For about a week my wifes 01 Excursion 6.8l has been blowing white smoke on startup and lasts a mile or so. Also has lost a bit of coolant and the coolant can be smelt at the exhaust. However there is no coolant in the oil. I did put a pressure gauge on the degas bottle (like we do to test headgaskets on a 6.0) but not sure if that is a proper test on these gassers. I will say that according to the pressure gauge it holds at around 7 psi once its warmed up. Could this be a headgasket failure or something else. A scangauge has been in the vehicle for over 2 years and the hightest the coolant has ever got was like 204 on a very hot day but it came right back down to low 190s and cylinder head temps are always in sync with the coolant temps. Thanks for the info.

 

You'd likely see puking out the degas bottle if your headgasket failed like that. Combustion pressures are far higher than coolant system pressures, so you'd be pushing combustion gasses through to your cooling system. I think intake manifold gasket failure is more likely.

Pull the spark plugs and see how they look. If you're burning coolant you should see evidence on one or more of the plugs.

 

^^^ What Tom said ^^^
On the bright side, intake manifold and/or gaskets is much cheaper and easier to repair than doing the head gaskets!

 

Thanks guys Ill look into that further. Im not versed on the V10 like I am the 6.0 so I wanted to make sure im on the right track. I will do some investigating later today.

 

Moving this over to the 6.8L V10 forum.

Stewart

 

Any good tutorials on the procedure for the intake gaskets?

 

I had similar issues with my '05 F350. Curious how this worked out.

 

Yeah, if anyone has any updates to the same issue. A few weeks ago my truck started puffing out a pretty significant amount of white smoke on start-up. Only on startup. Also, I have a digital temp gauge and it has never been over 200 on the hottest of days, going uphill. Actually, some days it won't even puff.
I haven't checked my coolant or coolant level. I may pull the plugs this weekend and see what they look like.