So I was riding home from school the other day and I turned on to a street near my house, hit the gas, and it took my truck about 40-60 seconds to get from 15mph to 45mph, and that was with the pedal on the floor, and the sound of the exhaust sounded really funny (i have straight pipes). I'm not very savy with automotive stuff, so I really didn't have a clue what could be the problem. Then after a few more minutes, I realized that when I hit the gas to speed up there was no whistle (the whistle is usually very loud with the straight pipes), so I realized that my turbo wasn't working. So instead of going home I immediately went to a friend's house that knows a good deal about diesels and works on them, and he rode around with me to hear it and see if he could tell why the turbo wouldn't be kicking in. He told me to floor it one time as we were pulling out onto the road and after a few seconds, you could hear my turbo winding up and then the truck just took off. Ever since then the turbo has worked fine. Before this happened I was planning on flushing my cooling system and putting some new coolant in, because right now I'm not even sure how much I have because there isn't any at all in the overflow tank. Could this possibly have anything to do with my problem? My friend also said that the 6.0s had some issue with the tube that sends oil from the engine to the turbo, and that before they improved them they accounted for a lot of early turbo issues. Anyone know anything about this?

On a side note. I just recently bought this truck (little over a month ago) and the dealer i bought it from said that the guy who owned it before had something go out and screwed up the entire engine so they replaced the whole thing. My truck has 150k miles, but my engine only has about 85 or 90k miles. I know the dealer I bought it from and go to church with him, so I know there's nothing shady or sketchy about him, and I know the truck is not some lemon he was just trying to get rid of. But does anyone know how I could find out by reading anything on the engine when my engine was built or what model it is?

 

Ya your degas bottle should be full to the level it needs to be at. Look at the passenger side valve cover should give you some info about when it was originally built. As for your turbo sounds like it might be sticking, also are you tuned or not ? Id advise you to get some coolant into that truck asap and dont drive it, also look into investing coolant filration system as well.

 

Degas bottle should be filled to min lveal mark. If it's not you might have some problems with it. Is there white residue around the degas bottle? Are you running a tunner? Yes the engine build date should be on the passenger valve cover. The coolant should not have anything to do with the turbo though. I would think the turbo gaines are sticking. Drive it hard every once in awhile that will help it.

 

Sounds like the vanes are sticking (mine did), you may have to get them cleaned.
I recommend you do a CCV re-route to prevent them from sticking in the future.
Try not smashing the skinny petal to the floor, just ease on the throttle to help with the Turbo Lag.

 

Possibilities:

A) turbo has carbon buildup and vanes sticking, or an outright jam with a carbon particle.

B) egr stuck open

C) both.

Give more symptoms... is there smoke coming out tailpipe? white?

 

The EGR is unplugged. The mechanic at the dealership did that. What I described were the only symptoms. But it's been working fine ever since.

 

As RescueF250 said - get coolant in it ASAP and keep the level up. If your level keeps dropping - find the leak anbd fix it. You can cause a lot of other problems with a low coolant level - corrosion being one of them.

 

I did my radiator flush today...didn't know that was as much of an ordeal as it was. I was going strictly by the Haynes Repair Manual. The block drain plugs had obviously never been opened before, and we definately couldn't get them. The right bolt on the thermostat housing was not easy either with the fuel hose right in the way. But there wasn't a leak because the coolant was low, but at the same level it was when I bought it. But we'll just see what happens.

And from what we could tell, it really didn't look like the radiator had ever been flushed before...so that may be some part of the issue.