This is on a 2005 F350 with about 95k miles. I've been loosing coolant for about a month with no evidence of a leak. I started seeing white smoke a few days ago so I pulled the EGR valve and it was covered in a black tarry goo. Delta's weren't perfect, but I would think 10-12* is okay. Since I have all three symptoms I deduced that my EGR cooler was leaking so I ordered a BPD EGR cooler as well as the external oil cooler kit. While waiting I went to work tearing everything down. Now that I have the oil cooler out I connected it to a hose to see if it would pass water, no problem there. Seems like if it was obstructed there would have been some blowback of water. I lip locked it and blew through it, air passed without any problem. I took my sawsall and cut it in two - there might be some staining to the metal on the water jacket side but no sand, silica gell, or any other obvious signs of obstruction.

So is it possible for an EGR cooler to fail with what appears to be a normal oil cooler. I feel like I just wasted a crap load of money on this BPD oil cooler - I know I didn't, you can't put a price on sanity or peace of mind...

I'll post the pics when I get to a computer that I can access file share sites from.

 

I also have an 05 and had my EGR cooler fail without losing my oil cooler. I welded my cooler up and put it back on and have gone 15000+ miles on it since. I didn't remove my oil cooler because I had been monitoring my deltas and had and still have 7-9 degrees. Dunno why it failed but it did. Have heard its possible for it to break lose or crack inside due to excess heat and engine vibrations. Who knows.

 

Being cooled down quickly will crack them. Like when doing a coolant flush and not letting it cool enough before adding water.