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.

 

My first guess. And this is based on your milky substance statement. only happens when Oil and coolant mix. 3 common senarios for that to take place:1. EGR cooler ruptured. What kind of EGR delete did you use? How long ago? 2. Oil cooler clogged, overheated, ruptured. It your oil pressure holding good? 3. Head gasket failure. what other HG tests have you done? Based on overly high pressure at the degass bottle, could very well be exhaust gasses pressurizing coolant system. With engine running and oil filler cap off, does anything come out?

 

My guess is oil cooler.

Black Onyx gaskets will fail on you at some point if they haven't already, they've turned out to be just terrible for the guys using them unfortunately. Haven't seen a set make it past 20k, most are 10k or less.

It doesn't take hardly anything to make these trucks hydrolock, the heads are flat and the pistons stick up out of the bore, there is almost NO room in there, so a little amount will make it hydrolock.

I would take some oil out and get an oil analysis done, it will tell you if you've got coolant or fuel in there.

Where did the new injector come from? Which number was replaced?

Was the oil cooler rebuilt or replaced when the headstuds were done? It should have been, unless the delta between engine oil temp and engine coolant temp was in check. Can you log the EOT and ECT and let us know what the spread is? It shouldn't go more than 15* apart or so.

The milky residue tells me coolant and oil are mixing and generally the only way this happens is ruptured oil cooler. The rebuild kit for the oil cooler is about $250. Cheap insurance.

Do you have a coolant filter on this truck?

 

I have the sinister diesel egr delete from MKM customs. It has been on for several thousand miles. Oil pressure seems to be good. There is enough pressure that the stock cap won't even hold the pressure. It whistles as it is releasing pressure. Engine on, cap off, it steams from the cap.

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The new injector went in number 3 and came from Pensacola diesel. One of their in house re-builds. The MKS customs kit came with a new Ford oil cooler.

I will check on the eot vs ect, that is a good indicator of oil cooler failure I assume?

No coolant filter at this time, but it will have one after this.

 

Pensacola doesn't have a very good reputation for injectors. I prefer to buy them right from Ford, as they're one of the only places that actually replaces the spool valves.

They are on the same bank though and we have seen more than once that a bad injector will falsely throw other injector codes. Say injector number 1 is leaking past the o-rings, the combustion passes the o-rings and fills the rail that they're all in and can make the other injectors on that bank throw codes too, long shot but it can and does happen. It is also possible you just plain have another one on the way out. Have you tried Rev-X? What oil do you run now?

Ok so the oil cooler isn't that old then. I would still check ECT vs EOT, it's at least a good indicator if the cooler is becoming clogged more than anything. There is only a couple ways I know of for oil and coolant to mix, one is a ruptured oil cooler and the other is cracks in the head itself. Typically when headgaskets blow it will just push coolant, normally doesn't mix with oil though.

Does your oil fill cap have any residue on it? Check that out.

You say oil pressure is good, but then right after say something about the cap not holding the pressure... I'm assuming you're referring to the coolant cap right? The high pitch squealing (what we normally call the tea kettle whistle) is a good sign of blown headgaskets if you already have the EGR cooler gone... not unheard of with the BO head gaskets. Stick with OEM Ford gaskets next time

 

Hey Mdub707,
Referring to my earlier post about "engine running and OIL filler cap off does anything come out" I ment is anything coming out of oil filler tube. And if his answer is yes steam is coming from it. I would lean a lot more toward the blown HG more than likely the RH given the injector problem location.

 

blow-by coming out of the oil fill tube is often times a sign of bad piston rings more than anything isn't it?

 

yes, if it chugs like a train.

 

My mistake guys, I haven't removed the oil fill when running yet. I misread and thought you were talking about the coolant cap.

I am going to do some tear down tonight and see what I can find. The truck was previously my dad's and he had the bullet proof kit done by a shop that I am less than confident in. So I have no real way of knowing if the oil in the coolant is residual. The milky residue in the intake tract could be residual for all I know too.

All that I do know is I am losing coolant, and have some intermittent injector issues. Yesterday there was some coolant leaking from the rear of the engine area. This leads me to believe my coolant loss could be from somewhere other than the gaskets. Perhaps an injector is sticking open causing the hydrolock situation.

I am an LSX guy and new to diesels so this is a learning experience for me. Upon removal of the glow plugs the tips looked as if they were submerged in oil. Is this normal?

Going to see what my temperature delta is and go from there.

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I used a Snap-On solus pro tonight and monitored the ECT and EOT. I simulated a heavy load with using some braking while building boost at highway speed. I had Hybrid Race in the entire time I was doing this. I could never even get the Oil more than 2 degrees higher than the coolant under any circumstance. I managed to get the coolant up to a little over 200 but the oil was always right around that or a good bit cooler. I assume from this I can draw the oil cooler is working well right?

I did manage to get cylinder 1 to fire off some excessive fuel while cranking it over with the glow plugs out tonight. Cylinder 1 was one of the 2 that show a contribution issue when I can get it to miss.

So anyone that cares to tell me what you think, here is my theory at this point. I have an injector that is leaking fuel causing hydrolocking (most likely number 1). The head gaskets happen to be bad at the same time (damn you black Onyx). So 2 issues with similar symptoms. At least that is what I am thinking at this point. Anyone see any holes in my theory? It builds pressure on the cooling system immediately upon cranking the truck, when the coolant is still cold to the touch in the degas tank.

 

Sounds like it could be your issues. Though you might just have a simple coolant leak (since you say it was leaking off the back) and then one injector with a busted nozzle or something. These injector's don't really "stick open" so much like a common rail injector, but they can leak fuel. Typically it's when a nozzle is cracked. You could always try switching injector 1 and 3 and see what happens too. Though if it's hydrolocking I'd probably just go buy a new injector and call it a day.