Have 69k on a 2004 6.0 and found some sand in the degas bottle. Took it in for a complete flush, however, I decided to see what it would take to do the whole job for prevention.
They will replace the oil cooler, flush the whole thing, do egr delete with programmer and put on the head studs for $5200. Is this a fair price?

 

replace the oil cooler with stock one or one from bpd? i am doing a bunch of stuff from bpd and my parts alone are over 4k.

 

This is at the Ford house. They have one of the best diesel mechanics in the area according to all the guys in this area. I imagine it's a Ford stock cooler.

 

don't waste your money on an oem oil cooler, you will be essentially prolonging the failure date. it will eventually fail. sounds like they are trying to sell you a ***** sandwhich with special sauce.

 

I agree with daddykitty, I did th BPD upgrade. It i spendy but well worth the extra $$.It just does'nt make sense putting the OEM unit back in just to have it fail again because it will. BPD really did their homework on this, Ford engineers should have done theirs. The egr is another weak spot in the system that the guys in blue should have come up with something else . SPEND THE MONEY and do it right you'll be happier you did. ollllo

 

some folks will chime in for both points of view.

i have the bpd oil cooler, and was sitting in
traffic for half an hour idling today. someone played
spin the volvo on the 405 freeway.

ambient air temp was 88, inlet air temp was 124 ish,
oil temp was 193, coolant was 191. and i'm in a van,
which gets sucky airflow compared to the trucks.

 

Interesting that this is at a "Ford house", which I would guess to mean dealership. I can't imagine that they would alter emissions equipment and risk a HUGE fine or loss or the loss of their dealership status.

As to your original question about it being a "fair price", I think that's an extremely subjective question without having a breakdown of specific parts and labor prices, but it's not totally out of the ballpark by any means.

 

That's not really true. EGR failure is almost always due to Oil Cooler failure. The root cause would be the oil cooler, not necessarily the EGR Cooler.

Now go a step further back. Why is the Oil Cooler failing? In this case, as it is in a huge portion of cases, there is sand in the system. That's going to cause issue with any system that needs to be clean and pure. Even more so in systems that have tighter tolerances, but having tight tolerances doesn't mean that it is flawed. Hell your very expensive sports cars have very tight tolerances and need very frequent visits to the dealership to keep them running in tip top shape.

As to a Ford dealership altering emissions equipment and run the risk of a huge federal fine and probably the loss of the dealership, that's ballsy on their part. Not many places around here would do that, especially since there have been a few places closed down to this very practice.

Now considering you already have sand in there, I wouldn't trust either system that is in there now. However, I'm not a huge advocate on deleting portions of the systems either, for a variety of reasons.

 

Get the BDP Oil Cooler. Why even mess with the OEM one. Your already into it. It IS a better cooler.

 

Most important thing to do here if you have a problem with the casting sand is to also MAKE SURE YOU INSTAL A COOLANT FILTER!

I like this one best;

IPR High Flow Coolant Filter Ford 6.0

 

if you however do a flush with vc9 and install a bpr egr cooler, a coolant filter is redundant and not necessary unless you are completely ****

 

Call me **** then..... If it costs me an extra $200+\- for peace of mind that my water pump and coolers etc... are all going to be that much more protected and increase longevity, I'll take it!

 

Because I can still change 8 stock coolers and come out ahead on parts costs over a single BPD cooler. Even if you figure in $50-100/hr if I paid myself labor, I could do 4 stock coolers before I spent more than if I'd bought the BPD. If they can make 100k intervals, stock is cheaper if you do your own work.

 

That really shouldn't be "even if". When people compare prices, you need to compare all the prices for a true C/B ratio of what to do. Doing it yourself costs you. Time has a value. Rather it's a dollar value, or value of the time spent with friends and/or family or the lost wages of a job you could have taken if you didn't have to work on your vehicle. I would also factor closure to $100 per hour as my dealership charges $90 last time I looked.

I'm not saying you still won't come out ahead of the game (it looks like you will based on your figures (if accurate, sorry, I have to add that in there)), but you really need to factor everything. I see it time and time again on here especially where people say doing it yourself means no labor charge. There really is a labor charge, it just may not be the straight dollar labor charge that they are used to.

 

I get with your point, and I agree with it. I said "even if" because to me my time is valued differently depending on what I'm doing, and 50-100 is higher than I'd value myself for this kind of job. If I can laze along and do an oil cooler an hour or two at a time over 4 nights, then those hours are maybe worth $15 each because all I'd be doing is drinking beer and watching reruns, and part time wrenching that isn't critical is an enjoyable hobby for me. If I needed my truck tomorrow or I was facing a deadline at work at the same time, those same hours could be worth $200 each and going to a dealer and paying their shop rate would be worth it. Plus, for this exact job I'd have to put a lot more time into a BPD install that I've never done before, so the break even for me on this is still so many oil coolers into the future that I doubt I'd ever go through that many. Even if I did, $2100 right now is more to me than $500 a piece spread out over 10 years. The guy asked why mess with OEM... because it's a heckuva lot cheaper, time for labor included.

It's all variable, sometimes my time isn't worth anything. Just ask my boss about what he thinks of my bill-rate while I'm on FTE