I have a 2004 f250 I recently purchased needing work. Truck has 200,000 miles. Purchased truck knowing it had a blown turbo seal, while loading/unloading truck found that it was hydrolocked with coolant through all cylinders assuming this was an egr cooler went ahead and installed egr delete/bypass while in the truck installing a rebuilt turbo. Pulled all glow plugs and turned motor over to clear all the oil/water from cylinders possible.

Last night:

Put the truck back together and it idled rough and smoked quite a bit(white/gray) figured it was just leftover coolant in the cylinders and oil in the tail pipe thought nothing of it. After the truck was warmed up in the shop ran the rpms up some to see if maybe the idle issue was just air in the fuel lines still, the truck began to runaway with itself, crammed a box over the intake and it eventually died in less then thirty seconds or so of blocking it off. Didn't think much of it, figured just due to oil still lingering from the blown turbo seals since the truck died out so quickly once blocking off air flow.

Today:

Started truck, I wouldn't say the truck had a long start, but it didn't see me coming either. Truck still idled rough(light the tires stacked in the bed were shaking) and smoked slightly at idle and worse with increased rpms. Went to drive the truck to see if maybe I could get it to burn everything off and it would line out. The truck seemed to have no power what so ever when I pulled out onto the main road, smoked terribly with increased throttle. Truck soon started to idle up high, pulled over and applied break to keep rpms under control. The engine died with turning the key off, let it sit a second and started it back up, some what of a long start. Drive it a 1/8 mile to turn around and go back home, while turning around it starts idling worse and dies, realize now the truck is hydrolocked.

Get it home and pull glow plugs, I do believe there is a slightly blown head gasket on the passenger side. But what is really puzzling is none of the cylinders seemed they should have been hydrolocked. When I pulled the glow plugs on the drivers side I found plug from cylinder 6 has generous amount of oil on it.

Is this a sign of a bad injector on cylinder 6? Is it possible for an injector to lose oil directly into the cylinder? Any tips on narrowing down between a bad injector and bad rings on this cylinder? Sorry to type a novel, just trying to get all the details

 

Oil on the glow plug is not too unusual, the glowplugs go through the rocker boxes and oil being in there is normal as this is the same area as the rocker arms and injectors, they are installed like that to keep the actual connectors out of the oil and to make replacement easier. It almost sounds like you have a loose injector, when a injector comes loose it can send cylinder pressure into the fuel "rail" that is actually just a hole bored through the head to feed each injector. when that pressur hits the fuel rail it can push fuel away from other injectors making it hard to figure out which injector is the problem. Another thing that can happen is the fuel can push around the bad oring/causede by the loose injector/ and pour right into the cylinder causing a hydrolock. I have never heard of a 6.0 running away before so this is a new one to me, might have to pull the intercooler to make sure it is not filled with oil fom the bad turbo, all 6.0s will have some oil in the intake tract because of the vent tube that enters it from the drivers side valve cover, but it should not be pooled up in the intercooler. I hope that you didn't replace the turbo because you saw some oil in the intake, every 6.0 will have that but some mechanics don't know that and especcially if it is a cummins guy they will say the seals in the turbo are bad, if a seal in these turbos goes bad then the turbo could not spool up and it would unleash alot of oil..

 

Thanks for the reply. The reason I replaced the turbo was when I bought the truck it was burning an insane amount of oil, it was running out of the tail pipe and had a liberal amount of oil throughout the intake and was puddled in the turbo(but had no blow by while running with the oil fill cap off) with any hope that was it.

After pulling all the glow plugs today and restarting it it ran just like before, idles rough and smokes slightly(I think all the oil from the turbo has been burnt off now). When it would kind of stumble or idle up for a split second. It randomly poured fluid of some type out of the filter side of the intake so I turned the truck off immediately. It didn't smell like anything, but felt like fuel. When I went to restart it was hydrolocked again.

Guess I'll assume it's fuel and order me a seal kit for the injectors. I planned to either replace the injectors or have them rebuilt just to save myself the trouble in the future, but I hate to drop that kind of money in the truck with no guarantee nothing else will be wrong. I've got a perfectly good 6.5 truck sitting in the driveway(the lemon diesel shop I know), maybe I should cut my losses and run LOL

 

Well I changed the injectors in mine last october and after we put them back in it hydrolocked. I thought it was a big deal at first but we pulled glowpluggs and cranked it over until we found were fuel was coming out. We pulled that injector and the copper o-ring on the tip was bad. I put new o-rings and a new copper washer on and replaced it. Then I spoke with a mechanic and he said that sometimes just tightening the injectors is not enough and when the injectors fire off they will unseat and let diesel pour down into the cylinder. So he sai tighten them, then use a wooden block or something soft to tap on the top and tighten them again. We used a brass punch which worked great. Everything was well after that. Worth a shot to you as easy as the injectors are to locate