Bad oil leak

[STeichert]

My brother just drove about 1500 miles pulling a heavy trailer in his bone stock '04.5 6 spd with 243,000 miles. About 1000 miles into the trip he started smelling oil, when he stopped for fuel he had oil down the drivers side of the truck and all over the under carriage. It was about 1 in below the add line on the dipstick so he filled it with oil and kept going. about 200 miles later he stopped and it was back down to the add line. He refilled and did this all the way home. The truck had no leaks at all before the trip. As I looked at it, it looks like it is coming out of the breather tube in a big way. It blows right on the front differential yoak and everything from there back is soaked. Nothing above the breather tube, or in front of it is wet. I checked blow by at the oil cap and it does have some, but it wont blow the cap off. You can feel some pressure with your hand though. From what I can find this sounds like rings?? and or bad injectors?? We can't tell if it is making oil because of the leak, but I am going to see if he can get an oil sample to help trouble shoot. Is the truck safe to drive? And any Ideas what is wrong?
Thanks, and Happy Thanksgiving.

 

[klcammie]

Check to see if it might be the tappet cover. If an 04.5 has one it's on drivers side above starter behind fuel filter and fuel pump. On my 01 with 237k the gasket dried out and leaked 1/2 quart /2k, it's not a hard job just time consuming.

 

[rscurtis]

There is no tappet access cover on the CR engines. Sounds like it might be time for some engine work. What kind of air filter was used on this truck?

 

[cerberusiam]

CR engines don't have a tappet cover so that is out.

Did you check for blow by at an idle or engine loaded? If you have anything more than just a trickle coming out an idle or what looks like puffs you have issues that will get much worse under load, likely broken rings if it doesn't have a dead miss and massive blow by.

A compression test will tell you which cylinder and if there is a leak.

No, not safe to drive at all if you want an engine left to fix.

 

[klcammie]

There is no tappet access cover on the CR engines. Sounds like it might be time for some engine work. What kind of air filter was used on this truck?

Sorry didn't know. Since I have an 01 that is what I was going by. Now I know.

 

[STeichert]

Thanks for the replies,
The blow by was checked on a warm engine at idle. It puffed white smoke out of the filler hole, and had some pressure when you put your hand on the hole. I forgot to mention that it had low power the whole trip, Not like it wouldn't go the speed limit but it would loose speed on a hill quicker than normal. It has no miss, it runs very smooth, and has a stock paper air filter.

 

[cerberusiam]

If it is puffing and has pressure at an idle you have rings and\or piston issue somewhere. #6 is the normal culprit but broken rings can happen on any cylinder when an injector starts over fueling.

 

[STeichert]

So is this caused by an over fueling injector? Do they over fuel because of wear, or cracks? I guess a full injector replacement is in store also.

 

[cerberusiam]

Over fueling is due to wear or stickiness with the internal operations of the injector. The internal clearances on CR injectors on on the order of 2-3 um with critical parts. Solid contaminants can score and wear there parts to the point they no longer operate as designed. The intenral pieces will not move as fast as they need to with scoring and allow extra fuel to be injected. The pintle seats wear and do not seal correctly. The extra fuel tends to raise cylinder temps and pressures causing failure of rings first then pistons due to heat soak in the cylinder. At 243k with stock filtration the injectors are on life support, or, a ticking bomb. Depends on a lot of variables what the final outcome is.

Yes, injectors are almost a deifnite need. Likely going to take a tear down and engine work to fix the consequences. If he is lucky a hone job, rings, bearings, and gaskets will be all that is needed. Unlucky, it will take a sleeve and new parts to fix the damage. No way to tell until the engine is apart and assessed.

 

[STeichert]

Well, he is weighing his options. He may get rid of the truck, but I am up for an engine tear down. If we move forward with it I will keep updates coming.
Thanks everyone for the help.

 

[STeichert]

Update :
We decided to tear into it and see what happened. When I pulled the exhaust manifold off for the head removal #4 hole was wet with diesel so we knew that it was a dead cylinder. When we got the head off it was a nasty mess. #s 4,5,6 all had the piston bowls full of diesel and the injectors had so much carbon on them there was very little spray pattern on the pistons. #1 piston had chunks of ring stuck in the top of it, but luckily didn't hurt the cylinder. We pulled the oil pan and took all of the pistons out, and four of the six had broken rings. The rings were broke in five or six pieces each. Again no cylinder or head damage! I don't know how this thing ran at all, and especially that it ran smooth. He pulled a heavy trailer from Nebraska to Idaho and really only had two good cylinders. We bought one new piston, new injectors, bearings, and gasket kits. We honed out the cylinders, put it all back together and it is a whole new machine! It has no blow by, and way more power. That was on new years eve that we got it running, And today he took a load of horses to Nevada and it ran great. Fuel mileage was back up and he could pull the hills at the speed limit. We got the injectors from TC Diesel, and they were very helpful. They had fair prices and a lot of good advice on the repair. It is good doing business with people like that. Thanks to all for the tips and advice, now if I can get the pics to attach.

 

[STeichert]

These are all I took. My brother took some that he will have to send me. I forgot to mention that we did all of this in frame. It really was not that hard.

 

[cerberusiam]

Got one sitting one the floor of my sons garage with injectors that look like that. Guessing we are going to have some broken rings when we tear it all the way down.

That looks like it was rode hard and put away wet. Farm truck?

 

[STeichert]

You were spot on with the diagnosis. I am glad that he quit driving it before it got worse. No his is not a farm truck, but we do have a couple of those that have a pretty tough life. One is a '98 12v 5sp that is one of the toughest trucks I have ever seen. The other an '05 nv5600 That got new injectors and good filtration a long time ago.

 

[cerberusiam]

The 12V's will run on fuel that will kill a CR on a short trip. These things are very picky about clean fuel and everything working as designed or you see the results. Extra filtration and additives a must or things can go bad real fast. That was extremly lucky one or more of those pistons didn't look like somebody had taken a blow torch to the top of it, expecially on the deep spray bowls.

Glad it wasn't a total melt down for y'all.

 

[Prairie Dog]

Does this mean it's wise to proactively replace injectors at some set mileage interval?
Or is this truly the exception?