Cavitation??

[Peteandsharon]

Hi guys,

With my previous 7.3L Powerstroke I religiously added a coolant additive in order to prevent cavitation in the engine. When I traded up to the 6.4L Powerstroke there has no longer been any mention of the need for the additive. Can someone explain to me what has changed so that cavitation is no longer a concern with this engine?

Thanks,

Pete

 

[hoefler]

delete

 

[Peteandsharon]

OK, well I just got a bit of clarification from my dealer. He says that there is in fact an additive in the coolant. What has apparently changed is that you are not changing it on a regular (15000 mile) interval. Rather, you wait for a light to come on in the dash to tell you it is time. He also said that they regularly check this coolant supplement level when you have maintenance with them like oil changes (which I do).

So... I guess I'm OK for now. However, I need to go back to my owners manual and see what it says about this process. It seems to me that this whole issue of cavitation and the coolant additive is not stressed enough in the manual or when you buy the truck. Something this mission critical should be highlighted in big bold letters and I don't believe it was in either of my truck manuals. Not everyone is tech savvy enough or reads the diesel forums to understand the importance of this additive. I guess I'll get off my soap box for now. My blood pressure is now starting to come back down. Something this morning triggered my memory about the coolant additive and I had the sick feeling that I had missed several times when I was supposed to add it. Not good for the heart.

 

[scottyb]

OK, well I just got a bit of clarification from my dealer. He says that there is in fact an additive in the coolant. What has apparently changed is that you are not changing it on a regular (15000 mile) interval. Rather, you wait for a light to come on in the dash to tell you it is time. He also said that they regularly check this coolant supplement level when you have maintenance with them like oil changes (which I do).

So... I guess I'm OK for now. However, I need to go back to my owners manual and see what it says about this process. It seems to me that this whole issue of cavitation and the coolant additive is not stressed enough in the manual or when you buy the truck. Something this mission critical should be highlighted in big bold letters and I don't believe it was in either of my truck manuals. Not everyone is tech savvy enough or reads the diesel forums to understand the importance of this additive. I guess I'll get off my soap box for now. My blood pressure is now starting to come back down. Something this morning triggered my memory about the coolant additive and I had the sick feeling that I had missed several times when I was supposed to add it. Not good for the heart.

I must have missed that memo. Between Me, my wife, and my company, we racked over 1 mil miles on 7.3L's and never used any coolant additives. We had no unusual fuel pump failures and no major component failures. If they were cavitating, it went unoticed. The last one, a '02 F450 flat bed had 304K when I traded it for a F550 last summer. The only real problem we had was belts and tensioner pulleys. I guess, sometimes ignorance is bliss. I wouldn't get too worked up about it.

 

[Peteandsharon]

I think the Lord was smiling on you. However, it only takes one time of having pin hole leaks in the cylinders and a rejected warranty claim because of lack of maintenance to make ya a believer. Not to beat a dead horse but I had a major problem with this truck when it didn't even make it home (80 miles) from the dealer before having the engine self destruct with $5000 of damage. I lost a huge fight with Ford over whether they should fix my truck or replace it. I have no desire to enter into another battle over a warranty.

 

[driver311]

cavitation is the forming of air bubbles on the sleeves. the air bubbles cause hot spots . in 500000 miles and up this may cause a hole. some engines have sleeves some dont, if no sleeve no need for additive. large diesel engines all have sleeves and have water filters ,in the filter is a hard lump that dissolves through the like of the filter.

 

[Peteandsharon]

cavitation is the forming of air bubbles on the sleeves. the air bubbles cause hot spots . in 500000 miles and up this may cause a hole. some engines have sleeves some dont, if no sleeve no need for additive. large diesel engines all have sleeves and have water filters ,in the filter is a hard lump that dissolves through the like of the filter.

So....... what are we saying here? Does the 6.4L have a sleeve? Does this water filter lump keep you from needing an additive? If you think that it takes 500,000 plus miles to cause any problems then for just about all diesel pick up owners cavitation is a non-issue and the coolant additive is just extra revenue for the dealerships??? I'm not a mechanic so I can't challenge this with any authority but it seems to me that a lot of people were making a big deal out of cavitation for it to be such a non-issue.

 

[scottyb]

He must have been smiling a lot because we are talking about 8 different vehicles.

I lost a huge fight with Ford over whether they should fix my truck or replace it. I have no desire to enter into another battle over a warranty.

My gosh. Was the truck new?

 

[rgwilliams69]

Here in Illinois you have a return period on any new vehicle purchase. I would have had them tow it back to the dealer and cancel the contract for such a failure and let the dealer handle it from there. Unbelievable that they (the dealer) didn't stand behind you on this. That is just terrible and unbelievable...

 

[Peteandsharon]

Well that is a long and now almost 4 year old story. I don't really want to rehash it here but yes it was brand new and on it's maiden voyage home from the dealer in West Bend Wisconsin. If you're interested in the long story the link is //heartlandowners.org/showthread.php/9216-What-have-I-done-!!?highlight=west
We took up a great deal of forum time and I certainly heard a lot of "Well I certainly wouldn't have taken that". Well yes you would have because outside of hiring an expensive lawyer and rolling the dice I had no options. Ford had all the cards. But again that was then. The truck has run wonderfully since then. They essentially did rebuild the engine. The only difference is that the dealer did it - not the factory. Anyway, my point is simply that the dealer generally holds the cards in any dispute involving very expensive repairs. And if I can avoid any such situation by adding coolant additive, I'm all in.

 

[57chevyconvt]

Some of your concerns on Cavitation damage to the coolant side of diesel engines has been addressed with the new and improved chemical formulation of coolants. Dodge recommends the G-5 coolant which is H.O.A.T. (Hybrid Organic Acid Technology). If you want to learn more about the various type of coolants (which are many) used in internal combustion engines, go the ZEREX web site and/or link, http://www.englefieldoil.com/PDF/Zerex_chart.pdf, note this link is from an article that is several years old, therefore you might have to do a little more searching to retrieve this article and coolant chart. Hope this answers some of your question on coolant/antifreeze.

 

[rgwilliams69]

Hey Pete, apologize for my 20/20 hindsight comment. I'm certain you had plenty of that and I didn't need to pile another on. Quite some story you had there. I spend a lot of time on the Ford Trucks forum with some friends there, and your story trumps a lot of the worst ones I have seen. I can certainly see why you are worried about the coolant additive, I would be too. I guess there are those situations that happen infrequently (hopefully very infrequently) for all three big brands, but the notion of having a brand new truck blow up would drive me nuts. Kudos on your patience with Ford in resolving it, not sure I could have done the same. Wow...

Here's to hoping that is your one and only lifetime experience with such a crazy situation! Glad to see you stayed with Ford. They make some crazy good trucks, wait until you try one of the new 6.7s!

 

[JohnDar]

Here's some information that Jim Hutt asked me to post to this thread. He's having a bit of difficulty attaching things to posts.

 

[Peteandsharon]

Hey Pete, apologize for my 20/20 hindsight comment. I'm certain you had plenty of that and I didn't need to pile another on. Quite some story you had there. I spend a lot of time on the Ford Trucks forum with some friends there, and your story trumps a lot of the worst ones I have seen. I can certainly see why you are worried about the coolant additive, I would be too. I guess there are those situations that happen infrequently (hopefully very infrequently) for all three big brands, but the notion of having a brand new truck blow up would drive me nuts. Kudos on your patience with Ford in resolving it, not sure I could have done the same. Wow...

Here's to hoping that is your one and only lifetime experience with such a crazy situation! Glad to see you stayed with Ford. They make some crazy good trucks, wait until you try one of the new 6.7s!

No problem Greg. No offense taken. Yeah, I stuck with Ford primarily because at that point I was committed. But also, I had been very happy with my previous 7.3L diesel. What I will never do is buy from that dealer again. They played the perfect good cop/bad cop scenario. Dealer was always in my corner. He "sympathized and understood completely why I was upset" while Ford played the bad cop. The owner was also very understanding saying that after the smoke cleared he was going to compensate me in some mysterious way. But in the end I got nothing from the dealership. Not even a free truck wash. I emailed him several times but he didn't even return my emails. In the end he had sold me a truck with a rebuilt engine at a new truck price and he wouldn't acknowledge my emails. Ford did give me a free 200,000 mile catastrophic damage warranty. So essentially, if a similar thing happened between 100,000 and 200,000 miles and they couldn't prove that I had caused it (like the cavitation issue) it would be covered. Essentially that is useless. If I were to have a problem after their rebuild it would have occurred before 100,000 miles and I already had that extended warranty which I had bought. So... there you are. Like you said, hopefully that is my one and only collision with Ford management.

Take care,

 

[Peteandsharon]

Just to throw a little more fire on the caviation discussion, it would appear that the 6.4L Powerstroke is indeed capable of suffering cavitation and in under 100,000 miles. With some time on my hands recently I did some googling and some searches in Youtube. It would appear that cavitation in the 6.4 is real and maybe more common than I would have thought. I saw several Youtube videos where they had 6.4 engines taken apart and showed where cavitation had eaten a hole right through. One of the engines had 98,000 miles on it. In fact whoever was speaking on the video made several references to the fact that the 6.4 kept them plenty busy with this kind of problem. Very depressing to watch. Googling 6.4L and cavitation brought back more than I cared to see.