I have been watching the coolant leave since i purchased my truck new. Originally i thought i was loosing a little coolant onto the ground but it was so slow it was hard to locate. After watching this for sometime now i have notice that at every 5k oil change i need to add 16-24oz of water/coolant. Since i couldn't find a leak i have done two oil analysis and they have come back with higher than normal Potassium levels. OK so its going into the engine but how? Can someone list all the places i need to look? I've already had my dealer pressure test the system but since its such a slow leak nothing showed up for them.

thanks,
<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

 

Hopefully Tom, a.k.a. Crazy001 will see this. Is'nt the only way for coolant to get in the oil via the heads? Seems like EGR leaking would just burn up in the exhaust. The oil cooler is just a closed system that does not use coolant right?

 

I am thinking that it could get in thru the EGR or water pump and headgaskets. How about the degass bottle, does it have any evidence of oil residue?

 

I am anxiously waiting for a response from some ford techs, because I have the exact same issue.

 

Looks like I'm a bit late!

The oil cooler is located in front of the HPFP and uses engine coolant to cool the oil. I think it's possible for a leak here to contaminate the engine oil, but I've never heard of it happening.

Has your truck ever overheated? Have you ever run low on coolant? I've heard of cases where the pump can cavitate and eat through the front engine cover and dump coolant into the engine oil.

Head gaskets are another big area where the coolant can leak into the engine oil. I've never heard of head gaskets going bad on a 6.4 except for highly tuned engines that have been abused.

 

ok most of the time a failed oil cooler will leak in to the cooling system. as the oil pressure is always greater then cooling system pressure. so most likly not it.
As far as the heads you would have to have a failed head gasket that was failed between oil port and coolant port. have not seen or heard of that one yet but possible.
A failed egr cooler could do it by leaking in to the cyclinder and running past the rings and into the oil pan. I still dont buy that one either but easy enugh to test. Go somewere they have a 5 gas tester and have the degas bottle sniffed for emission gases.
You could have an issue with a porous block alowing some small amount of leaching. Iv heard about it but still have not seen one.
You could have a cracked cyclinder wall There have been reports of 6.0l doing this but not common at at all.

Have you had a radiator fail yet?
The biggist thing we see for any type of leaching is a failed front cover. this is such a problem we keep 20 front cover kits in stock and thats maybe a 10 day supply

If any of the info I gave does not pan out to be your problem I would urge you to force your servicing dealer to TAR (TAR = tech assist repair )the truck this will get a Ford and or Navistar enginerr out to help figure it out.

 

Having the same issue, will bring the truck to the dealer on Monday. Service manager said he has a good idea where the coolent is going. My oil level has not changed though, but I did get a puff of white smoke on very humid days

 

your puff of white smoke is most likly a charge air cooler. Once again a knowen issue. have the dealer check the build date aginst the TSB.

 

This could be it. I had a new front cover put on at 4000K. I wonder if they didn't do it right. Its possible it came from the factory just a tad low in the bottle and in reality was not leaking so my issue could have started at 4K. What do you think?

 

I was reading about cavitation in the water pump on some trucks and this caused the wall behind the impeller to fail and allow coolant into the oil. It was suspected that job 1 trucks that had the radiator fail and lost coolant may have contributed to the air getting into the water pump and creating a problem. This sounded like a new theory and was being looked into more. I was reading about this on one of the other powerstroke specific forums in teh last day or two.

 

well you are half right. There is a cavatation problem that is happing to the front covers like I have stated.
The reason that is currently suspected is a t-stat problem and ford is claiming this is causing radiators,front covers and oil coolers to fail.
I have my doubts about this theory. Ive seen to many with ok t-stats for this to be the case. Im not an engineer so I could be way wrong on this. The porblem looks more to be caused by excessive flow rate to me. Do you know why the 6.4 has 2 t-stats in it? its because one was getting blowen open durring testing so they had to add a second. I also find it very odd that every single radiator that I have replaced is failed in the same spot always the drives side that leaks. There is also an updated degas bottle that has been designed to reduce the possibility if air in the system. It will be interesting to see when they get to the bottom of the concern. I wonder how much more effort they will really put in as the 6.7 is due out and Im sure it will have some issues too.
also radiators just came off back order again.
Its pretty hard to mess up a front cover install on that engine. Its a simple and stright forward job.... then again Ive see people screw up some stuff that you wouldnt belive.

 

Well at least its not a hard fix for people that will own these when they come off warranty. I'm used to working on gas engines and worry about what will happen with a diesel when it comes off warranty if I want to keep it around. I can do practically anything on a gasser, but diesels have some specific things that you just don't find on a gas engine. Also the 4.5 million sensors will get real interesting as these things age lol.

 

Picking up my truck this afternoon. Service manager stated it was an O ring on the radiator that the coolent was leaking by. I mentioned to him about the white smoke when I dropped it off, he stated that the truck being a Job 3, the changes to the CAC and EGR have been made by the dealership prior to my purchase, but he looked into it any way and said that everything was OK. Will update the thread if I have any more issues on this subject.

 

Well, as we speak, my 09 is in the shop for a very small coolant leak, the kind where like above, you only had to add 8-oz here and there. The tech had the system pressurized for about 15-minutes before the pressure finally started to drop. He is narrowing his search to the egr valve/cooler after eliminating other possibilities. My last blackstone report at the end of August showed 0% antifreeze in the oil, so hopefully that is a good thing. But his fancy egr removal tool broke this afternoon, that is when I left and got a loaner. I will report back when I have more details to the situation, hopefully on friday.

 

my 08 is leaking coolant in the engine the dealer figures it is coming from #8 piston. have some one check your compression to see if everything is ok. all this starting out as a crack in the rad then the EGR has to replace with both thermostates