So after purchasing my 2005 F-250, with 73,000 miles on it, and finding a 30 degree delta on the ECT/EOT, I replaced the oil cooler and egr cooler. I brought the old cooler down to a machine shop and paid the guys $20 to cut it open on their vertical band saw. After getting it home I used my compressor and some running water to clean the aluminum debris from the cut.

To my surprise, it didn't look bad at all. Nothing like other pictures I've seen with obvious blockages. I decided to use my dremel to cut open the top and get a good view of the coolant 'layer'. There is a buildup of something which is damn hard and not easy to scrape away. It seems to get worse as you get closer to the coolant supply area. But, there doesn't seem to be an obvious overwhelming blockage. Although the brown substance looks like slime, it is solid and only wet looking because of the water I used to rinse off the cutting debris.

 

Your cooler appears to be a lot better looking than mine was. I also had a delta of 30-35 degrees, but clogged is clogged. What is your spread now? Mine is now running about 3-7 unloaded and about 6-9 under heavy loads with hot Florida temps. Your 6.0 should be happy now!

 

Nice pic reps to you

It shure doesnt look that clogged

Mine had a 25* spread and it was plugged solid

heres a pic for show & tell day

 

Wow, what do you figure plugged it?

 

My delta is about 4-6 now unloaded. Going on my first big tow next week.

 

I would be will to chip in to have that stuff analyzed. Or, is there a thread that tells exactly what that is? Is it for sure silicates? Because that is a lot of silicate if it is.

 

After seeing a few different results from cutting these things open, and the various discussion online, I am of the belief that it may not be any single contaminant for each and every instance. I think it's just a bad design where anything foreign and capable of collecting is getting trapped in there. Some folks are lucky enough to have cleaner cooling systems than others. There's really no other way to explain why so many folks are able to run the gold coolant for 100k+ miles with no ill effects, while others clog up within 30-60k. If it were definitive, I would think it would be reproducible consistently.

If I thought I had enough material here to get analyzed, I would entertain the notion, but I have a feeling it would be expensive and inconclusive. I'll hold on to this thing in the event an opportunity comes up though.

 

That's the kind of crap I see in our Seawater condensers (on Submarine) all the time. Heat bakes the crap onto the heat transfers surface and creates a hard scale like pictured above.

I've read where the Silicants cause organics to grow if left unattended. When we clean out or stuff, we have to use high pressure water lances with 4,000+ psi. It's a major PITA.


Your stuff sure looks like organics to me. It doesn't take much of that scale to seriously impede your heat transfer. Looks like you have a decent coating on each transfer wall

 

Sounds reasonable. Perhaps it wasn't the clogging which led to my delta, but the inability to transfer heat properly. If that were the case, then an EGR cooler failure may not have been the big danger here (unless the veins in the EGR cooler were similarly affected). When I hooked up the hose to the water inlet and outlet, the flow seemed fine through the cooling veins (although I'm hardly emulating the environment in the cooling system and cant measure total flow).

 

I wonder if Ford skipped the distilled water in the making of Ford gold coolant. That crap looks like hard water baked on a heat element.

 

Dude send this to high binder he is doing research on these things. and by the way it doesn't look that bad, looks kind of like mine did when i cut it

 

If you want to spend a bit more money and do some testing, I'd be interested in what Restore would do to that scale

That may be the very reason alot of guys do a Restore and Restore+ flush. I've used acid to clean seabeastie growth before. Not as effective as mechanical, but it does work

 

I have some restore and restore plus left over from my flush. What do you propose I do?

 

FYI
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...rs-needed.html

 

Why don't you try soaking it in vinegar, people use this with great success on electric coffee makers to remove mineral deposits.