All of a sudden my water temp jumped up to 9 out of 10 on the gauge while going up a steep long grade with the A/C on. At the top, the 'Check Engine' light and Oil pressure light went on, then engine when in to 'protection' mode and I was barely able to get off the road. After turning it off and letting it set, it fired up fine again and the temp was back to normal. I was low on oil as it has been consuming 1/2 quart a week. I had an oil leak and smelled oil burning, so not sure where it is being consumed, but it was two quarts low on this day. All other fluids were fine, belt was fine, fan was fine. No loss of any coolant. Put two quarts of oil in and drove home. It did it again on another steep, short hill, but hasn't done it since. It was a hot day (85F) and it hasn't been that hot since.

Today I took it to the shop and had them do some diagnosis: They found PCM codes stored: P1282 (Cylinder Head over-temp detected) and P1299 (Cylinder head protection active). On the smog machine, then found the engine temp at 255 degrees and found HC entering the cooling system. Detected 250_ HC in cooling system, which means a blown head or import/exhaust gasket was allowing super heated exhaust gases into the cooling system, and immediately caused the overheating (9/10 of the gauge).

The shop said that the heads needed to be removed and inspected for either replacement or a new engine was needed. They said new gaskets would not be a good fix for this. Has anyone had a similar experience and what was their fix? It seems a new engine is a bit extreme for a V-10 (2000 F-250 Crew 4x4) with 183,000 miles on it. I've heard of them going much longer than this.

Thanks for the help.

 

 

It all depends on what other damage was done by the leaking head gasket. Hydrolock can cause eventual bearing/rod failure, did you hear any knocking?

 

The shop is trying to hose you into a big dollar repair ( new engine ) , when in fact you may be perfectly fine with new head gaskets and have the heads checked at a reputable machine shop .

 

I do believe you need a second opinion from a different shop.

 

I suspect you just have a bad sensor.
Anti-freeze would be puking or disappearing if it was that bad I would think?

 

Not really, I just did the head gaskets on my wifes Excursion even thou a 5.4 it had a small leak seeping thru the head gasket from cylinder #3 to the closes cooling passage, and never once did it puke coolant out the degas bottle, it would randomly peg the dummy gauge on the cluster loosing all power like the OP but engine never really overheated it was just an air pocket created by the compromised head gasket. A tall tale of this problem is having a hard rock radiator hoses when cold and also checking for hydro carbons.

 

Op a machine shop should be able to tell you if the heads are good meaning maybe just milling them flat is all they need, or bad having cracks that are not repairable.
and this point it would be smart just to have the heads rebuild to insure you get many more miles out of the engine.