eb290

Been trying to figure out how to wrap this issue all up, so here goes. (this might be a little long) Those of you that have been following this know my truck had a blown head gasket last month. The tech took the head off and told me the head gasket was bad, I did not see it on the head gasket. It did show some scorched places on the head. (I will get back to this later) The parts were ordered, everything was put back together, taken on a test drive and said to be OK. I drove it and it seemed to be fine. The next morning I was called for a short run, hooked on to my trailer and after about 25 miles it was obvious that it wasn't fixed. I got to the location, got my load and started back. Put a gal. of water in before I got back to the highway and had to put another gal. in before I got back to drop the load. It was blowing it out just like it was before the head gasket was replaced. Of course this was on Sat., a weekend, so on Mon. morning I was back at the shop. This time they called Technical Services, (Star) and were told that the first thing that they should have done was to change the EGR cooler. One was ordered and it was replaced. This time it was fixed. The only issue now was the bill. I was told to take the truck and work it for a while to make sure it was OK. (I worked it for 5 days) I went in to talk about the bill and was told that the second bill was no charge. That was probably over a $1000 bill. To be honest, at first, I wasn't happy about that. I thought that they had jumped the gun on the head gasket job and it was $2355. I thought that if they had called star first, the head gasket job wouldn't have been necessary. Asked to talk to the service mgn and and he called the tech in to talk with me. I do think the tech is very good. I asked why a bleed down test wasn't done on the cylinders which would have shown a bad head gasket and was told that a "power check" was done on each cylinder electronically and #4 & 5 were at 92% the other cylinders were at 98%. Those were the cylinders that the scorched marks were on when I looked at the head. After I was told that, I decided that it was a good deal because if they had called star first, the EGR cooler would have been changed and I would have had two weak cylinders and not known about it until later when the head gasket got worse and I ended up having to do the head gasket later.
The way it has turned out, I got an EGR cooler for free and the power on the truck is back up, all cylinders are equal, 99% with 132,000 miles when the repair was done. I've gone a couple of thousand miles since then and everything is back to normal.
If anyone starts blowing coolant out of the overflow, get it into the shop and check or change the EGR cooler. According to star, that is the place to start.
This should be the end of this story.

Spooler

Glad you got it fixed and the bill somewhat taken care of. If it was weak on power on those cylinders it might explain why the EGR cooler started to leak. I don't feel it was money waisted, aggrivating though. Hope your good for a long time. They could of replaced the EGR cooler the first time and it happen again down the road. I have no clue it that blown gasket overpressurized the cooling system popping the cooler to start with.