I started tearing apart my truck today to replace the leaky oil cooler, and boy that is one amazing mess!



I think that will need to drain overnight, it's been dribbling out of there for at least an hour already, and it is still going. I jacked the rear end way up in the air to help. I can only imagine how fun it's going to be to get it out of the heater core. And of course it's impossible to keep it off the driveway entirely, where the rains spreads it all over the place... hard to clean it up off of the gravel!

 

This looks like a job for Simple Green and a high pressure carwash. I hate dirty engines.

 

yep. After I get it all drained and back together, then it will get as many simple green cycles as it needs to clean the insides, and then it is going back to the car wash again. As I was towing it home I stopped and blasted it clean, and now it is a mess again, although at least now it is not all over the engine compartment like it was.

 

FWIW Purple Power will work a lot better for degreasing ... just let it sit and dwell awhile

 

I like Castrol Super Clean (its purple) and works great! plus its bio degradeable so you could even do that in your lawn! heck even Walmart carrys the stuff.

 

uh oh...

here's an update to that other powershop story about the simple green...

http://thepowershop.com/index.php?pr=Disaster

 

Do any of these products pose a problem with deteriorating seals?

 

I wrote a letter to Tom Arnold of the Powershop asking if he add anything to add to his experience trying to clean that engine. I suppose an inquiry to Cummins would also be in order...

 

If I'm reading this correct the oil cooler leaked into the water of the cooling system?

If so, I had the same thing happen to me a few years ago. Had a great mechanic that did the replacement and most of the clean up (inside the engine). But told me it would take quite a while to flush all of the oil out of the system. He was right. If figured out a way to catch all of the smaller bits of oil that kept coming for month afterwards though.

Put a tampon in the coolant overflow. I just made a hanger out of some wire to get it to drop down far enough to float. Then just replaced it every time I filled up. Within a few months I had every drop of oil out of the system. Just a few funny looks from the woment that were at the pump filling up when I changed my tampon!

 

Just... Why... Don't... That's... But... He's...


No, I don't think I'm gonna touch that one.

 

man, i've been readiing and posting on some of the sites for a while. i thought i had seen all the first. wow, tampons, really i'm speachless. really.

 

Not having pulled and tested the oil cooler yet, I am still only assuming that the oil got into the coolant through the oil cooler. It seem like the most likely event. At least that's what I'm hoping for anyway, since I'd rather not pull the head right now. I'm just a bit worried about using simple green to clean the passages out now that I've read that artilce at the powershop website. Maybe just dish soap I guess..

One of the other guys was using a wet dry vac to suck the leftover oil out of his coolant overflow bottle periodically until it was all gone.

That seems like the more manly way...

 

Thank you.

 

At the time I had started a new job and was living out of a suitcase in an Ameri-Suites...didn't have much for tool and it would be a couple of months till the move made the shop available...so....

Besides I often refer to my CTD as "The Ole Girl" so a tampon just made sense right?

 

well, after getting the sludge draining into buckets yesterday, I took off to spend the night in the city and track down some parts and look at a job that I have coming up. I came home this afternoon to find apparently the dog or something got under the truck and knocked one of the buckets off to one side and the engine finished draining onto the gravel driveway instead of the buckets... Now I get to go out there with a shovel to clean up the mess.. got everything I need though, except the gaskets for the oil cooler, which apparently are dealer only items and no dealers stock them.