Dean Snow

so there is a tube hanging out from under the truck, looks to be for engine oil. it was smoking earlier and it was dripping some oil. what is this tube, and is it bad that it was dripping oil and oil steam/smoke was coming out of it?

John Faughn

With out seeing I guess it is the crank case breather , its not a good sign , but need to do a little more testing to see whats , what .
Try to plug the tube with a fixture for pressure gauge to get a reading , the next is trying to figure where the pressure is coming from , plowby =rings , head gasket , with gassers I used to use a leakdown gauge , on each cylinder , then cooling system to see where the most air is passing .

infidel

It's called a blowby tube and vents crankcase pressure to the atmosphere.
Normal for it to drip a little.

Dean Snow

well the oil hasnt been changed in over 7k miles, (not my fault, but my dads when he owned it) i put 1000k on the truck and all the oil is still there, its still full, i dont know whether its just from me running it hard for a few minutes. or whether that is just normal if the oil gets hot to steam a little bit?

Dean Snow

thanks, it had me wondering there for a while...

Dinner

Most all trucks, big or small(like our dodges) will have steam/vapor coming from it, with the odd drip every now and then. Now if the bottom of your engine and tranny is SOAKED with oil, then you have a problem. If you are still worried about it, when it is running and there is that steam coming out..smell it. It should smell like a faint oil smell, nothing more really. However if it smells like coolant, then you probably have a blown head gasket.