Well, yesterday I went to start my truck it started, ran for about 30 seconds, started sputtering, and died. Thought maybe I had bad fuel from a little podunk store I got it from. Anyway, come to find out the truck was 2-gallons low on oil. I got in a bad habit of not checking the oil, but from about a month ago, it only burned a quart every 10,000 miles.

I changed the oil the first part of last month and haven't checked it since yesterday, but somewhere in between the first part of November and yesterday, it burned over 2 gallons of oil. I don't know if it happened in a day, or over the month and a half time period. There is no major external oil leak. A couple drips a month out of the front crank seal/oil pan. There was a couple little puddles in the valley. I cleaned them up and drove it about 15 minutes and nothing new appeared.

I've searched the threads and message boards and have found a couple of possibilities.

1). Injectors O-Rings
2). Turbo Seal
3). Dusted Engine

I found the turbo technician guide on here and pulled the intake hose off the turbo. It looks pretty good. Slight movement up and down, but I couldn't get it to move laterally. The fins are not eroded or bent, but the only thing I did notice is that it almost looked like the impellor was contacting the housing, but when I spin it over, it appears to spin free to a stop. It just looked like the tips of the fins were slightly lighter color than the inner part of the impellor blades.

I pulled the intercooler lines off the Y manifold. There was some oil in the cold side of the intercooler pipes (At the black boots). Very little on the hot side of the intercooler pipes (At the blue boots).

The truck does seem to puff blue smoke when I first start it in the morning. It seems reduced if I let the glow plug light go out before starting. It been gradually starting to do this more and more lately. I started it tonight after it sat all day and it started right up, but my dad said he thought the exhaust smelled like oil. I don't seem hardly any spmoke unless it's black from the DP.

Is there anyway to find out if it's injector o-rings. I wanted to think it was the turbo cause I do get turbo surge at times with the DP Tuner, but my thought would be that the hot side of the intercooler pipe should have been coated in oil for that to be the case.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Ryan

 

If you're loosing that much oil and not finding massive puddles anywhere its either going into the fuel rails (bad o rings), out the exhaust or into the coolant. Check the degas bottle and see what color to coolant is or if its higher then normal. If its going out the exhaust from a leaking turbo seal, the down pipe would be coated on the inside with oil.

 

pull a fuel sample, see if it is discolored from oil, could be injectors.

 

Valiant, i see you are a Cougs fan. Where u located? Im up in Spokane, might be able to meet up with you and take a look at your truck

 

The coolant level is OK and not discolored.

Is the only way to find out if it is an injector seal to pull a fuel sample from the tank?

PwerStroke99, I'm actually down in the Vancouver/Portland area, but did go to WSU in Pullman. I appreciate your generous offer though.

Sound slike maybe I need to pull the down pipe off the turbo and see if it has a bunch of oil in it.

I am just trying to eliminate possible sources of the problem to minimize the cost if I take it somewhere to get fixed.

 

Before you pull the downpipe check the tail pipe for oil. That much oil will go the length of the exhaust system. If you have oil there then the turbo seal is leaking and a rebuild is due, and not something that can be put off.

 

I am interested if this is injector O-rings as my 7.3 puffs a little blue when I start it as well but no visible oil loss.

 

Probly easiest way is remove filter,or maybe even at the filter drain

 

Can the turbo be going bad even without shaft play? If the turbo is leting oil get into the downpipe, would you get gray smoke out the tail pipe?

 

When the seal really lets go there is a plume of white smoke coming out the exhaust. When my seal went at 65 MPH there was a plume of white smoke a 1/4 mile long behind me. When I pulled over it was a white mist at idle and oil was dripping from the tail pipe. That is when the seal has a catatrophic failure and not the early warning signs of an impendig failure.

 

Well, I pulled the down pipe before I read this. Anyway, it was just soot covered. No oil I could tell. I was told if there was oil in there, the oil and soot makes a tar like substance inside the downpipe.

When I pulled the intake hose off of the turbo, the impellor isn't worn down and the intake looks fairly clean, but where the impeller gets meets the housing, the blades are discolored (white) and the housing looks almost like it's has been rubbed by the impeller. I can wiggle it up and down, but not in and out. I can't move it enough while spinning it to make it touch the housing, but it looks real close. Should the tips of the blades be discolored?

Additionally, in the oil in the intake tube (no CCV mod) where it connects to the turbo, it looks almost like an extremely fine metal dust is in the oil. Has anyone seen the filings from the impeller/housing spread towards the air filter even though the air is flowing the other way??????

Thanks again,
Ryan

 

Well, I forgot to mention that the evening before I couldn't get it to start, I filled up almost a full 40 gallons of fuel. The next morning when it started and died, my first instinct was bad fuel. I drained off the fuel from the fuel bowl and it looked clean.

I talked to an injector technician that said on the OBS, the fuel goes back to the fuel bowl and the filter and fuel would be black. He said on the new body style, the fuel doesn't go back to the filter so checking it wouldn't help.

Anyway, for poo and giggles today, I was gonna check the fuel filter. Hooked a hose up and cracked the drain valve. The fuel came out all black. I was gonna start the truck again and forgot to close the valve. When I hit the key, I pumped about a quart of fuel out on the ground on accident. It was oil mixed. Almost completely black. I'm on an almost empty tank of fuel and have been running on it for a week. I'm guessing that the other time I checked it, the tank was new and hadn't had enough miles on it to get contaminated with oil.

Anyway, this leads me to think it has to be o-rings on the injectors? Am I right? I was doing some searching and someone else said it can only be a cracked head because there is no way for the fuel/oil to get back to the tank. Is this correct?

Thanks