So things have been just a tad beyond busy as of late. Earlier this year, the machine shop closed its doors and we were all laid off. Very soon thereafter I completed the beekeeping and live removal apprenticeship I began around this time last year and have pretty much been doing that full time since. Between being too busy with bees or too broke for parts I have neglected a few systems that need some maintenance that assuredly have contributed to what is currently afflicting the health and well being of my motor...

The current symptoms..

At 55-60 mph on flat ground with no load i'm seeing oil temps reaching 300+*f with coolant temps hitting 230* at times in the peak heat of the day.

even prior to the overheating, at a stop light in drive at idle it bellows out white sweet smelling smoke... and im loosing coolant.

During warmup periods under acceleration I see a pretty chronic differential between my pyros. at least 40* difference between the manifolds. before this overheating thing started they would balance out at highway speeds holding the throttle steady. No smoke under acceleration or cruising... only at idle. I get the normal little puff of black if I stomp on it all of a sudden but nothing abnormal other than the idle smoke.

I'm pretty sure I have a couple or few cracked cups...
and leaning towards a clogged oil cooler.

anybody have any other idears?

 

Subscribing..i too have 75*-100* difference with pyros, p/s bring the hotter

 

Possibly a water pump. It would be pretty hard to clog 7.3 oil cooler. Stuck thermostat.

 

Don't totally rule out head gasket, but I think cups, oil cooler may need rebuild, and water pump probably does.

 

I just replaced the water pump less than 1k miles ago. I can see the thermostat activating at 197* while the engine is still warming up. I also just discovered a small crack in my radiator right by the top side hose connection (return) *sad face*.

I have seen no oil in the coolant, or coolant in the oil thus far... I have seen soot in the degas bottle when I first noticed the coolant loss months back... I know that is common with cracked cups.

I had pretty much resigned myself to having to yank the dang oil cooler and clean it.

 

Tim with that much of a difference between your banks I would sure do a cylinder contribution test, and compression test pronto.

 

When was last time you changed the radiator? I would think that radiator could clog before oil cooler. You say that you recently changed water pump and now over heating? I dont suppose your pump had one of those "packaging rings" around the impeller and you failed to remove it? Ask me how i know about that..... Stranger things have happened.... I ran 800+ miles with a compromised water pump and it did exhibit coolant temps of about 230+, dont know what my oil temps were....

 

Great to see you back, Chris - but sorry to hear about the series of woes.

This has a coolant pressure leak feel to it, and maybe cups. The water pump seal could be a thing as well, since you have recent work and the problem is recent. You may even have a cascade failure, with many things contributing to the symptoms.

I'm sure you already know this, but I say it for less-knowledgeable readers - I would drive an alternate vehicle until this gets sorted out before the failure is catastrophic. Those temps will create yet more issues that are difficult to come back from.

 

So I did some tinkering and think I have the oil temp craziness nipped in the bud...
I had a spare oil cooler assembly from an obs motor sitting on the shelf that I had planned to put on ZombieHeart when I ever get around to getting it finished... So I got them swapped over and got the oil changed and she fired up on the first crank when I got it all buttoned back up. "Cool Beans!" me thinks...

Took it up the road and back to see what was what with my temps and HooRay! no more crazy spikes in oil temp..

So after sitting back at the hours for a few hours I needed to go into town to pick up a few things and hopped in the truck without a second thought..

At my first red light I had my first second thought...

She died on me like the key was just shut off...
She refused to fire back up.
The pits of this whole situation was that while trying to diagnose what was going wrong with ae on the laptop (which barely holds a charge and requires power from the adapter) the laptop would emergency shutdown when I would try to crank while looking at icp... that got old real fast lol.

I called my better half and had her bring me my little bluetooth obd2 adapter doo dad... and sure enough the ******* refused to connect to my pcm! I had never had a problem getting it to talk before so I was getting very concerned.

Stretched the power adapter doo dad for the laptop over to her car and plugged it in and then had a good look at what was going on... no icp while cranking... duty cycle at like 68%. *Crap!*

I thoughts and I thoughts and I had a lightbulb!
I also had a spare hpop from an obs sitting on the shelf...
I knew the hpop wasnt going to work in my motor... but what if it is just the ipr giving me guff!!??

So we run back to the house and I grab the obs hpop... yank the ipr... run back to the truck (She stalled on me like 5 miles from the house) and proceeded to swap them out.

I got real nervous for a minute when I got the ipr out of my hpop... It had unscrewed and separated inside its port! It took me a good few minutes and about a tube and a half of profanity grease but I got the back half out of the port and noticed it looked different than the one out of the obs hpop... the obs hpop ipr has a little shiny plate looking doo dad stuck in the very end of the valve... the 99-03 has an open end... I feared the open end was not supposed to be opened like that and the little shiny plug dod dad was stuck up inside the port in the hpop!! Fortunately there was nothing in the port and the obs ipr fit just fine.

After getting it all tightened up and plugs pugged back into their pluggy holes... I gave her a try. She immediately started! then immediately died...

The next time I tried to crank it was already too late and my batts were done.
Tried jumping (I know I know) with her little tiburon's alternator power but no good...
We scooted back to the house and grabbed the battery charger and ran back...
after letting it sit on the charger with the batts connected in the truck for a good 2 hours on the engine start mode it had enough to turn over but not long enough to start. Feeling defeated I decided to pull the batts and bring them back to the house to charge till this morning...

this morning they were both sitting at 14.2 so we hauled bootay back to the truck... slammed the batts back in their homes and cranked with a prayer.
Sure enough she lit off and settled in to a beautiful idle after about a 20 second crank.

Moral of this story is... If you mess with the oil cooler... expect to dislodge some crap in the system that will clog the damn ipr shortly after you get it back together and think everything is groovy....

A new radiator is on a brown truck headed my direction...
It's about time for a new one after the 467k this one has worked... Is that a factory radiator record?

 

Good job of troubleshooting! So the bottom line was oil cooler was blocked. Just think how hot those pistons were with 300* oil coming out of the cooling jets. I think your ipr may have also suffered from that super hot oil for who knows how long. Injectors and o-rings don't like super hot oil.
Larry

 

Nice job on fixing the issue. I think a dissection of the oil cooler needs to happen to see what plugged it up. Besides we like pictures.

 

Great tale of victory, thanks for sharing!

I remember reading something about the IPR changing the lip or something. Plan on running this one or getting a new one?

 

Great job on getting the bug running again! That's a lot of work and frustration... I fear I'd be reaching for the BFH somewhere in that mess.

 

Frustration was definitely starting to set in around 02:30 trying to get the batts up enough to get her started in the conoco parking lot... but I managed to stay calm and just power through it. I nearly did take my big rubber mallet to my ratchet handle tho while trying to get the ipr to break loose.

I'm guessing the old ipr that quit on me was on its way out anyway... I had already done the rebuild on it a couple years ago and it showed signs of wear even back then. I now have mo' power on demand from out of nowhere... and my idle has smoothed waaay out and no more idle smoke! Wierd that my left and right banks have also evened out by 20* steadily on the pyro's.

I think I'm going to stick with this obs cooler and ipr for a while and see how it does. So far I had one hiccup that felt like about a quarter of a second long at 70mph. Truck bucked one time and went back to normal. My oil temp pushing hard did not hit 200* and my coolant temp peaked at 194* on a 197* t-stat.

Have not plugged back in with AE to look at oil pressure yet. I might do that here today.

Still waiting on the new radiator to be delivered.

 

I don't know about hand-shakers, but no oil pressure on the OBDII with autos... sorry.