Came out of the parts store to find a small puddle of coolant under the truck. Hurried home (gently) and found a pool between intake ports, passenger side rear two cylinders with a nice little stream the size of a mechanical pencil lead looking just like a water bubbler feeding it.

Mechanic friend thought intake manifold gasket but reading here that gasket is dry and this is likely a cracked head? Are they that delicate? I was not beating on this at all. Is this a common failure? What could I have done to provoke it, or prevent it from happening next time?

From prior threads this could also actually be a cracked block or maybe a head gasket. Since the turbo makes a little noise (on decel) and I've got a bit of leaking and blow-by and an oil report showing high wear, I am a little bit on the fence about which way to go - a new head, a fresher engine (maybe 7.3?), PSD convert (not likely), or another truck all seem on the table...

Thanks for any thoughts or insights,
- Jeff

 

drain all the antifreeze out of it .go to the drug store and get some waterglass it is used for sealing concrete put it in add water to top drive it and get it warmed up good till it stops leeking ,drain put antifreeze back in . it worked for me

 

That is absolutely terrible advice. The only time you should add anything other than proper coolant is when you're in a dire, as in life-threatening emergency. Otherwise, take a step back, we'll help you get through this.

There are other things you can do to diagnose this. Do a leakdown test, or at the very least open your radiator cap and see if you're getting pressure through the radiator. Check for oil in your coolant and check to see if your oil level is higher than it should be.

 

he was talking about changing motors in some cases it will work for a quik fi instead of changing motors

 

One option is just to add stop-leak. Stuff's cheap, might do it. If it works, call it good, keep an eye on your levels and ignore it until you rebuild the engine.

You also might be able to JB-weld it; clean the area around it real nice, rough it up some(sandpaper is supposed to be good), apply JB weld, let it set and, well, if it works, you've saved a lot of money and hassle.

Yes, a 'proper' fix is better, but if it's not a gasket, it sounds like a pile of money. Hack it together, call it good.

 

A cylinder head at the local junkyard I use is $45... Just sayin'.

 

No oil seen in coolant, no coolant seen in oil, no big coolant cloud from exhaust but haven't been able to sniff test that yet.

There's a middle ground here somewhere. I'm still surprised my searches led to cracked head, just suspect head gasket much more likely. Don't think any of those threads actually had the loop closed with "yea it was a cracked head" but clearly it's not the intake manifold gasket.

So the chore of doing the head gasket on this motor leaves me thinking. I've had this truck for 3500 miles, and had one oil analysis at 3k leading to "don't extend the intervals, AT ALL" and I think I have a noise from the turbo on decel. It's got a lot of blow-by and leaks/burns a quart in ~6-800 miles, and has had a turbo on it for a long time with no evidence of SCA. Truck appears to have 280k and the motor was "rebuilt" but no idea when. With it apparently having held a slide-in camper with a C6/4.10 I'm sure this thing has spent a lot of time going down the highway near 3k. How much of that time was with a bad waste gate I do not know.

Since I'm swapping the trans to e4od and I'm having trouble finding a FIPL, I know I'll be loading it heavy and studs would be useful, and I probably need to send the turbo out anyway why put the effort (found a fresh head for probably $150) into this engine? Looks like for a few hundred more I could have a 7.3 idi with known miles and sitting on the ground a set of studs is more likely to slip in. If I can find one whose oil looks and analyzes OK I may even go for new IP, injectors and GPs/controller all of which seem likely to need attention in the next year or two on the current motor.

Denny's leak fix sounds pretty cool for a "last chance", but I wouldn't want to do that to my water pump if it was going to stay in service.

Still wonder if any of the threads I found were actually cracked heads...

Thanks for your thoughts,
- Jeff

 

i was losing water pretty mutch a gallen every 75 miles didn't have time or money to do what i should of so i went with waterglass and i have put 50,000 on it sense then and have not had any problems. but do have oil burning problems so think i am going to change motors now it's a 7.3 with about 300,000

 

Do these engines have a oil consumption issue or what? I mean 300k on the engine that big should be in the middle of lifetime when taken care of. Or am I wrong? My BMW 2.5 TDS had 500k miles by the time I got rid of it and it used 1 liter for 3000miles which is more than acceptable, and mainly because of turbo, usually the criteria here in Europe are if it is 1 litre for 1000km it is fine, even on new cars. You cant apply warranty if it uses less than a litre for 1k km. My Grand Voyager with 2.5 TD engine has 250k miles and no adding oil between changes, and I prolonged them to 15000km. I am just wondering how much oil uses the engine by itself, I assume the most of it consupts the turbo leaking to the intake in your cases.
I mean this big engine, not putting that much power should last hell of a miles, we are using here like scooter engines compared to yours, mostly the cars here are like 2 litres diesels or petrol, and they put 250k miles without any major problems.
And also as I read here u are changing injectors and ip like spark plugs on petrol engines. I have never ever had a bad injector on my cars through 20 years of driving diesel cars beaten to death. Yes once, and it was the new injector that bit a dust after 1000miles. And I changed them only to think it would run better on my first diesel car I ever got. It is not that big problem to test them, test the spray pattern, opening pressure and just adjust them and use them again. The only case to exchange is dripping, and usually u can hear that by knocking from the engine or bad spray pattern but again never seen it on my cars.
I do not believe that specially these IDI´s are junk,just trying to say we have here shops that test the injectors and ip and mainly they just adjust it or replace some rubber stuff inside the ip and off you go. U must have them aroud there as well.
Just my opinion and kind of rhetorical question. I do not want to offend anybody.

 

Not sure if your reply is about this thread, which is about a mysterious coolant leak that searching leads to believe might be a cracked head.

I knew when I bought the truck that it was 29 years old and had spent that time with a small building on it while also pulling something big behind it, around the earth's circumference nearly a dozen times. I do know the truck appeared reasonably taken care of but it's detailed history is not available to me.

Anyone can turn any vehicle into crap if they try hard enough, and anyone can turn any vehicle into crap if they do not try hard enough to avoid it. As to your German car, around here every 3 series I know has had its rear subframe mounts go to hell and the cooling systems self destruct every few years. Our roads can be like third world but without the excuses, and our climate is something of a stress test.

Back to the topic, and I went back to look at my oil report. The metals that are high are chromium and molybdenum. I wonder if this is from chrome-moly rings at the rebuild, and if the stock rings are not that composition so those metals don't appear in the universal averages...

I still wonder, never seen an iron head crack that wasn't a casting flaw and at this age that kind of flaw should have appeared decades ago. A head gasket makes more sense but why would it pop only in the cooling system? The truck does run hot down the highway, hadn' t had the chance yet to put in a known Motorcraft thermostat. It's still probably a week until I can get this apart - I remember my mechanic friend doing HGs in a new body PSD and saying he never wanted to do that again...

Later,
- Jeff