Greetings Oil Gurus, and thank you in advance for any advice on this or a link to where on this forum this question has already been answered.
I acquired an 08 F-350 with a 6.4 Powerstroke with 92k miles this summer to use as my heavy hauler, and it had a laundry list of issues at the time that I felt could be solved to make the truck useful once more as a work truck for my tree service. Its primary function is to haul heavy loads such as my 14-yard and 20-yard dump trailer. The previous owner was in a bad way, and gave me what I thought was full disclosure of the issues and priced the otherwise nice truck for 9K. Those included blown turbos and the trucks remarkable capacity to shoot fire from the muffler during regen (I had heard about that but never seen it personally until this summer). That stated, it cranked right up and my local mechanic confirmed he felt doing a DPF-R delete and replacing the turbos and for good measure the oil cooler while the cab was off and he had reasonably easy access. All of this was in my budget to rehab it. His shop is quite reputable. It's a "get in line and wait so this particular man can work on your powerstroke" type shop. I bought the truck, had it hot-shotted from Jacksonville to Orlando straight to the mechanic and did all those repairs (New Turbos, DPF-R (Stock tune - no extra ponies added), OEM Oil Cooler). He suggested the rocker arms would need replacement sometime soon (by that he meant as soon as I could afford), and I agreed I'd get to them as soon as I had the cash and could deal with a couple days down-time without the truck. In the interim he suggested I attempt to address the sludge issue with Rotella T6 5w-40, changing the oil with every 2-3k miles for the first 10k miles I owned it...and the detergents should gradually reduce the sludge.
4k miles and one oil change later, I took the truck to our farm outside of Gainesville this past weekend and the #4 rocker arm failed catastrophically at about 35 mph. The truck was immediately turned off (less than 15 seconds of total run time after failure) and I threw the transmission into neutral and wrestled her over to the shoulder using the truck's forward momentum to steer it. It was flat-bedded to Ocala where the following work was done on it by what most locals deem the best guys around for powerstrokes: These are the direct notes from the invoice.
"Verified customer concern, performed diagnosis, determined noise to be coming from internal driver side of engine, requested tear-down time for further inspection, found #4 exhaust-side rocker broken, also noticed a large amount of sludge in the engine most likely due to a lack of maintenance, recommend and replaced driver side rocker arms and bridge assembly along with injector harness and glow plug harness as well as injector supply tube. ADVISE CUSTOMER CATASTROPHIC ENGINE FAILURE MAY OCCUR DUE TO LARGE AMOUNT OF SLUDGE IN THE ENGINE."
He was less clinical in our verbal discussion which went something like, "Normally when I hand the keys to someone after fixing their truck I tell them they can drive to Texas right now and get there. I can't promise you'll make it to Sanford before the engine comes undone altogether. If you get it home you need to sell it ASAP. It might go two weeks, and it might go 2 years, but you can never trust this engine after this level of neglect. Any aggressive attempts to de-sludge the engine while its running using available products may result in a large piece of the sludge breaking free and clogging something vital which will finish it off. It's a time bomb on wheels."
He said he did his best with time and budget constraints, which included two full oil changes and dropping the pan and scraping it and completely cleaning that component of sludge. He said the only good news was a lack of any sizable metal in the pan.
I cannot in good faith sell this truck to a private owner. I don't have the cash or know how to tear it apart and manually desludge it. Nor do I really have the money right this instant to get a replacement truck. Remarkably, it is running quiet as a 6.4 ever does (top end is super quiet), and better than it has since I bought it. Computer says 14.4 mpg. No codes. No smoke. No odor. That stated, he was adamant. I'm a small company and I am responsible for this gamble which I lost out on big time, it seems. Based on this information, is there anything that can be done from a lubricant perspective short of a complete tear-down to buy me some time on a time bomb? I will listen carefully to any advice here, and answer any questions you may have to better understand the situation. I'm already pretty humbled, so play nice, please. Thanks again.
I acquired an 08 F-350 with a 6.4 Powerstroke with 92k miles this summer to use as my heavy hauler, and it had a laundry list of issues at the time that I felt could be solved to make the truck useful once more as a work truck for my tree service. Its primary function is to haul heavy loads such as my 14-yard and 20-yard dump trailer. The previous owner was in a bad way, and gave me what I thought was full disclosure of the issues and priced the otherwise nice truck for 9K. Those included blown turbos and the trucks remarkable capacity to shoot fire from the muffler during regen (I had heard about that but never seen it personally until this summer). That stated, it cranked right up and my local mechanic confirmed he felt doing a DPF-R delete and replacing the turbos and for good measure the oil cooler while the cab was off and he had reasonably easy access. All of this was in my budget to rehab it. His shop is quite reputable. It's a "get in line and wait so this particular man can work on your powerstroke" type shop. I bought the truck, had it hot-shotted from Jacksonville to Orlando straight to the mechanic and did all those repairs (New Turbos, DPF-R (Stock tune - no extra ponies added), OEM Oil Cooler). He suggested the rocker arms would need replacement sometime soon (by that he meant as soon as I could afford), and I agreed I'd get to them as soon as I had the cash and could deal with a couple days down-time without the truck. In the interim he suggested I attempt to address the sludge issue with Rotella T6 5w-40, changing the oil with every 2-3k miles for the first 10k miles I owned it...and the detergents should gradually reduce the sludge.
4k miles and one oil change later, I took the truck to our farm outside of Gainesville this past weekend and the #4 rocker arm failed catastrophically at about 35 mph. The truck was immediately turned off (less than 15 seconds of total run time after failure) and I threw the transmission into neutral and wrestled her over to the shoulder using the truck's forward momentum to steer it. It was flat-bedded to Ocala where the following work was done on it by what most locals deem the best guys around for powerstrokes: These are the direct notes from the invoice.
"Verified customer concern, performed diagnosis, determined noise to be coming from internal driver side of engine, requested tear-down time for further inspection, found #4 exhaust-side rocker broken, also noticed a large amount of sludge in the engine most likely due to a lack of maintenance, recommend and replaced driver side rocker arms and bridge assembly along with injector harness and glow plug harness as well as injector supply tube. ADVISE CUSTOMER CATASTROPHIC ENGINE FAILURE MAY OCCUR DUE TO LARGE AMOUNT OF SLUDGE IN THE ENGINE."
He was less clinical in our verbal discussion which went something like, "Normally when I hand the keys to someone after fixing their truck I tell them they can drive to Texas right now and get there. I can't promise you'll make it to Sanford before the engine comes undone altogether. If you get it home you need to sell it ASAP. It might go two weeks, and it might go 2 years, but you can never trust this engine after this level of neglect. Any aggressive attempts to de-sludge the engine while its running using available products may result in a large piece of the sludge breaking free and clogging something vital which will finish it off. It's a time bomb on wheels."
He said he did his best with time and budget constraints, which included two full oil changes and dropping the pan and scraping it and completely cleaning that component of sludge. He said the only good news was a lack of any sizable metal in the pan.
I cannot in good faith sell this truck to a private owner. I don't have the cash or know how to tear it apart and manually desludge it. Nor do I really have the money right this instant to get a replacement truck. Remarkably, it is running quiet as a 6.4 ever does (top end is super quiet), and better than it has since I bought it. Computer says 14.4 mpg. No codes. No smoke. No odor. That stated, he was adamant. I'm a small company and I am responsible for this gamble which I lost out on big time, it seems. Based on this information, is there anything that can be done from a lubricant perspective short of a complete tear-down to buy me some time on a time bomb? I will listen carefully to any advice here, and answer any questions you may have to better understand the situation. I'm already pretty humbled, so play nice, please. Thanks again.