues?
First, any dealer tells you that is either seriously ill informed or just yanking your chain. That is a BOLD FACED lie. They are still the same piece of garbage TTY bolt.
Run, do not walk away from that dealer. Use ARP headstuds. Period. End of story.
I just got the call tonight and will be calling around tomorrow to a couple independent places as well. Any concerns about using them vs a dealer? Truck is well out of warranty.
Chris, try looking around for an Independent shop that knows this engine. They are out there, but typically not easy to find. If you drive by the shop and do not see a few other 6.0's out in his parking lot (or out back) waiting to get in the shop, keep looking.
Depending on what you want to do, and the emissions testing in your area now and in the future, you will need to decide whether or not to keep the egr cooler. Deletes can be had for a couple hundred bucks.
The oil cooler has failed as evidenced by the oil present in the coolant. This does NOT point to head gasket failure. It points to an oil cooler issue. This also requires the replacement of all the rubber hoses in your cooling system since the oil will continually weep back out of them and it also weakens the hose.
Heads:
YOU need to find a machine shop capable of milling these heads. Do not rely on anyone else for this step. If you decide to go with the dealership for this repair, this is a step that they typically skip over and the end result of this is that there are many repeat customers for head gasket replacement, if you get the drift.
The heads must be checked for flat straight and magnafluxed for cracks. If they must be milled, they can not remove more than 0.07 or the head must be replaced. Doing this step, you will never have to worry about the head gaskets again. Leave it up to someone else, well, nobody cares about your truck more than you. 'Nuff said?
Gaskets: There are some really cool sounding replacement head gaskets sets out there. "Black Onyx" / "Victor Reinz." Stay away. Your problem was not with the gaskets and the stock gaskets are not weak. The problem was the TTY head bolts. Use the stock head gaskets. The failure rate is much lower.
Other things to consider:
Your coolant. Flush your cooling system NOW! Previous to this repair. DO NOT, under any circumstances, replace that coolant with the FORD GOLD.
Find an International Truck dealer near you and get their Fleetrite ELC coolant. If you do not have an International truck dealer close, try any heavy truck dealer nearby. Look at the label of the coolant, you want a CAT EC-1 rated ELC coolant (it is usually red in color). In concentrated form, not prediluted. You need 7 gallons. Why 7? Your truck will use 3.5 gallons of concentrate. Do your flush now to get as much garbage as you can out of your cooling system. Then when you take it in for repair, the garage is just gonna dump it. Seems like a waste, but you need the crud out of the system if you hope to have your replacement oil cooler last very long.
DO NOT let the garage put anything else back into your cooling system.
Next: Read the first link in my signature line and get gauges of some type on your truck. The link discusses which ones, why, what they should read normally and what to watch out for along with a few other topics that you should know as a 6.0 owner.
