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Trying to fix a severe oil leak led me to a complete HPOP and fuel bowl reseal.
Likely suspect. Rear HPOP plug was loose and o-ring was trashed. Secondary suspect was the unserviceable plug. It showed signs of a slight leak and wasn’t terribly tight.
HPOP all sealed up and waiting out the 24 hour cure time for the Loctite 680. Did the discharge fittings, rear plug, unserviceable plug, rear plate o-ring, and IPR o-rings.
Fuel bowl was nasty. Cleaned it out as best I could with lacquer thinner and carb cleaner. Never did get it as clean as some I’ve seen on here. The actual o-ring swap was pretty straight forward.
Took me about 9 hours of actual work time to get this done. Right in line with my 3x longer than anyone else project time.
Have a few drips under the truck still. I’m hoping that is just leftovers from the 4 gallons of oil I blew out of it last time I drove it.
I noticed a great deal of oil in the valley under the turbo etc. SO your leak turned out to be a seal on the HPOP? SInce I am going to be doing the banks turbo exhaust and new intercooler boots I guess I should look into the hpop reseal.
I noticed a great deal of oil in the valley under the turbo etc. SO your leak turned out to be a seal on the HPOP? SInce I am going to be doing the banks turbo exhaust and new intercooler boots I guess I should look into the hpop reseal.
If your HPOP hasn’t been resealed and you’ve got oil in the valley, it would be good insurance to just do it.
If you have oil in the valley, it could be from a lot of sources; turbo pedestal being one of them. You could fix that and do some upgrading while you have everything out and accessable. I'm in the middle of that now: doing a fuel bowl reseal, HPOP lines, HPOP reseal, fuel rail crossover, IPR rebuild, EBPV delete, wastegate, turbo wheel, up-pipes, high-pressure crossover, AIS delete/boost gauge port, cleanup and some pruning on the wire loom... you have to be careful, it's a pretty deep rabbit hole. You can't "save" enough money to do all the upgrades, but taking advantage of the disassembly is an enoumous bonus in terms of time saved if you can financially manage it - if only the preventive maintenance items.
Removing the restriction of the muffler allowing exhaust gas to escape quicker is the primary focus of the aftermarket exhaust. Achieveing the desired output for your application and taste is very much a personal taste. Sure if I was 20 years old I would just cut the oe muffler off and down pipe it. I am no longer 20yo, wife and I use this as a camper and it hauls my Jeep around the mountains of CO. I don't want an obnoxious drone on the highway or driving thru the beautiful mountains. YEs the Banks is expensive but it was a output wife and I agreed is a compromise of performance and sound.
What exhaust setup do you prefer? I have had Corsa exhausts on a few other vehicles.
Not trying to stir up any Bee's nest of this vs that just curious.
Not trying to stir up any Bee's nest of this vs that just curious.
Just about anything other than Banks, which is priced two and three times higher than other aftermarket exhaust setups that function and perform just as well or better than Banks.
Tired of this seal hanging down. With some FTE sleuthing, a part number was found: F81Z-16A238-AA.
The buckzooka is pretty depleted right now. I’ve got oil leaks to track down still and I’m afraid what they will cost to tackle.
Dieselorings.com and riffraff I have ordered the maintenance kits for the common culprits. The kits arent that bad but the time and labor getting to the valley could be immense
Dieselorings.com and riffraff I have ordered the maintenance kits for the common culprits. The kits arent that bad but the time and labor getting to the valley could be immense
I did it all, at a very leisurely pace, with company for a week (no work), no dirty truck play on weekends when the girlfriend is on the loose from work, and with a week of rain (I don't work in the rain anymore). Took me a month, probably 4-5 hours a day. So probably less than 5 days of real work, and I did up-pipes, turbo wheel, remake of the wiring harness, stereo work, camera work, some stuff outside of what you have planned.
Best upgrade so far was the battery cables, it spins over like a 1974 Datsun wired to the Hoover Dam.
I’ve had a minor oil leak for at least as far back as my HPOP hemmorage. A few drips on the ground everywhere I parked. I was towing my RV back from the dealer yesterday. They were kind enough to wash it while they had it. That made it real obvious I had more than a few drips as the freshly washed trailer had a nice sheen of oil all over the front of it.
I finally got around to trying to track it down. I looked in the valley first. It was dry up front, so my HPOP reseal looks good. A bit of oil in the middle, but not a lot. The rear had a pretty good puddle. Oil cooler and dipstick mount on the oil pan looked ok. EBPV looked like it has had issues in the past but the built up grime on it looked old and dry. I don’t know where the turbo o-rings might leak so that might still be an issue. From the bottom of the Ex, it seems there is more oil on the passenger side, but both sides are oil covered. Hopefully not a rear main seal...
I knew my HPx had a minor seep on the passenger side and was moist on the drivers side, but it didn’t seem like enough to coat the bottom of the Ex and front of the trailer. I cleaned both HPx fittings real well and then started her up. It took a minute or so before oil soaked out of the passenger fitting and began flowing down the edge of the valve cover. As that’s the only place I could find an active leak, I decided to remove the HPx altogether and replace it with my original rail plugs.
The install of the HPx without the CAC tubes in place was much easier than the removal with them there.
Leaky *** HPx fitting on the passenger oil rail.
Oil rail plugs with new o-rings lubed up and ready to install.
Plugs back in. No leaks after about 5 minutes of idling. I have the check-valve less HPOP fittings now so hopefully get the same affect as the HPx, but without the leaks.
One slightly used Riffraff HPx free for shipping costs to anyone who wants to give it a try (supply your own o-rings). I’m going to put it in the Free Parts listing on the 7.3 forum.
Nice pics, Squirrel. Looks like you are up for the 16-18 year refresh on some things under the hood. Has to be done, and you will be in tall cotton after you get it all taken care of.
Well, haven't done anything to the Excursion for a while. Buckzooka was out of rounds and I was a bit burned out on wrenching. Old age is catching up with me.
I needed to tackle the Exxon Valdez like oil leak. About the only thing I thought it could be was the turbo/pedestal as I've done the HPOP and lines. Oil cooler and dip stick tube fitting still good.
Since I had to take the turbo off anyway I figured I'd tackle other things that would make sense while I was in there. Bellowed up pipes, turbo rebuild, billet wheel, and pedestal delete with high flow outlet. While at it I figured I'd also do my weeping ICP sensor and a new pigtail.
Turbo off. Pictures or it didn't happen.
All the instructions I read said 8mm 12pt socket for the turbo tear down. I had a whole set of 12 point metric sockets so I didn't think twice about it. Turns out my smallest was 9mm. O'Reilly's had a 3/8" drive one. That worked for 18 of the 20 bolts. Two of the center section bolts needed more reach. Drove around town for hours and only found another 3/8" drive deep well 12-pt socket. It didn't go quite deep enough so I put it in a drill and ground down enough to get those two screws out. A 1/4" drive deep 12-pt 8mm would have been optimal.
Riffraff 4x4 billet wheel. Sure is purty!
Last weekend I was roasting tearing everything down. I decided to get this Ozark Trail pop-up from Wally World to keep the sun off.
Turns out I needed to keep the rain off today when finishing up.
I didn't take pictures of everything I did as people have done it before.
Notes: No fitment issues with the Dorman bellowed up pipes. There have been a few threads running around that have indicated some issues. I think those must have been older ones. I did strip one of the up-pipe to manifold clamp bolts. I never found a torque spec on any of the online installation guides. I did it arm-strong tight and that was too much. I ran around town and finally found some 8mm flange bolts at O'Reilly's. Dorman brand of course. This time they worked fine. I used the generic 26 ft-lbs 8mm grade 10.9 spec. No leaks and no stripped bolts!
Aligning the up pipe collector to the back of the turbo housing was every bit the PITA that people say it is. If I had to do it again I could probably do it better, but I hope to never go there again.
Turbo rebuild using the SP Turboost was a snap. That part of the project exceeded my expectations.
Removing the old up pipes was difficult. Not because of rusted bolts, but because of access and the fact the existing factory 20 year old donuts were still hanging on for dear life. Not a sign of soot and took me the better part of an hour to get one of the up pipes to let go of the collector.
ICP sensor removal was cake with a 16mm crowfoot wrench. Needed a 1-1/16" deep well to reinstall. I had only 1-1/8", but it worked.
This project took me more than a week. Tear down was easy enough. Turbo rebuild was easy enough. Putting everything back together kicked my ***. It was 94, sunny and high humidity last weekend. Came down with the funk for most of this week so didn't finish up until today. Monsoon, as seen by the previous picture!
Buttoned everything up and turned the key to prime the newly rebuilt turbo without firing up. Problem is it just fired up. I turned it off to figure out what happened. I thought I unplugged the CPS, but really it was the EBP sensor. *******. Figured what the hay and started it up again anyway. Idled it for 10 minutes in the monsoon and shut down to check for leaks. Looked under the truck and found Valdez again...still. (pic below) ****! What did I do wrong? Where was it coming from?
I looked in the valley, nothing in any section of it. Not coming from the turbo, thank God! Where the heck was it coming from? I started it back up again and got up on the topside creeper (if you don't have one, get one) with a flashlight. Pretty good stream of oil was coming from the driver's side HPOP head fitting. It think this was the major leak I was trying to track down since last fall. There was signs of seepage at the ICP sensor and pigtail, and some signs from the EBPV and turbo pedestal, but nothing like this. I had rebuilt the fittings and put on new o-rings when I did the new HPOP lines. After not having any leaks for the first 6-12 months, I never thought to look back there. Also, the stream of oil was only obvious when the truck was running. After it was shut off it would quickly drain off, barely leaving a trace.
Put in a new fitting that I had and had forgot about (bonus). No leaks!
So, the moral of the story is I have a rebuilt turbo, new up pipes, and a deleted pedestal, all because I didn't thoroughly search for the true source of the leak because I had already "been there".
