DamageINC

To be honest, and kind of a dick, I hope the engine's trashed. Maybe it's masochistic of me to actually WANT to have to put a 6.0 in a bus (no body-off possible) but for some reason it'd just make me happy to have the worst-case scenario pan out in this particular situation. Dave

Hehe, I can see this conversation already. =-=-=-= Hotline: What needs to be replaced? Tech: The EGR cooler has failed and resulted in oil cooler damage. Both need replacement. Hotline: What kind of vehicle? Tech: 2005 F-550 19,000lb GVWR loaded dump truck. Hotline: Oh. Ok. Dave

It just ran itself out of fuel, I'd guess... the oil level got prety high but for whatever reason it finally just puked out. I am gonna have to pull the intercooler out and clean it, just to put it back in (along with putting the rest of it together) again and HOPE that the bottom end's ok. Think I'll get paid for it all?? Hehe I'm not sure of it yet. Dave

Wow. Ok, so after the whole smoke show this morning, I buttoned up a couple loose ends with other RO's and got back to this thing. Go over power balance again - everything's fine... decide to take it down the street for a bit. Watching my pids, turn onto the highway - instantly starts *billowing* the nasties, thickest grey smoke you've ever seen from the tailpipe. Very low on power but not running rough, just shaking from the engine vibration. I get maybe 1/4 mile down the road when I lose my throttle input... rpm's start dropping, I look at my PDS to see that ICP has gone down to like 400psi. I figure it's gonna die, so I turn in to our sister location and sure enough it craps out right there on the drive-in. I crank it, and although it's "firing" and sputtering, it doesn't have nearly enough ICP to even consider squirting the injectors. I look at the cluster - I don't even have base engine oil pressure. But somehow, it fires up and pukes a giant cloud of smoke again. I let it idle for a few minutes, and decide to turn back around and head to the shop again. Turn back onto the high way and the engine sounds like it's about to -explode- ... some of the gnarliest engine knock I've ever heard, I thought I was gonna have a piston come through the dashboard. I back off the throttle and dceide that I'm just gonna limp it back to the dealership. Not quite. LEt off the pedal and the rpm's keep climbing. Next thing I know I shift it into neutral and the revs are through the roof. Turn the key off and the bastard just keeps running, screaming away at around 3,500 rpm's. I literally drove this thing back into the shop, on the brakes, a good 600 feet across traffic with the key off. Naturally I found a delicious fuel/oil cocktail in the intercooler and charge pipes. I pulled the new injector out to find a TIIIIINY little tear in the black (upper) o-ring, so I'm assuming that's the cause of the problem. As for now I'm going to reseal the whole bank but I'm not convinced that there isn't any base engine damage with the hydro-locking and the fact that I'm having a hell of a time building base engine oil pressure (according to the gauge). Plus, the thign sounds like a damn maraca now. Dave

Ok so I posted that topic about the short bust that ended up getting a dummy plug in the oilrail for a High pressure leak.. I finished the van/bus early yesterday. Let it idle for a long while, shut it down, gave it a few re-starts - perfect. Went out an hour later and took it to lunch, drove beautifully, brought it back, let it idle all day until 5:00 when I left. Fired up at the end of the day too. I get in this morning, crank it over - it partially hydro-locks right here in the lot, but the starter had enough nuts to crank through it and, after 2 or 3 more sloooooow chugs through the crank cycle, it started up. And smoked out the entire city I work in. Now I have a SEVERE engine vibration that can barely be felt at idle, but once you get on the gas at all (park/neutral or in gear) and the rpm's come up, it will shake your teeth out. I swear it's gonna rattle one of the 7 mirrors right off the bus. Relative compression is perfect, power balance is spot-on, and I don't have any differences in my MFDES pid when cancelling out injectors - the result is the same with all 8 of them. Standing on the gas creates a lovely cloud that would have worked nicely in the conclusion of the "highway scene" in the 2nd Matrix movie. Reeeeeeeally looking forward to what my SM has to say about this. Dave

Hehehe don't get me wrong - I love actually working, figuring all this stuff out, taking it all apart and fixing it. I really do. It just gets hard to stay motivated when you realize how poorly we're paid sometimes. It's hard to complain about getting money for something you love, but the fact that it takes it's toll on your body at the end of the day kinda sucks the fun out of it. And the paycheck becomes more of a slap in the face afterwards, lol. Rest assured that I'll be ass-deep into a 6.4 sometime again before the end of the month. As for now, I've got a 6.0 boom-truck that needs head gaskets. Dave

The bottom-er line is that we're idiots for dealing with this, lol. Ahh... I can't even complain at this point. Looking under the hood of a 6.4 truck doesn't even phase me anymore. It's so sadistic that I can't help but just sit back and accept it's inevitability to provide more headache than it's predecessor. I'm sure in time, we'll have it figured out like the 6.0 and eventually we'll have our own little ways of getting things done. Dave

We ARE a level 1 dealer with 3 PSD techs (however myself and my partner are the only 2 that actually work on them). Our service manager is a NAZI about the 126 reports and shoves them down our throat in weekly meetings. I suppose I understand why, things like this make it nice every now and then to know that you won't have to deal with what everyone else does, but by the same token, I have to wonder if it evens out in the long run. We literally are forced to undercharge things to warranty and claim less diag than normal just to appease FoMoCo and that ridiculous 126 sheet. Somehow, miraculously, our numbers are better than everyone else and we still keep our repairs per 1000 section low too. It's very hard to "FIRTFT" when you have to 'ignore' other areas of concern that aren't being complained about. Yes, the overall Repairs per 1000 would go down even further if we fixed everything at once, but then the $$ per RO area goes up and we get asspacked that way. It's a terrible position (pun intended) to be in but what other options do we have? Ford makes the rules, we just sit here and laugh. Dave

Yup - right on the money. This site is invaluable. Dave

Well, I had some time today to dig into this one. Put shop air through the system and isolated an air/HPO leak in the left cylinder bank. Off comes the valve cover, air tested again and sure enough there was a pretty obvious leak near the front of the bank. Pulled out the oil rail, popped all 4 injectors out and inspected them to find no real damage. I checked the "fitment" of all the injectors onto their respective nipples and all seemed to fit snug enough to be considered normal. With the injectors in the rail, I applied some more shop air to the fitting where the lower half of the stand pipe kinda 'plugs' into the oil rail and found my leak in the oil rail itself, from the opposing plug where the standpipe would attach if the oil rail were on the other bank. Off to get this thing on the road again. Dave

So yeah, 57k mile school bus. Towed in for a crank no start. P0341 in memory, probably front cranking it into oblivion. Either way, I get in, it fires right up. Drive it around, monitor the usual pids, only thing I noticed was that the ECT/EOT spread got up to around 15* but that shouldn't have any effect on the starting of the engine. Bring it back, shut it off, go to crank it over after sitting for a minute - ICP only climbs to about 280 psi. I'm pretty sure that the HPOP is fine, it had no trouble achieving 3,800+PSI during WOT stomps. I crank it over about 10 minutes later, the EOT has had a chance to cool down and it makes it up to about 350 PSI. Another 15 minutes and slooooowly built enough ICP to sputter and finally start after a 10 second crank time. Drives around mint afterward, no driveability issues. Shut down again - crank no start. I'm wondering if maybe I've got a "loose" injector issue here, I recall reading about them but I have yet to deal with it personally. Anyone here thinking differently? Dave

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to learn about a new open recall that basically covers anything bolted to that engine. Fact is, if it's on a 6.0 and it's there from the factory, it's probably going to need to be replaced before the customer gets rid of the truck. How's that for confidence in the product, lol /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif Dave

We had a front crank seal leak on a 6.4 as well, had like a hundred miles on it and it was BAD. Seal was all torn up. The new seal came with a wear sleeve. Hmm... Dave

So the other day, I stumbled across a "technique" that I'd never tried or even considered before and found that it's MUCH easier than you might think. Odds are that many of you already got this one down, but just in case it's "new", I'll mention it here. If you just stand by the passenger side front fender, and grab the belt between the alternator and the tensioner, and pull the belt with your hand towards the passenger fender, the tensioner walks itself into full "release" and you can just pop the locking tab in place with your finger while you're holding the belt. It takes surprisingly little effort to actually peel the tensioner all the way to it's maximum range of motion and lock the tab in place. MUCH easier than wedging a tool down into the 1/2" square hole in the tensioner arm itself. And then, when it's time to install it, just grab the belt in the same spot again (after routing it, obviously) and give it a tug, the tab will pop out of place and the tensioner will tighten up again. Dave

I was actually thinking the same thing - why not just rail a big ass screw in there and tear it out that way? At this point, you had to be sure that you were going to destroy the valve and the "console" anyway, hehe. Dave

Yeah, the new kit is PN# 4C3Z-9B246-C "ICP Fitting Kit". It looks like you should be able to get 9.1 hours for an F-series STC fitting when claiming the proper labor ops - and there are a lot of them. This TSB supersedes the old high-pressure diagnostic TSB I think, it has updated times for everything. Basically, it looks like you will get 4.2 hours for high-pressure diagnostics (labor ops A and E) and then any associated part replacement on top of that (so an F-series pays 4.9 for the nwe fitting, plus the diag ops) There are seperate labor ops for replacing injectors causing ICP leaks, Branch tubes, everything... actually looks like it'll pay out more than the old TSB did. (For example, you can now get 19.9 for a branch tube on an F-series instead of the ABSURD 14-something from before.) Dave

This goes for gas engines too, chips that are installed IN the PCM will notoriously cause stalls and no-starts if they rattle even just a little bit. For our high-performance customers who insist on chips, we always electrical-tape the living hell out of the chip to make SURE that it doesn't move at all once installed. Any time there's a chipped (literally) vehicle with a stall concern, I always recommend disconnecting the battery, removing the chip, cleaning the contacts, and FULLY securing it back into the PCM with enough tape to restrain a horny pitbull. Dave

Well just so you all know, the new oil cooler I got was *loaded* with that powdery crap, it was seriously caked onto the side of it pretty thick. I took it to the parts washer and got all the crap out of there. I'm amazed that this powder can create such havoc, though, I'd imagine that it'd almost just dissolve in the oil, it's so fine. Either way, the new cooler, IPR, HPOP and screen definitely took care of the problem. Again. Dave

LOL I said that to my SA right after I found out I was SPW-ing it and he just glared at me... Dave

I've done these before, but it's been a while. The customer supplied the studs but didn't leave the instructions, I can't seem to find the torquing specs online for these things. Anyone here know the process for torquing the ARP studs on a 6.0?? I need the specs for the studs AND the nuts. Thanks in advance, homies. Dave

I always check that screen, of course!! There was *nothing* on it or beneath it, I always dry up as much oil as I can and check the screen, clean gunk out of the resivoir, and fill it with fresh oil before installing the new cooler. Hotline told me to replace the oil cooler, HPOP, IPR, and the screen again as an SPW repair. Whoopee!!! Dave

Actually Jeff - wow! Just because I was going to air test the system, I yanked the turbo and, on a whim, took the IPR out to look at it. Brand new IPR, screen has a hole blown clean through it and inward, kibble all over what's left of the screen. Initially I thought that the new HPOP was bad out of the box and had taken the new IPR out as well, but now that you mention this, I have some more head scratching to do! I'm gonna buzz the ol' hotline real quick and see if they by some miracle have anything useful to say about it, but that's a great pic and I really wish I'd thought to look at the oil cooler BEFORE installing it on the truck. Either way, SPW repair, here I come! I'll keep you guys posted with what happens, but keep the other ideas coming too. And thanks for the great pic, Jeff.. Dave

Ok friends, here's my current situation. '04 F-350, 150k miles, local paving company owns the truck and a bunch of others from us as well. EXCELLENT customers, does all their maintnance with us, so on... either way, they came in complaining of black smoke intermittently and erratic power loss. P0404 in memory and nothing else.. Yank the EGR valve out and it's totally carboned through and literally dripping with coolant. Turbo was replaced about 3 months ago. Toss the valve in and drive it, found an ECT/EOT difference of over 30 degrees. So, I sell them an EGR valve, and EGR/OIL coolers, and a heavy intake cleaning. After some down-time, they decided to put the money into the truck. I replace the coolers and the valve, start it up, it runs like garbage for about 30 seconds and then dies. Won't start. ICP maxes out at 85psi...wonderful. Turns out that the IPR blew apart, due to the HPOP eating itself up too (the screen was shredded and there was debris all over it.) This is the OLD STYLE HPOP too with the cast iron cover. Either way, I feel terrible about bashing these guys over the head with another big-dollar repair right after they just bought the coolers but it just won't leave the shop without the parts. They buy it. I install it (HPOP and IPR), start it up, runs like a champ. Drove a TON better than it has in years, probably. After driving it, I let it idle for a while and then parked it behind the shop on Saturday. I come in today (Monday morning) for one more drive on it, and it doesn't start. ICP maxing out at about 115psi, won't go any higher. I'm not really sure how much more shit and I wanna hammer these guys with and I'm afraid they're gonna thing we're hacking it over here, now that they've bought all this stuff and the truck still won't run. Either way I'm gonna air-check the high-pressure oil system for leaks but, my question is, has anyone here dealt with a similar scenario like this? What'd you find? Dave

...so yeah, after my wonderful experience replacing a 6.4 on a Village dump truck equipped with the most absurd plow frame in the history of snowfall and enough poorly routed aftermarket wiring to make a tow-strap for the tug-of-war at a monster truck rally, and a 40+line warranty story through ADP with to-the-tee details of the diagnosis and work performed, Ford Motor Company determined it was suffecient to pay me a whole 10.5 hours for the job. I had about 27 invested when it was all said and done. Kinda feel like selling my tools and starting bakery or something. Dave

Fortunately we got ok'd to put a whole engine in this thing. My body is killing me though, we had no way to lift this thing and the amount of aftermarket garbage strewn threw this truck has bee nothing short of frightening. I hope to God that I actually get it back together correctly, lol.. Dave