So I got this on my travels for the holiday, doing 85mph. The oil cooler has been slightly suspicious for some time, but deltas were less than 15 at 60mph until this trip. Recently i might get a delta of 16-18 doing 80-85mph (not towing). This time it stayed about 20 doing 75-80mph and hit 25 when I had to pass a few trucks and was going 85mph for a longer spell. That was when the wrench light came on and gave that code.

So anyway, I do need to drive home. Highest oil temp was 217 which is not that bad and it did come down when I slowed down. This is in South FL and it is still hot here (85+F). I won't have to drive for a week and I have everything at home ready to go as I have been expecting this day to come.

Questions: How urgent is this? I think I probably can drive 150mi home without too much trouble. At home I am rarely on the highway so I figure the next week or two.

How long can I ride around with just water in the coolant system? I ask b/c I will do the flushing first but no sense in putting antifreeze in until the job is done and it is not going to freeze by me.

God news is that otherwise the truck has been running extremely well. I finally get to do the STC and standpipes too. There is also a mystery leak near or on the driver side valve cover that I will get to investigate (I bet it is my CCV mod). I will admit I am a bit scared about getting the wire loom back on properly - oh and the damn turbo

 

I wouldn't keep just water in it too long it will set up corrosion inside the block and that could clog up a bunch of thing.

 

Good point - I was thinking hopefully just a few days, but I guess I will fill it with coolant if it takes longer than that.

 

and without coolant, the water will boil.

 

I'll need to look into this. My coolant temp has never gone above 195F, well below the 212F water will boil at sea level. Plus the system is under pressure and should raise the boiling point to close to 250F (like a pressure cooker). I agree though that safer is the way to go. I also want to make sure I do a really good job flushing the system. I do not want to skimp on that. Good thing is I was due for a coolant flush - I do them every three years regardless of mileage (b/c I don't log a lot of miles.)

 

The wire loom is easy. Once you start putting it back together. .. it falls into place.

 

That's what I was hoping - it looks like a crazy octopus when you strip it off though (I've watched a lot of videos).

 

Without coolant you also could have cavitation issues.
Not good. ALso if you do have some cavitation at the
waterpump impeller and blow a hole in the back side
of that housing your going to have the chocolate milkshake
to clean up after.


Sean

 

Yeah, I will just do a complete coolant flush and replace before the oil cooler work. I don't want to take any chances and I worry the repair could take me a while - I am not going to have an uninterrupted weekend for it.

Any thoughts on how urgent it is to replace the oil cooler, if the deltas stay less than 15 driving around town. Other than the 150mi drive home, I won't be on the highway again until it is fixed and hopefully that will be in the next week or two.

 

Not sure if you have an EGR cooler or not, but that would be your biggest worry (and corrosion/cavitation) by not running coolant, otherwise, you could go for quite a while. Remember that the original spec was a 25* spread and using a bit of common sense, which you obviously have, helps in this area. IMHO you'll be fine.

 

A few days with water only don't hurt anything.

If you have an egr delete, drive it. When the oil temps get to 255 degrees, your fan kicks on full speed to drop the coolant temps and oil temps. I towed this summer with a steady oil temp of 245 with occassional drifts to 256. I have an egr delete.

If you have an egr cooler installed, you biggest fear is not oil temp, but rupturing that egr cooler and blowing coolant into to your intake. Take it easy, and that won't happen. Do a delete (if you will be driving off road only) while you''re in there.

It took me an hour to label all 6,836 electrical connectors to make sure I got them reassembled correctly. Upon reassembly, it's hard to get them wrong. It's easy to break an ficm plug, but zip ties work great.

For the turbo, loosen both driver and passenger manifold to up pipes. If your doing a delete, the passenger has to come off anyway. Loosen turbo outlet and turbo mounting bolts. Use antisieze on the blanks and tighten ypipe and turbo exhaust. Tighten turbo bolts. Tighten exhaust manifold to up pipe bolts. That's the surest way to avoid leaks but takes longer. You can take some shortcuts if you've done a few or are lucky.

 

I do still have an EGR cooler - I am going to put in the bulletproof one. Thanks for the advice. I'll take it easy on the ride home and then get to work.