Old thread revival but I've got a leaking gasket on the lower water pump inlet elbow requiring some attention, which means it would be a good time to finally do something about the degas bottle since I will have to drain the rad anyway to fix it. After some hemming and hawing I think I've decided to just roll the dice on a new plastic OEM bottle for $125 rather than shell out the big bucks for the SInister or other aluminum ones. Emailed Riff-Raff and asked if they had those on offer again and he said no but they where considering testing them to see if the QC problems might have been corrected. (Who knows).

Sinister raised the price to $380 for theirs I saw, and I am not convinced the aluminum ones wont crack and leak over time anyway as the chassis tweaks and flexes over uneven terrain and stresses out the bottle at the hard mounting points. Possibly a false concern but there might be a reason Ford made these plastic in the first place is what I'm getting at, and Y2K eluded to this earlier in the post with the comments on the specific types of aluminum used. 7.3Excursion4x4 even mentioned how his very expensive PSPDiesel one developed a weld crack, so this isn't unheard of either. I won't be anywhere near as disappointed if a $125 OEM plastic bottle craps out on me when I'm already half expecting it to in the first place. Spend $300-400 on a fancy one and a year or two later if something goes wrong with it, good luck getting them to take any responsibility for it.

 

My original bottle went 15 years and I replaced it with a new OEM about 3 years ago. No problem so far knock on wood

 

I bought the dorman for my impending w.p. job. Will update if any issues

 

Another failure story: I had one fail in my truck but in a different way. Was driving from Montana back home to Arizona and the truck had a pretty good oil leak so I kept stopping and topping off/checking oil. The degas bottle broke off the mounting tabs and was resting against a pulley getting eaten away, luckily I stopped to check oil just in time because it was paper thin at that point. So I tied it out of the way with some rope and made the 30 or so miles to Moab where I was able to find a Dorman replacement at autozone. Moral of the story is oil leaks are a blessing. Almost ended up stranded in nowhere with a trailer in tow. Also as I've seen in other posts, the cap doesn't seal.

 

Been running my Rudy's Diesel degas bottle since last November. No issues whatsoever.

 

Mine's got swipe marks on the back of it from rubbing the A/C pulley also but not because the mounting tabs are broken...previous owner was in a front end collision and apparently the bottle got re-used by the repair shop. Another good reason to get rid of it.

I just bought one from the local dealer and actually the price wasn't all that much worse than what the Fleabay sellers have them for. Lately I try to source whatever I can locally rather than waiting for Amazon or UPS to show up.

 

This thread was linked today, and skimming through it, I noticed that one photo was missing from this thread that illustrates an inherent problem with opaque coolant degas bottles made from aluminum.

A site glass "hole" is useful for to see what the coolant level is in the degas bottle. There is either liquid visible in the site glass hole, or there isn't.

But a peep hole isn't that good at letting an operator know if there is oil or fuel in the coolant. Just liquid level. And they are all liquids that can get mixed up with a 7.3L HEUI injection system where high pressure oil, fuel, and coolant all flow just one O ring apart from each other... even without a head gasket failure.

A translucent coolant bottle is more effective at informing an operator of coolant condition at a glance. One can backlight through the entire bottle to see what lurks in the murkiness.



Shining a flashlight through the translucent coolant bottle to visually inspect coolant.

 

I've got one in the shop right now with one of those aluminum tanks. Not naming names, but I don't know why it's not blue.

Anyway, he had cup issues and had another shop fix it. The only way he can tell if there's any residual stuff in the tank is by shining a light down into it....the depth of the film is a guessing game. It's a nice piece but an at-a-glance check with the stocker is absolutely worth it.....a seep at a seam doesn't bother me enough to go to something I can't just eyeball real quick.

 

To both your points, even a point mounted sight glass/tube (open at top and bottom) would not necessarily reveal a recent contaminant issue... unless there were enough volume movement through the sight glass/tube to replace the liquid inside the tube with what's currently in the tank. That is the biggest thing I do NOT like about my aluminum tank. I'm resigned to needing to periodically open and shine a light to inspect, and I can live with that. Were I able to weld and build my own, it would have a seriously thick pane of tempered glass in the end of the tank as a sight of what's hiding inside.

 

I picked up a Dorman at O'Reillys after I was told there that all of their Dorman parts have a lifetime warranty. I prefer the transparent bottles, and the price of $65 including replacements sits right with me even if I need a new one every 200k miles. New stock cap, and everything's dandy,

 

Not sure a consensus was reached here.

I like the idea of the plastic bottle (to see contamination) but don’t want to spend money on OEM if the QC has gone downhill.

I’m less concerned about spending extra money and more concerned about being stranded due to a part failure.

Does anyone have any recent thoughts?

 

I went with a Dorman one. There were complaints about the cap but those have been addressed in the newest revision. No leaks in the short time I used it before starting engine rebuild.

 

There's still a lot of choices on Ebay for under $50.00 with seller paid return shipping. If it leaks, ask for another one. I have an aftermarket one that I bought from my parts house when I was still working on there after going through two OEM tanks in as many months, leaking at the seam and soaking the right side battery.

 

Not sure there is a right choice here, I've tried quite a few. The aluminum one that Rudy's used to sell is the only one that hasn't given me problems but it is hard to see any contamination. I have found that if I put a flashlight up to the sight glass at night and then look into the tank via fill port you can see if there is any contamination pretty easily though. If you go aluminum get one with a sight glass. If you want plastic I would go with dorman, although I have had them fail, if you get one from a local parts store it is a easy exchange as they have a lifetime warranty. Given the cost of the OEM tanks and all the problems they have , it doesn't seem justifiable, just my 2 cents...

 

My unit from Rudy's is also running well, but the price has definitely gone up since I purchased mine nearly two years ago.