Hey All!

I recently picked up a 98 F150 Lariat 5.4 that supposedly had a blown head gasket and found only an oil floater on top of the coolant in the recovery tank. It has a miss on perhaps a couple of cylinders, but I think that's a plug/coil issue, but didn't see any coolant in the oil, mayonnaise on the dipstick or filler cap.

It has the factory block mounted oil cooler with the filter relocated under the front bumper. I isolated the cooler from the rest of the cooling system and flushed, flushed, flushed that beast, using some Murphy's Oil Soap (tested it on the shiny side of aluminum foil first) and finished up with a little Dawn dish soap, then flushed with plain water till it ran clear. Ran the engine for about 15 minutes or so, from idle to the 2500-3000 RPM range and no more oil in the coolant (oil pressure gauge was at about 2/3rds / 3/4 range, so I think I dx'd correctly and the oil cooler is the culprit.

I like the relocated filter, but I think it's the original setup with the individual hoses, while the superseded part takes puts both hoses on one connection header at each end (from the diagrams). So $230 for the cooler, plus new hoses and I'll have a time bomb waiting to go off and knock me back to square one. True, it had about 190k on it when this all came to a head, but I'd rather have an aftermarket air-cooled kit that will simply make a puddle on the ground if it fails.

In the meantime I'm just going to take the old cooler off and switch the the threaded filter bung from the remote filter adapter to the filter adapter on the side of the block till I can give this thing a better shakedown cruise (I had it towed from the Seller's home), see what else a truck with almost 200k on the clock might be in desperate need of and figure out the triage.

Any hints, tips, guidance on replacement oil coolers/filter relocation kits, etc?

The Canton/Moroso type adapter that's a mostly a flat plate with various fitting looks kind of interesting and unsettling at the same time. The Hayden-type looks kind of cheap and I don't trust barb fittings and your typical stainless hose clamps at that kind of pressure, even double-clamped. This truck is going to be spending a fair bit of time in the sticks and rolling the dice on a breakdown out there just doesn't appeal to me. Plus I'm sure Mother Nature would prefer that I didn't blow a gallon and a half of synthetic all over her. But yeah, a larger filter in a place that's easier to get to would be nice! The fittings on the original equipment seem to be proprietary from what I see, so the hoses, remote filter mount, etc. will all have to be new.

Which reminds me... I need to find out where the bypass on these beasties is, if there's one aside from the one in the oil filter.

Anyway, your thoughts on this?

 

As was figured out by 2001 these engines saw little benefit from the cooler and they were deleted. I would delete it and run the filter on the block like millions of other trucks and not think twice.

 

Thanks! That would save a fair bit of dough for other uncertainties, like the fuel pump.