i am working on a 2005 excursion with a 6.0 liter diesel motor andwhen it is running there is coolant coming out the exhaust i know it is the head gaskets and i am not sure if these heads crack or just warp please help thanks vince

 

Welcome to FTE, Vince.

How do you know it's head gaskets and not a failed EGR cooler? When head gaskets fail, the higher pressure of the combustion gasses enters the cooling system, and you rarely get any coolant out the exhaust. When the EGR cooler fails, it can blow white smoke like crazy.

 

The bottom pic(#78) shows the EGR coolers location.



An easy, but not always accurate way of diagnosing a failed EGR cooler is to pull the EGR valve. If the the area under the valve looks wet or gummy, the cooler is shot. You should have dry soot in there, and that's it. The EGR valve location is shown on the lower picture.

 

a certified ford mechanic checked it out and tested it and he said it was a blown head gasket . he tested the cooling system with a gauge and the gauge was maxed out.

 

i will also check the egr and see if the inside is wet from coolant.

 

That makes more sense in regards to HG's.

You might have both issues going on. Another thing that needs to be checked is the efficiency of your oil cooler(it's an oil to water cooler). This can be done by comparing your coolant and oil temps under normal operating conditions. You don't want to see more than 15* difference between the two, with EOT being the higher value. Many times the oil cooler gets clogged with debris from the cooling system and it starts this chain of events.

Do you plan on doing the repairs yourself?

 

yes i am doing the repair my self i am a diesel mechanic i work on 18 wheelers it is not much different then a cat v8 diesel gust smaller

 

Cool.

Check out the 6.0l forum too. You'll find plenty of tips and tricks for doing these repairs. There are a bunch of helpful guys that hang out there..

 

thanks for the help and i was also looking over on the 6.0l forum and there is alot of info thanks

 

If this is your truck, do yourself a favor and put a coolant filter on it from www.dieselsite.com non treated, the filter is like the one on the big trucks you work on.

 

Excellent help bro. Reps sent William.

Stewart

 

jdw1 no it is not mine it is a friends truck and i will let him know that it is a good idea to put one of these on and he also wants to put a egr from bulletproof on it as well and we are looking into a oil cooler but not sure what type to get yet. thanks for the info

 

the owner of the truck want to try changing the egr cooler and oil cooler befor we tear the heads off the truck to see if this might be the problem, we have been talking to a couple of machine shops and they also said to try this befor we take the heads off and see if that is what it is. any thoughts would be great. thanks vince

 

Just went through this with my truck. Was just the EGR cooler. Installed a full EGR system delete instead of hassling with this over and over again.

 

Excellent response William and suggestions, specially with the images.