Hello all,

I recently purchased this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/F-350-Duel-Wheel-with-utility-box-/251360352179?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEWNX%3AIT&nma=true&si=krpj4U3DXeZGYc10UkXkdFnWi7A%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc
The 460 has 113k miles. The exhaust manifolds are leaking at the gaskets (or what's left of them)

Here are my issues:

1. Removed the air intake hoses to start manifold work and found both hoses had a lot of oil in them. After opening up the air filter box, I found the filter and PVC filter both saturated with oil. The air filter is marked Feb. 2013, 111k miles. This oil issue has been happening for a while, the inner fender is covered with oil as well. The dipstick is also wet with oil as well. PCV valve is ok, oil level is a little under the full mark.

I removed the spark plugs and the front two on both sides look good. The rear two on both sides show a little oil with the rears showing the most. No major build up.

So any ideas of what is happening? Seized rings? Plugged passages? Possibly overfilled at some point?

2. There is also an intermittent miss. It seems to come and go. I've checked the wires, cap, and rotor, all seem ok.

3. The manifold work didn't start out very well. I discovered that the front bolt on the driver's side was broken off previously. Attempted to remove the next one back and snapped it as well. So what is the next step? Can the broken bolts be removed with out disassembling the heads?

I have not yet scanned for codes, it's on the list of things to do.

The truck for the most part starts and runs pretty well, except for that miss.

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks

 

Well, there is now a new symptom. There is a distinct miss and what seems to be a pronounced backfire. It's coming from the driver's side and is still intermittent. Scanning for codes is next. Maybe a bad injector?

Any help/advise is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Nobody? Anybody? Could use some advise, or at least a direction to go with troubleshooting.

Thanks

 

First and formost you must find the cause of what sounds like some pretty serious blow by.

You state the PCV valve is ok but can air be drawn from inside the valve cover?

If its not PVC related the cause of the problem is going to be deeper, will take some testing to figure out what that is. Start with the crank case ventilation system verify it can and will actually work.

Gonna want to pull the valve covers, doing so will tell ya a lot about the maintenance its had. Covers clean in side but doesn't look like they where just cleaned probably had regular oil changes, caked with black oil deposits then no just topped off as needed (hopefully at least topped off regular). If didn't get regular oil changes and was ran low on oil a lot its probably gonna be worn rings, caked oil compounding the problem preventing crank case vent action via pvc valve.

Looks like it was a service truck of some sort and maybe didn't get the best of service itself, suggests to me its gonna be more than a simple PVC issue, found the problem and dumped it on the market bought a new one rather than fix it.

Who knows though they might not have even looked at it, found oil in the breather and decided it was time to go, depends on what kinda service they offered though. If auto/truck service you can bet they looked at it....

 

Thanks for the input. The truck has 113k miles and is very clean all over inside and out. I bought it from the second owner who used it for a year or so before his new F550 service truck was built. There is a bunch of receipts for the truck including the original bill of sale for it and the service body. There was obviously a 5th wheel hitch in the bed at some point. My guess is that the original owner had this truck built to tow a camper or large transport trailer. There is virtually no rust and all original paint. So if I have a major engine/trans. problem, I'm ok with it. I just want to pin down what the issue is and then go from there.

I started it today to let it warm up for diagnostic testing but it is missing and backfiring pretty badly. There is also a strong smell of raw fuel on the driver's side when running. I hestate to run it much for fear of doing more damage.

Is a compression test on a cold engine a waste of time?

I should note that this problem was not present when I took delivery of the truck. So I have to wonder if I knocked something loose when starting the exhaust manifold work.

Thanks for any input.

 

Check for spark, one of the basics. How old are the ignition components? Remove the oil cap with the engine running. Is there a lot of smoke/vapor coming out (like a chimney)?

 

Yup appears to be a nice solid truck and definitely worthy of fixing whatever ails it, often don't get the whole story when buying used, the motor will tell that tail.

Yes you'll get an accurate compression read with the engine cold (you don't wanna do it in real cold weather no), make sure its up with fresh oil remove all plugs and block the tb full open during crank, good strong battery. I only mention it as sometimes that very important step is overlooked, can't compress air if can't get none!

Find a cylinder down on compression put little oil down the plug hole test it again, if value rises significantly the rings are bad in that hole. If little or no increase its suffering from broke ring leaking gasket hole in piston etc something the oil can't overcome anyway you get the idea. Allow each cylinder three hits to produce full compression before taking the final reading. Not sure how much detail to mention as don't know if you've done compression testing before.

Anyway IMO no need to find out why its running bad at the moment not until find out what's causing the blow by. Yea might be you just knocked something off, snapped a vac line etc but no point in finding that at this point.
Fix the biggest problem first the blow by, whole thing operates based on engine vacuum, excessive blow by can and will interfere with that cause all kinds of problems even if you haven't knocked anything loose/off.