my truck is smoking and seems to be loosing anti freeze- what could be wrong. also has kind of a faint tick or knocking sound. the smoke is white and bellows out at startup and gets less after it warms up. exhaust smells kinda like antifreeze. antbody have an idea what can cause this and what the fix is.

 

www.leakingfords.com This sight will tell you everything you need to know.

 

"oh no" - accurate assessment of the situation.
"now what?" - ga$ket$.

I'd park it until you get it fixed. Sounds like you've been lucky so far. If you try to crank it and the offending cylinder(s) happen to be on the compression stroke AND have taken on some liquid....
well...you ain't gonna compress the liquid. Metal pieces bend and break and you get to spend even more money.

 

You're definitely leaking coolant into the cylinders. More likely than not, it is from the lower intake gaskets.

Before you over-worry about bent rods and rebuilding the engine, if this is a faint tick rather than a knocking or banging, it may just be the sound of the exhaust you're hearing.

You will need to have the lower intake gaskets replaced as soon as you can. The cost is around $400.00 parts and labor. Also: Do not allow a mechanic to try and convince you that it's a blown head gasket. It may look like a blown head gasket but it's not. I've heard over and over again from people who say their mechanic wants to replace the head gasket(s). Every case ended when they removed the lower intake and found the gaskets were blown. The head gaskets on this engine are not a problem. You don't need to spend an extra $1000.00 to replace them.

Brian is also right about parking the truck until you get it fixed. You DO NOT want to just park it for a week and then start it up to drive to a mechanic however. As long as your truck is sitting, coolant is leaking into the cylinder, and if you try to start the engine with all of that coolant in the combustion chamber, you're going to throw a rod.

What you can do to avoid damage to the engine is remove all of the spark plugs before you start it to drive to the shop. Then crank the engine to expel the coolant from the cylinders through the empty spark plug holes. Then, reinstall the spark plugs and head for the shop. You also need to let the shop know that they cannot start the engine and must again remove the spark plugs after the repair to expel the coolant.

If this were my truck, I'd disconnect the battery and have it towed to the shop. Bring along the 4 pages of TSB 99-20-7 from the Website also so the mechanic knows what the problem is and is aware of the updated part numbers for the gasket kit.

 

Yea i have a friend that might help me and we should be able to do it ourself. Has anyone done a lower intake gasket before? And since im in there should i replace the front gasket too or should i put the one the broke on first and see what happens w/ the motor? How much are the gaskets themselves?

THx

 

You won't need to replace the front cover gasket unless you have an engine built before 5/2/1997. Check the build date sticker on the valve cover for your engine build date.

Lower intake gaskets:

Gasket Set - F85Z-9433-CA $66.71 Engine built before 7/31/1997
Gasket Set - F65Z-9433-B $72.06 Engines built after 7/30/1997

I haven't done the replacement myself but the procedure is very straghtforward. Just be certain that you label every hose you remove so you can put everything back together. I've heard from quite a few owners who've done this repair and the only problems were related to not remembering which hose goes where

While the lower manifold is out of the engine, you'll also want to thoroughly clean the ports of carbon.

 

This is a very common problem with the 97 and 98 model years. Just in the past few months we've had numerous posts about this exact same thing. I'm glad that Ford fixed the problem on later year models, but I think that they should have issued a recall.

Tom