Brad Clayton

I recently had a doozy of an oil leak on a 2008 F-450 with a 6.4 and 175k on the clock. It turned into more of a stubborn oil leak to be honest with you. The truck came to me from another shop that had been round robin with the thing. This came to them from their customer that had been dealing with it long before them. The thing was a mess, a hack had been into it previously and shit was just wrecked. I think it should be criminal for people to be allowed to perform such atrocities to a vehicle. I noticed pretty quickly that the oil drain back tube for the crankcase separator was in question due to its routing and contact with the a/c belt. The oil leak was originating from the front of the engine and to the right side some where. I replaced the tube and degreased the engine and sent it on it's way. It came back the next week with the same issue. Against better judgement (I told them the engine needs to come out as something is seriously wrong with it) I replaced the front crank seal. It still leaked. The customer came up to get some stuff out of the truck and told me that him and his buddy pulled the motor in his yard and had someone rebuild it. He then tells me that he put not 1, not 2, but 3 front crank seals in it trying to cure this oil leak. Well now we are onto seal number 4. I then pulled the front cover thinking that they wrecked the bed plate gasket, I mean why not, they wrecked everything else. No such luck and I had to put it back together with you guessed it, seal number 5. I took it for a rip and it leaked. I cleaned it off and let it idle for 3 hours with not a drip nor drop of oil fell to the floor. Took it for another rip and it looks like I ran over a 55 gallon barrel of oil........i.e. it still leaks. So up to this point I have been begging and pleading with all involved to let me pull the engine so we could quit dicking around and squash this thing once and for all. And up to this point many things have led me to the direction as to what is wrong with the truck, although I will admit I ignored most of the indicators. #1. The customer obviously butchered this thing and anything he touched is called into question also anyone he knows that "rebuilt" the engine is subject to the same scrutiny. #2. Lots of carry over oil in the charge air cooler system. #3. No leak at idle........lots of leak while driving. #4. A shit ton of front crank seals replaced and it still appears to be leaking at the front crank seal. So the shop owner that is the middle man in this thing came by last night and we were brainstorming and he mentioned the turbos. I said they were kinda of difficult to check for a pushing oil concern, however I could do a quick crankcase pressure test. I really never thought to do one before because the engine only has 1300 miles since it was put back into service. Well I did said test this morning and she blew an 11 inh2o at idle............at idle. She then proceeded to hit 44 inh2o before getting to 3000 rpm. It's kinda hard to believe that it wasn't popping the glow plug harnesses out of the valve covers. The customer declined to go any further and I think they know they got something out of whack in this engine from their previous repair. So I put it back in working order and punted that bitch.

I'm up to my eyeballs in 15M01's.

I would definitely be working from the pump back, if you have 70ish PSI off the front tank and less than 70ish PSI off the rear tank. The fact that you have to drive if for a while backs up what's being said here with a possible restriction being built up as fuel is pumped out of the tank. I would put the pressure gage back on it or monitor the fuel pressure pid while driving off the rear tank and see what you can see.

I love how easy a 150 cab comes off compared to a Super Duty.

Amazing stuff. I would love to have a 1/10th of that guys talent and an 8th of his time and a 5th of........well you know.

I think my parts department needs to start selling these.

Amen to that. I was going to mention this in reference to another on going post but you beat me to it. If all the Ford techs that are belly-aching over on the FMC website were to jump ship and go to Chrysler, they would come back begging for their old job.

I just replaced a short block on a 2011 for a knock noise. These all aluminum engines have super thin cylinder liners and number 4 cylinder was out of round.

The base cluster setup can be IDS'd to perform manual generations but not until the customer sees 85%, is it available on the high end trucks now?

I miss the little birthday cake.

That's cool, I used to ride by this place on my to work everyday. It's a small little joint and a co-worker's wife worked there also.

This is your problem, at least I highly suspect it is. I have seen way too many crappy 6.4 liter programmers take a shit and cause exactly what your saying, I.e, a key reset will clear it up for a bit. The best course of action is to have the customer return it to stock (this usually takes care of it on your end because they dont want to do that and they will just go away) so you can eliminate the aftermarket stuff as the problem. Or have them reinstall the programmer if a flash or get a new one all together.

This is one of the biggest things that pisses me off about this engine..........the longer it's in production the harder they make it to work on and service. This is completely opposite of the 7.3 and 6.0, they got easier and easier as time went on and production runs changed.

That's a very good point.

Those numbers are right on the money in my book and I would not condemn that pump.

What's your ICP voltage and IPR percentage after it has started and idled for 40 minutes or so and then under snap accel?

You only need 500 PSI to start and your at 1200 PSI, what is the ICP voltage reading? (0.8 volts=500 PSI)

Having the same issue, gonna try that also, thanks.

That got me the first time I used the ol phone to make a video. Yes I was the nube and the object of ridicule. You must turn the phone horizontally before you hit the record button or you end up with what is in your present video. Trying to turn the phone after you have started recording will not make any difference.....stop the recording then turn the phone and resume recording if you forget in the future.

That's a deep freezer for keeping the deer meat fresh!

That's a new one on me and I have been fixing these since 1988.

:popcorn: :popcorn:

I've always had them shipped with a minimum of 1 (in the bottom port) but sometimes and not all the time, they have had plugs capping off the top port.

Kevin, you need to step back for a second. It is time to have a talk with management about the shop's situation. These trucks are damn hard enough to fix with the correct tools. Using the wrong tools or tools that are not equivalent to the ones needed for a particular job will create a bigger problem than the one that is in front of you i.e. a broken truck. The biggest enemy we face is interpreting collected data incorrectly. This will lead you down the wrong path right off the bat and everything else goes South quick. Get the right stuff and follow the the "hard start/performance" sheets and you will fix every Powerstroke that comes to your bay. I guarantee it!

The dealer gave our service advisors a camera for such goings on. The guys always bitch about it, saying they don't know how to take the pics and get them to Ford. Of course they don't have any problem taking photos on there own and posting them to their Facebook account.