The more I look at this the more I think something shady is going down.

I mean look at how that "ice" is melting. It should all be melting from the center of the dish to the outside, like seen on the left of the piston shot. The random pieces of ice make no sense.

I mean obviously they could have poked around when the head came off, but I sure as hell know if I yanked a head at work (especially on a warranty engine) and found ice, NOTHING would get touched until I took a thousand pictures.

 

I don't doubt the motor was taken apart, but have you looked at it closely? Does the clean part in the photo mentioned earlier match what you see in person? I'll admit I don't know squat about how they do things in the cold weather, but I figured the shop would be heated. I also know it's rare for them to pull a truck in and jump on it right away. Usually it gets the computer diagnostic first, then if that doesn't work it will get looked at again, then they would have to determine it's time to dig into the motor, which means pulling the cab off the truck before starting any engine work.

Granted that's not a lot of ice in there, but why does the coolant appear to be a green liquid and not ice? Why does the liquid appear green? Is that really how a 6.4 looks after only 30k miles? The clean spot can be indicative of moisture entering the cylinder during the combustion process. The flash evaporation of the fluid leaves a clean spot, but that dosen't explain ice in the cylinder and green coolant in the passages. We need to hear from someone who has pulled a 6.4 head and make sure we're looking at the right motor.

Otherwise I don't see how you won't have to explain to Ford how you had frozen water in the #7 hole when none of the coolant had frozen. Since the motor costs 24k, I think I would find a buddy to film me taking a sample of the coolant and have a tech or service manager initial some tape over the lid so you can later prove the freeze point of the coolant was at least equal to the factory spec.

 

The way the carbon is cleaned off that piston I would have to say that it was running while burning off some water/coolant. Bad head gasket, truck shut down, coolant weeping in # 7 cylinder froze up. I would say at -35 a small amount of coolant in an unsealed area would be prone to possible freezing, especially if it degraded some. Just my theory. I hope this works out for you. Good luck.

 

Amen. The other thing that concerns me, and maybe this is looking too deep into a thread, but i get the impression the dealer isn't trying to help the OP but more of just trying to get a buck or $12K out of that $24K engine. But why they jump to 'warranty voided' astonishes me, you'd think they'd be trying to push that thru warranty as:

if the OP is being honest there will be NO signs of abuse anywhere in that truck to support an abuse claim

this is an anomaly that they could get the same $24K motor from ford thru warranty

and lastly, this guy has an expensive truck to begin with, if Ford wants him to keep coming back and buying these expensive *** trucks they would want to take care of him.

This right here is the time to make or break at least 10 future customers, because this man is one of them, and word of mouth travels fast. How many people will hear about this and say 'no way i'm gonna risk my hard earned cash so some sheister can take it away from me when I did nothing wrong'


Lastly this sounds kinda like a case I heard about the Duramax when it was a new motor. If I recall GM had 8 or 9 diesels that apparently had nothing wrong with them as far as specs. However after about 5000 miles these engines died with nothing wrong so to speak. I remember talking to a few of my engineering buddies that were tearing them down trying to figure out why on earth they wouldnt run. Never got a verdict what caused the failure, but when GM had them shipped to Milford all the electronics, fuel system, and other systems were in perfect order. I know at least one of those dealers did give a customer a hard time about the motor. I don't know what ever came of that whole ordeal, but this just kinda brought back the memory and maybe in some wierd way it'll trigger someone elses memory regarding how it got dealt with?

E

 

If the truck is stock you do not have a problem. complain to the 800 # and they will send out a technician from the manufacturer to inspect it. If there is no tuner and the filters are fine they can't void your warranty. There was no abuse to the truck and it's stock. I could see them voiding it if there was an intake or huge scorch marks on the pistons from a tuner. Maybe there needs to be an update to the air filter housing if it is letting in to much moisture. The manufacturer will have to determine that after inspecting your truck.

Dealers are always quick to have a customer pay for repairs, the manufacturer pays only 40-60% of customer cost for the repairs and the time is about half for the repairs. 5hr job customer pay is a 2hr job under warranty.

 

Yep. And I totally forgot that the cab has to come off, like someone posted earlier.

So here's what I can make of it:
- the coolant was up to snuff on anti-freeze
- it's isolated to one cylinder, which all but rules out any moisture intake
So if it's not outside condensation, and it's not coolant, then how else could that have gotten in there in such a massive quantity.
Add to that the fact that they were able to get to the CC quick enough to snap pictures before it melted.

Furthermore, I'm not familiar with these engines at all; what kind of angle are the cylinders on? It looks like the side of the piston that has the greatest accumilation of ice is towards the valley, which would be higher up than opposite side. I can't fathom how enough water could get in the CC to flood to that level, especially over one night, out of nowhere. And if that was somehow the case, where did it all go? Is there water in the oil?

It looks to me like someone wandered outside and grabbed a handful of snow, but thats just a wild guess based on a picture, don't storm into the dealer saying that.

 

Is it possible the water could be external? Like say there was snow that gathered up under the hood? Is there any way it could leach through, or would it have to have come through the intake or squeezed(separated) from the coolant?

The shop would be heated and I'm very sure they spent many hours on diagnostics possibly with it in and out of the shop a couple times (more freeze/thaw). I would think that any solid ice would not remain in it's original position and water may even 'slosh' around a bit.


I know from Ford's and the dealer's perspective it is to their advantage to deny claims especially when there is just cause and when their costs are high in footing that bill....and when they are very busy it is to their advantage to perform service work that is more profitable....but wow this truck is a highway work truck, basically brand new and it's frightening!

 

Well physics and chemistry will aid us in this one with some calculations on how long it will take to get that volume of ice turned to water....so need to know how long would it take to pull the cab and the head?!
And no, definitely not accusing the dealer of anything, that rust around there indicates the presence of liquid water for some time, or small quantities over a long period of time....?

 

I would ask to see the push rods and head plus the gasket. If water really froze in there and the valve was down it should have bent the push rod. The gasket is also a weak spot to check. It should show signs of compression from the ice too. I feel that if water would have gotten in their it would have evaporated before it froze from the engine heat.

 

I noticed that little bit of rust also, but as the OP stated he just had the truck out for a long trip, so I can't see there being any pre-existing problem with that.

Like you said, a time frame for how long it takes to get to the bare cylinder, plus roughly how long it would take for that cold engine to reach melting temperatures would be interesting.

I don't mean to jump all over the dealer, it just looks terribly fishy to me.

 

your gettin F#$%^d!!!!!! i had a transmission go out on my 04 f150 at 16000 miles and they claimed abuse because the throttle had been at 100% three thousand some times. truck was bone stock. few phone calls to customer service and it was taken care of. if your tellin us what happened (and i belive you are) then you have nothing to worry about. THEY designed the truck and its limits NOT YOU and if what you did wasnt good enough for THEIR design then they need to pay for THEIR problem and correct the problem for next years model. if they tell you you need to pay for it tell them you already did!! part of that ungodly sticker covers this exact thing. dont give up!!

 

ive left some advise on the other post for you.

 

After reading all the comments, I went back and looked over the pics again... I would say its was a head gasket leaking, for some time too for the piston to be clean. It was running with coolant in it to have it clean like that. And the block shouldn't be rusty in that big of an area, the coolant would only be at the passages, not everywhere under the head... I'd tell Ford to send the District service manager out to look at it. Tell them to take a look at the pics, that you think the dealer is trying to pull a fast one...
By the way I am a Mack truck mechanic and have been into many engines in the last 31 years of working on them... If they can't figure it out they should fix it under what Mack calls policy its where they fix it just because it should not have happened. We've had some unexplained things happen and we sent in everything and they studied it all to figure out what happened, so it wouldn't happen again.
In the states that would fall under implied warranty. Where it's expected to last for so long, and it didn't...
I'd call Ford and who ever you have up there for consumer rights.

 

Subscribing. Want to know how this turns out.

 

Based on the 2nd picture, I am going to say this was a head gasket failure. Notice the rust between the coolant passages and the cylinder bore, from 1 o'clock to 6 o'clock?