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serious diesel motor problem , please help !

Started by UNCLEBUCK, November 04, 2004, 02:15:33 PM

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UNCLEBUCK

My old 3 cylinder industrial ford diesel motor started blowing black smoke and losing power plus white steam rolling out the oil cap breather so I just put on a new head gasket and torqued the head down in 3 different setting up to 110 pounds for the final torque .  I snapped one headbolt on the final torque located more towards the center of the head near a cylinder . I changed oil and filter ,added new anti-freeze ,started it up and 5 minutes later the dipstick got fuller and the oil turned grayish and steam started rolling out the oil breather cap again . "MY QUESTION " will one snapped headbolt cause this kind of trouble and when I take the head off again can I use this brand new head gasket . I am hoping that the snapped headbolt is the new problem . I know I should have replaced the snapped headbolt before I fired it up but I was so close to done . Can someone help me please , thank you
UNCLEBUCK    bridge burner/bridge mender

Jeff

Certainly it might be the problem. Or an added problem. An analogy might be: If you turn your Tupperware upside down without one place being sealed will your Guacamole seep out?

When you had the head off did you check it and the block with a machine edge? No warp?

Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

UNCLEBUCK

thanks jeff , I will take the head off and check it with a straight edge and replace the snapped bolt and give it another try , if it happens again then I will park it and take a year to fix it .
UNCLEBUCK    bridge burner/bridge mender

Bro. Noble

Did you see a bad place in the old gasket where water was getting into the oil?  You want to be sure you are fixing the right problem.  Chances are the broken stud is the problem,  but I'd want to make sure.  Check for cracks in the head while it's off.  A machine shop can do a better job of checking and I would reccomend that if there is any doubt.  You can probably get by with using the new gasket.  If they are costly and the head is easy to change.  If it doesn't hold,  at least by then you would be a pro at changing the gasket.  Look the valves over good while you got the head off.

Jeff,  How thick is the guacamole?  When I'm around,  there's never any left over ;D
milking and logging and sawing and milking

J_T

I don't think you'll get by using that gaskett again to much compression on those motors . Bet you find a cracked valve seat .  Sorry to sound so bad .You mak can get the head magfluxed cheep.
Jim Holloway

Dom

Have the head checked. Did you replace the bolts when you put in the new gasket? Most engines require that you change the bolts everytime you open up the head.

twoodward15

yeah, prolly cracked head.  if you need to use that gasket again, I'd get some of that spray on gasket copper or silver crap.  I'd sooner use a new one, but if'n it's expensive I'd try it again.  Check the areas between the cylinders for any blow through, especially at the center cyilinder where the head bolt busted.
108 ARW   NKAWTG...N      Jersey Thunder

DanG

 You have some troubleshooting to do. First, why did it blow a head gasket, to start with?  Look at the old gasket and see where it blew. This will give you a place to start. Is there a burnt valve?? This will probably indicate a cracked valve seat. If there is any indication of a problem on the head, get it magnafluxed. It ain't all that expensive. :)

Get new head bolts!  Clean up the threads of the bolts and their holes with the appropriate tap and die.

An old Indian trick, taught to me by and old Indian: (actually he was an old diesel mechanic ;))   When you get your new gasket, and have checked out everything, paint the gasket with aluminum paint. Coat it good on both sides and let it dry overnight. Coat it again the same way, and install it wet.

Should the magnaflux show a crack, don't let them weld it until you shop around. Chances are, you can get a rebuilt head cheaper with less chance of a problem.  First place I would check is   www.doverheads.com

Good luck, and remember; Diesel engine repair is no more difficult than gas burners, but they're a lot less forgiving. Ya gotta do it right! :)
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

duke401

it could be in the piston sleavs or a block problem too!!!!!
duke

DanG

Yer eggsackly right, Duke. I shoulda mentioned that. Examination of the original gasket should tell a tale, here. If, indeed it was blown, you should be able to track down the cause. I learned from experience that trial and error troubleshooting can be expensive and time consuming.
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

Mark M

If you are trying to run it with the broken head bolt that can definatly cause the symptoms you are seeing. You might be able to back it out and replace it without taking the engine  apart. I once had a Olds diesel that developed a bad case of compression getting in the radiator. Wouldn't do it at idle but as soon as you speed ed up it would build up pressure so fast that the water pump seal acted as a relief valve and blew water out from behind the pulley. I pulled the head and in the process found the broken bolt. I kept going but found no problem with the head gasket. I put new bolts in and put it back together. About a year later I was driving with a friend and approached a stop sign. When I went to step on the brakes there was next to nothing. I exclaimed "sh*t I just broke a head bolt!" My friend looked at me like I was nuts but when I opened the hood sure enough the water pump seal was venting pressure and coolant all over the fan belt and the steering pump was slipping. This time I just replaced the head bolts one at a time without taking the engine apart. Luckily I could just unscrew the broken bolt. I car lasted another 2 or 3 years without any problems.

Good Luck

UNCLEBUCK

well I got the cracked headbolt out without removing the head so I will try a new bolt first and will change the oil and filter again and fill the radiator and let it idle and keep checking the dipstick . If it happens again then I will take the head off . There was no external leaks at all with this new head gasket . The old head gasket was so paper thin and melted in spots but I will get a closer look at it . Its a ford diesel industrial motor in my old wore out backhoe but I am lost without it but I will do as you all mentioned and if it ends up a block problem its going down the road . The pistons and valves all looked just fine . I lost one gallon of anti-freeze today just at a idle after 5 minutes . I may have cooked it pretty good this time because I had to limp it home a half mile and I kept loosing power and the black smoke and white steam rolling out it didnt look good . I should have shut it down and walked home and then figured it out . Its a heavy little motor ,the oil pan is like 3/8 inch thick steel , I will see what happens tomorrow . I am praying that its just the bolt . Thanks for all your inputs everyone . I have beat this tractor into the ground for 20 years and it just never dies . I feel bad now and its my fault for not walking home .  :-/
UNCLEBUCK    bridge burner/bridge mender

Mark M

Uncle

You might want to do your testing with water instead of antifreeze. If you do have an internal leak it is a lot easier on the bearings. Also run without the radiator cap and look for bubbles in the coolant. If you have a combustion chamber leak (head gasket, cracked head, cracked block. etc.) you will see bubbles in the coolant. It may be just a few or it might be violent bubbling.

You mentioned you broke the bolt when you were torquing it down. Did you follow Ford's torque sequence and spec? How big are the bolts? Did you clean the holes as DanG suggested and use oil on the threads and under the bolt head?

This isn't likely but have you been adding the corrosion inhibitor to your cooling system? This is an absolute MUST for diesel engines. Without it your liners can and will pit all the way through and coolant can fill the cylinder. As I said this isn't likely because when it happens it's really easy to tell because you usually have a rod sticking out the side of the block. :o :( >:(

Mark

MrMoo

Uncle,
You may want to look for a hole in your cylinder sleeves.

Last year my backhoe was running hot & losing antifreeze. I found it in the crankcase. Took it to my brother in law who is a diesel mechanic & he took the engine apart & found one of the cylinder sleeves had been eaten thru by the coolant. I guess the coolant can get corrosive in a diesel engine that's why they add conditioner to them. I ended up doing an engine job.

Hope your problem was your head but if it isn't that I'd start looking lower.

Mike

redpowerd

cavitation sucks!

did you readjust all the head bolts after fixin the broken one?
NO FARMERS -- NO FOOD
northern adirondak yankee farmer

ScottAR

Mr. Moo

Cavatation...  Tiny water bubbles form on the cylinder sleeve walls and when they pop, they make a tiny divot.   Years and years go by and the tiny divots become a hole. and then bad things happen as you have already seen.  

UB, I hope that hasn't happened...  Backhoes are fun...  
Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

MrMoo

Scott,
You're saying cavitation is caused by bubbles. So I guess what I was told about the coolant being corrosive is not true. Is that correct?
Mike

ScottAR

Coolant is somewhat corrosive, but not extremely so,  not much more than the water that it's in.  
The additives for Diesel engines are to break the surface tension of the water so the little bubbles don't form or at least reduce their number.  

Which reminds me, I need to test my powerstroke's coolant before it gets colder...  
Scott
"There is much that I need to do, even more that I want to do, and even less that I can do."
[Magicman]

UNCLEBUCK

wow thank you all for this feedback , everybody !  I decided to take the head off and look for the things everyone has said and it looks good . The bolt hole where the cracked bolt came out of was full of coolant all the way up to the valve rack . I got 14 new headbolts coming from ford in fargo,nd and right now with the head off I filled up a coolant port on the top of the block and am going to go look right now if it all went through the oil pan drain plug and laying in my coffee can . I read in the I.T. manual that there is 500 psi in the cylinder so now I can understand why I am losing guacemoley ? I never been faced with this problem . Its either going to end up simple or quitw the opposite . Mark I only put straight anti-freeze in it . I guess I am on hold until monday but I will finish this with some pics and tell how or what was the cause . thanks again . It will be interesting to see if my poor judgement and too cheap to buy new headbolts when I got the new gasket was where I got into trouble , I lift that head off myself and I seeing white spots in my eyes for a few minutes . what a chunk ! :o
UNCLEBUCK    bridge burner/bridge mender

redpowerd

NO FARMERS -- NO FOOD
northern adirondak yankee farmer

rebocardo

>  I snapped one headbolt on the final torque located
> more towards the center of the head near a cylinder .

Sounds like you reused an old bolt. You are suppose to chase the threads, use new bolts, and if you torque to spec with 30 SAE oil, it should not have snapped.

> will one snapped headbolt cause this kind of trouble

Yes!

>can I use this brand new head gasket

No!

Not unless you plan on putting the head back on with 120 pounds per bolt and even then it would be iffy. You have basically applied at least 100+ pounds to the gasket at every edge and ridge, the only way it will seal properly is to torque tighter to make the head squish into the gasket more.

Before you take this apart again, do a compression test.

Mark M

Yep the bolts stretch when they are torqued, if you try to reuse them they will usually break. I don't think this is true with all engines but it is with many of the smaller engines.

On the topic of coolant: there is some debate about the actual mechanism that causes liner pitting. Some (including Caterpillar) say it is caused by the formation of bubbles and high frequency vibrations. When the bubbles collapse they eat away at the metal causing pits. I've got friend of mine who is an engineer at Cat and one of the world's foremost experts on metalworking coolant, he says this is not totally correct. Bubbles and vibrations are involved but also involved is the presence of oxygen. When the bubbles form and then collapse they area underneath of them is superheated and then the relatively cold coolant shocks the surface. Where the bubble are there is no coolant. If oxygen is present then black iron oxide is formed. This is the same iron oxide that forms when cutting iron with a torch. This material flakes off and after a while pits form. The deeper the pit the harder it is to control. Unfortunately this happens fairly fast in modern high horsepower diesels.

There are several additives used to protect against cavation erosion with nitrite being the main one. Here again there is some debate as to how this actually works but it is generally thought to form protective coatings.

There are a whole bunch of other problems in cooling systems. Whenever 2 or more different metals are in contact with a conductive fluid (an electrolyte) then current flows resulting in galvanic corrosion. If you have a bad electrical ground then you end up with electrolytic corrosion (electrolysis) with is the same thing as electroplating. Here you can dissolve large amounts of metal in just a few hours.

Another problem is the breakdown of the glycol. With heat and age it degrades to form glycolic, oxalic, carbonic, and formic acids. These all lower the pH to the point where iron corrodes. The pH in most conventional coolants runs from about 8.5 to 10.5 or so. When it gets below 7.0 then it is considered to be acidic. We don't usually let it get below 7.5 without taking action. pH levels above 11 will attach aluminum parts in the engine. This is the reason you need to change coolant every so often, it is also the reason filter-based recycling is not a good idea since it can't remove these acids.

It really is absolutely necessary to add the supplemental coolant additives at the recommended interval (usually 250 hur or 12000 miles). You may get by without it for a while but you will get bitten. We had one customer who had to replace two D8R engine blocks because he ignored our instructions to add additives. After 2500 hours the blocks pitted through, an expensive lesson at $60,000 each! If you don't know the condition of your coolant then make it a point to have it tested. Any Cat dealer can test it for about $10.

For more information than you probably want Click Here

One last thing, if you want the best protection possible use one of the Extended Life Coolants, with these you only add additives at 1/2 the service life. The change interval on ELC is 12,000 hours for off road equipment and 600,000 miles for on-highway trucks. For conventional coolants is 2000 hours or 200,000 miles.

Mark


DanG

Wow, Mark! What a WHACK of info! 8)  I was wondering why I only get a couple or three hundred thousand miles out of an engine. ::) :D  Seriously, I only got about halfway through that link before I went crosseyed. :o  I had no idea all that stuff went on.
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

Mark M

Well you are doing pretty DanG good DanG! I got 298,000 on that Olds I had and only changed oil in it twice a year whether it needed it or not. Obviously some engines aren't as sensitive to cooling system problems because I sure didn't put any additives in it, in fact I can't even remember changing coolant. I think it didn't have liner pitting problems because it didn't have liners. What finally done it in was a bad case of fuel bacteria that wasn't properly diagnosed.

There are all kinds of crazy stuff that go on in cooling systems. We have seen them damaged when a trucker was hauling plastic pipe without having the ends plugged. The air rushes over and through the pipe and creates a current that causes big time corrosion problems. Truck engines are really hard on coolant and it's wise to manage them carefully. What we see happen all the time is a guy will come in with 200,000 miles and big problems. In most every case the system is full of rust because he didn't add the additives. Another hard lesson that isn't covered under warranty.


Buzz-sawyer

MarkM
300,000 on a GM 5.7 diesel???????????????
    HEAR THAT BLADE SING!

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