2004 F 250 Crew cab 6.0 L, 2 wheel drive work horse, 140,000 one owner miles.

Backed in to drive and discovered that I had oil in coolant reservoir by finding an oil slick on the ground on driver side. She starts and I am not sure how far I drove after this started no smell; just oil and antifreeze shake being pushed out the reservoir cap. No sign of antifreeze contamination in the motor, what are the odds it is the Oil Cooler? EGR Cooler? Head gasket ? or other? I am going out now that it has stopped raining to get started on taking her apart.

Wondering if maybe it’s time to put her out to pasture?

Can I say this sucks or will that get me booted as a newbie.

Thanks in advance.

 

Sure it sucks. Never a good time when stuff goes awry.

Oil cooler is probably the culprit. Headgaskets almost NEVER mixes coolant and oil together, unless the head is severely cracked.

A few gauges could prevent this in the future too. If the oil cooler is shot now, you should get rid of the EGR cooler, or upgrade it at this time too. You're going to need a fully coolant system flush, you should also replace every rubber hose in the coolant system, and some say to replace the radiator as well, if you don't, make sure you clean it REALLY well.

 

Hey thanks, will do just that. I was worried that maybe the head, block or gaskets where gone too and did not want to sink the money into the coolers and that not be it.

Any recommendations on EGR delete kits… guy at ford recommends theirs, not a delete kit but cooler, and says it has been redesigned from the original factory installed version any thoughts on that?

 

It has been redesigned, and the thought is that the new one is worse than the originals, and they do have a higher failure rate.

If you wish to keep the cooler (may need to, depending where you live for emissions testing), bulletproof diesel makes a nice upgraded cooler. I prefer a delete myself. I have one from River City Diesel, you can pick it up cheap on ebay, but there are a few other non name brand one's on there that do the same thing for a little less money. You can of course always take your cooler out and weld freeze plugs in to the ends of it and put it back on, that way it stops the function of it (cuts exhaust flow to the EGR valve completely) but it's still there for your visual inspection! Don't buy another Ford one though.

It's still possible there could be issues with the heads (ie cracks) but you wont know til you take them off and get them to a machine shop, IF that's something you want to do. Gotta ask yourself what your plans are for this truck. Will you ever crank the power up more? (I'd get rid of the Edge unit myself, or talk to Bill @ PHP about making it hold custom tunes). Future plans? Just keep it stockish? Weekend warrior? drag truck? What does the future hold?

Are you going to take this time to do headgaskets/studs? Or just fix the coolers and keep rocking it?

 

I would start by pulling the oil cooler and testing it, plug one side of the oil side and put some air presure to it, not over 75psi and see if it is leaking into the coolant side, should be obvious then if that is the caulprit.

 

Gettiner done, slowww. work fulltime +, wife full time ++, not enough time +++ to do truck as quick as I would like.

Oil cooler, Check, egr see ya, head gaskets & stubs Check, now who makes a good coolant filter, this will not happen twice?

 

There really are only a couple options, basically the exact same thing, just pick which one you think is better looking.

dieselsite.com sells one, and sinister manufacturing sells one.