First, thanks to all the great people who contribute to this site; You are a wealth of knowledge and much appreciated.

A brief history about the 6.0 out of my F450. She has been properly maintained. Has a K&N air filter. Had the Injectors replaced @ ~70k. This is all until recently.

She now has 145k miles on her. About 10k miles ago, she was blowing white smoke w/no power. Took her to my local ford dealer and they told me the EGR cooler was bad. They took several thousand dollars from me and replaced my EGR cooler and oil cooler. She worked fine for several months.

About a month ago we noticed the degas bottle was low all the time. We would fill it only to have to fill it again the next day. We assumed, because we had no other symptons, that our degas bottle was cracked @ the seam on bottom. I ordered another bottle for her. The day we replaced the degas bottle, she was smoking badly again with no power. After about ten minutes, the smoke stopped and she acted normal. We pulled our mini-excavator to the job and she did fine. The next day we cranked her up, same problem. We took her to the dealer for another check up.

The dealer called me a couple of days later and told me the EGR cooler had gone bad again and he would replace it no charge; I told him to go ahead and fix her. A couple of days after this, he called me and told me that they replaced the EGR and Oil cooler, but that she had blown a head gasket and told me that it would be ~$4500 dollars to repair. I told him to leave it alone that we would come and pick it up. He said it wouldn't hurt it to drive home (only ~2 miles from my shop) so we did.

I decided, after reading all the information that I could find on this forum, that we should pull the engine and do some work to her. I have purchased the parts for and intend on doing the following to the engine:

- ARP Studs
- EGR Delete
- HPOP Update
- "Blue Spring" update
- Coolant Filter
- Updated Standpipe and dummy plug kit

With the engine on the stands and the heads in the machine shop for checking/rebuilding, I decided I would clean up the block a little bit. This is when I noticed that one of the pistons had some damage to her. On the top of #3 piston, there is some charring with the edges of the piston 'rounded' over.

The picture below is the top of this piston. May need to right click 'open image in new tab' to see.


This picture is of the cylinder wall for #3


I have already ordered a replacement piston but I need to know two things.....

1. Does anyone know what caused this? What do I need to do so this doesn't happen again?

2. The scratches on the walls of the cylinder aren't deep, I can barely feel them with my fingers. What is needed, if anything beyond honing, to recondition the cylinder walls so the new rings will seat?

 

Recommend posting this down in the 6.0 Forum in the Diesel Section. You'll get a lot more input there from a lot of knowledgeable people, including some diesel techs.

 

Thanks Frank, I tried to delete it here but no luck