Overall assessment of doing this:
My first thought of undertaking this task was one of skepticism, as you only have to look at all the garbage that clutters the top of the engine. How in the hell will I remember where everything goes? Now that I am 99.9 percent complete, yes it has taken awhile to do it and yes I got everything back where it was supposed to go. Thanks in part to my 13 yr. old son who helped me the final day. What a trooper he was.

Would I ever do this again, well I hope not. At least, not on this truck or engine.

There were a lot of folks on this forum that added help and advice and I wish to extent my thanks and appreciation to them for their help, knowledge and encouragement in this task. To those of you with the "overwhelming fear of the unknown", rest assured it is doable.

deucer

 

what are you going to flush with? when i worked for Caterpillar and we had dozers and other equipment come in with junked up engines and radiators, we drained all the nasty out. bout cascade dish washin detergent, and ran that thru several cycles until it came out clean....then filled it back up with coolant.....i thought they were crazy when the boss walked up with a box of cascade....thought he was bout to wash some damn dishes ...oh just for future reference, royal purple oil and CATS dont like each other....that oil gummed up awful in those engines...i run rotella in my 6.7 and always ran amsoil in my 5.9..........glad you got it back to runnin man

 

I'm told that Ford service guys have been running "Super Clean" (couple of gals. with water) and flushing. I got a gallon of it, but I might try a box of Cascade since I'm going to the grocery store today. I'm open to anything that will thoroughly clean the system. I'm running Rotella 5-40w T6 oil.

 

get u a couple of things of it, and just let the engine run at idle for a while til it gets up to operating temp and has good circulation...drain it, then do it again...it always worked good when we did it

 

Personally I'd just do a standard flush with distilled water, and put a coolant filter on it....

Congrats on getting it done man!

 

Don't use dish detergent man... get some restore and flush with that, then do a flush with vc-9 and then fill with ELC and water.

 

Thanks guys for the input. I've been running the Super Clean in it for about 70 miles now and I am going to drain it today. Could not find Restore anywhere locally so I went with Super Clean. Man I thought my truck had rabies yesterday when I opened the degas cover as it was foaming at the mouth. I'll drain it and go back with straight distilled water (.83 cents a gallon at WallyMart) for a day then drain again and look at what comes out. If it looks relatively clean then I will go with the coolant Rotella ELC and distilled water. VC9? What does that really do? The guy at the local Ford dealer told me the mechanics there used the Super Clean instead. If it offers a greater advantage at removing more crud then I don't have a problem with using it after this drain.

Mdub: I already have a coolant filter system on the truck, but I have it closed right now while I'm flushing the system. I will reinstall a filter and turn it back on when I'm done.

 

Here's a very good article on how to do a proper flush, as you'll see the truck is running as water is being pumped in/out.... good read.

http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/96...formation.html

 

Well the guy from the machine shop called a said heads were ready to be put back together and I asked how much for hardened valve seats on the exhaust valves and he said 400 bucks for both. He mentioned there was no cracking at all in the seats as I had brought them in so I decided against doing them and save a little money. Plus I heard horror stories if they come out. 2 different metals expand and contracting different rates etc. So I'm gonna keep it simple and I think by keeping EGT down you reduce chance of issues. Plus my EGR is deleted and I have a 4" turbo back no cat.

 

Parting comment: Truck is all back together and initial analysis is extremely favorable with its overall performance. My prime directive was to solve the chronic spewing of coolant out the degas tank and repetitive headgasket failure. With the tips and assistance of several folks on this forum, I undertook this task as I had lost faith in having dealerships do it. I'm glad I did it as I have learned enormously about this engine. I believe each and every step I've taken in doing this has contributed in me better understanding why things happened to my engine. Ok, enough with the bs; engine purrs like a kitten, but when you hit the throttle now, it literally rips like the "bull in the china closet".
It's time to close this thread. Thanks to all and I don't forget. Now where did I put that ****ing beer?

Later dudes!
deucer