symptoms: white smoke, wet exhaust manifolds/up pipes, truck starts and drives great, no misses or blow-by. No strange noises from engine.

I recently bought a 2001 Ford F250 7.3L powerstroke. Was checking it for about 2 hours before buying it, and everything seemed perfect. No blowby, no major oil leaks, fluids all looked good. So i bought it.

After a 3 hour ride back home, i turned the truck off. About 10 minutes after i turned it back on and upon accelerating it a cloud of white smoke blew out of the exhaust. At idle there is little to no smoke but when you accelerate it a cloud would come out.

I begun with the basics; oil change, fuel and air filter change. Turned her back on and same thing. I immediately took to youtube and the forums. I disconnected the intake to the turbo, no oil. The same for the hot side of the turbo, no oil. I unplugged the MAT sensor, ran it for 15-20 min and no change. When looking at the exhaust manifolds i noticed that the port by cylinder 8 was wet. When i looked under the truck, so was the up pipe. I can’t really tell if it is oil or fuel. Or a mix of both.

I ordered a scan tool and got forscan to run injector diagnostics and see if i get any codes for balance/contribution.

any information will help!!!!

 

Howdy and welcome to FTE.

I’d look towards the top for a fuel or oil leak as it looks to be starting close to the top of the uppipe. I believe there’s a fuel plug near that location on the head.

From the looks of the smoke I’m guessing fuel leak and low fuel pressure. Just my guess though.

You don’t want to drive it if the fuel pressure is low or you’ll damage your injectors. There’s an “easy” method for checking the pressure on the tech folder sticky at the top of our forum. Here’s a link to to the check method. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/a...4&d=1592859516

What’s the fuel level? If the pickup foot is broke off inside the tank then they’ll start to draw air around 1/4 tank.

 

For the leak, it's always gonna be pulled down by gravity, so follow it up to the top. The turbo and pedestal can leak quite a bit up there, but most of the time they flow down the passenger side and out the back of the engine Where there's a drain hole cast in - unless that drain is plugged up....

The white smoke could be because you're not getting enough air flow - and those original up pipes are leaking - or will be and that causes your drive pressure to be bled off. You'd see that under acceleration.

 

Both the oil and fuel rails in each head have plugs at the front and back of the head. If one leaks, it's more often the oil plug. Do whatever you can to see in there with a mirror, inspection camera, cell phone or whatever you have There was a design update to the plugs to make them less prone to leak.

If that turns out to be the problem, they are installed with thread lock compound and it's a lot easier to break them free if the engine is at least warm.

 

Thank you for responding,
I have not driven it since I got it down to Miami from Cocoa Beach. I have it parked right now and have only started it for diag purposes, like checking the MAT sensor. I will take a look at the plugs on the head this weekend.
As for my fuel level, I filled it up on the drive home from Cocoa beach, I have over half a tank for sure.

So you think the two issues are unrelated? I am no expert, but for some reason i was under the impression that the oil/fuel that is leaking was coming from cylinder#8 and getting pushed up the up pipe because the area where the exhaust manifold and exhaust port for cylnder#8 meet is also wet as you can see in the pictures.

I am getting FORscan and a wireless OBDII reader soon for troubleshooting purposes.

 

Thanks for your response,
I had not thought of that, but from all your responses it seems like i have two separate issues, and will be looking into the plugs on the head this weekend.

 

Thank you for the help, I am getting an inspection camera from amazon, and will use it to help me look at those plugs.

 

You're welcome, and just to clarify, the updated design is for the oil rail end plugs. I don't think the fuel plugs have changed.

 

1/2 tank should be good regarding the fuel pickup concern. Most likely not it.

I’m not necessarily saying the issues are unrelated.
*A fuel leak could create low fuel pressure and white smoke.
*A high pressure oil leak can cause issues.

I don’t expect it’s coming internally from #8 because of the bolded comments in your original post. An issue to create that much oil/smoke would have no/low compression and not run smoothly. And I would expect you to see it in the exhaust outlet side of the turbo (or maybe you meant intake air discharge by hot side. The other items should still cover this).
*Had a dropped glow plug one time that caused valve to stick open. The lack of compression created white smoke (and a “dead” cylinder). I don’t think this is your issue.

Getting to tools is a great plan.

I have a cheap inspection camera from Amazon. It can be very useful and has been money well spent.

 

So this weekend i finally got to it and started by looking for an oil leak that could explain the oil all over the exhaust manifolds and up pipe on driver side. sadly there was no visual explanation for it, and the fuel and oil plugs on the back of the head are not leaking. turbo shaft has no play, and there is no excessive oil build up on the down pipe. My next step was to clean the area up, is used brake cleaner and degreaser shampoo, got the area nice and clean, and started the truck for about 5-10 minutes. after being off for two weeks the truck did not miss a beat, started right up with a little bit of white smoke, and the usual big cloud when accelerating the motor above 1500 rpm. again there is no abnormal noises from the motor, and no blowby (when placing oil fill cap upside down, it does not puff it off).

After a little while of being on i turned it back off and noticed what i was afraid of, oil all over the #8 cylinder exhaust manifold again. at this point my conclusion was that the oil was coming from inside the cylinder. Before moving forward with any teardown i got forscan on my computer and had the bafx obd2 ready to go, i ran the buzz test and everything sounded great. got the engine warmed up and ran the cylinder contribution test, to no surprise cylinder #8 gave me P0284 and for some reason u got a P0269 which indicates not enough power being contributed from cylinder #3 and #8. I looked at the cylinder percent delta while running and noticed that cylinder #8 was hovering around 8.4% and #3 was at 2.6%. I imagine this is what the cylinder contribution test looks at. ran regular KOEO on demand and got no codes, as well as KOER on demand and no codes. I had ordered the set of injector o rings from my dealership, so i had them on hand.

I removed the valve covers, removed the high pressure oil rail plugs, and removed my #8 injector hoping for some sort of catastrophic o ring failure that would have me back on the road in no time. but it was not the case. the orings looked fine, but i feel like they were not oem since the 2nd oring was 3 different colors (black, white and pinkish). having nothing else to do i decided to slap the new orings on the injector and put it back on. I evacuated the cylinder with a pneumatic vacuum pump till i was getting nothing out. I then unplugged the passenger side harness as well, and with the glow plug removed i turned the engine over using the starter. we gave it a good 3-4 10 second cranks, and oil kept shooting out of the glow plug hole. it was a mist but over the 10 second period it would create a palm sized oil mark on the fire wall.

Now, i guess my question would be this: Is it normal to have oil coming out of the glowplug hole after evacuating it with a vacuum pump and turning the motor over with the starter for 10 seconds about 5 times???

I stopped after seeing the oil mist keep shooting out, did not want to damage the motor.

I am ordering an injector for that cylinder just in case.

if you have any questions or insights please lmk, anything helps!!

pics will be uploaded soon.

 

A lot of the time, an engine that has zero problems will flag cylinders 3 and 8 on a CCT. It's a pretty meaningless test, really. Seeing oil mist while cranking is really no big surprise. No matter how much of the liquids you remove, you won't get it all and the turbulence in the cylinder is bound to pick some up and expel it.

 

Do a compression test while you're there

 

I'm not sure I understand, are you saying you think the oil is coming past the exhaust valve and leaking out from the mating surface of the manifold and head?

 

Pikachu
Do you have any explanation for the oil on the exhaust manifold?

 

Josh,
exactly, there is oil on the exhaust manifold where it meets the head, i cleaned it with brake cleaner and degreaser. then ran it for 5 minutes and it was soaked again.