Alright. Well my wife and I were gone all day. She drove 40 miles to visit a friend and I went with a friend to pick up some parts for a jet ski. Well this evening we were outside cleaning my mustang and doing some random crap outside the house and I had to get a tool from my toolbox in the bed. When I went around behind my truck I noticed a couple small spots of oil on the tailgate. So I kneeled down to look underneath and saw everyone's worst nightmare. The whole undercarriage of my truck was covered in motor oil, front the front to rear. Well I pop the hood and pull the dipstick. Nothing! Not a single drop of freaking oil on the stick. At this point i'm wondering, how the heck is this thing still running. After some inspecting I realized the oil filter had a tiny pin hole in the side. I'm not sure how this happened. We don't live down a gravel road and I only use a belt style filter tool to remove the oil filter. Luckily I already had some motorcraft oil and a filter ready since I was planning to change it today anyway. Well I installed the new filter and the new oil. Said a quick prayer and turned the key, she fired right up without any strange noises, rattles,leaking oil or smoke. I let it run for about five minutes, have the wife rev the motor a few times while I stood outside and the truck ran great. Fast forward a few hours of it sitting I had to move it, I crank the truck up and well I died a little inside. Blue smoke came rolling out the exhaust and I know what that means. It quickly went away and I couldn't get it to smoke anymore. The motor sounds great still but blue smoke is never good. I'm gonna let it sit a few more hours and crank it again to see what happens. If it never smokes again then great. I'll keep a driving her, if it does emit some smoke then I guess i'll be doing a compression and leak down test to see how bad things are before tearing it apart. I'm not pissed at my wife but did ask how did she miss this and she said nothing ever gave any warning. We all know the fantastic oil pressure guages only show whether or not you have any pressure. I think it has to actually go below 6psi before it even throws a warning light. I just installed an aftermarket oil pressure guage in my car three day's ago and should have put one in my truck at the same time. I have over 120k miles on this truck and haven't ever had to turn a wrench on this thing besides normal maintenance and now a hole in the filter and fords bull**** guage may have just costed me an expensive repair.

 

Man that sucks, glad I have my edge, it warns you on stuff like that. Wasn't there any smoke coming out of it? I would think oil hitting the exhaust would be noticable both visially and thru the nose.

 

I would think so too. She was already home when I got back, so the exhaust had already cooled down. I'm about to go crank it real quick and see what happens. It should be cooled off pretty good now.

Edit: No smoke. Had my neighbor crank it for me while I stood by the exhaust and he revved the motor a few times. It's running perfect and nothing came out of the exhaust. I can't believe that motor isn't making any funny noises at least. I'm gonna keep a close eye on everything and see what happens.

 

Wow man that's not good. Seeing the filter is where the oil pressure comes from and with a hole in the filter things might not turn out so good. I hope that's not the case though and you caught it in time.

Just curious, were you using a MC FL-820s?

 

Good luck!

 

Yes sir! FL-820s filter and MC 5w-20 oil. It just crank and ran fine. Looking good so far.

Thanks! Built Ford Tough

 

Great to hear! My truck has a little over 120,000 on it too, I don't want to be hearing horror stories like this!

Hope it continues to run right and you don't have any related problems with it.

 

Put some miles on it then take a oil sample in to have checked out for metal fragments.

 

2004Triton5.4


Several things ....

How much oil came out when you changed it yesterday (earlier today?).

Low oil press light or "Check Gages" never lit up?

She never made any noises?

How many miles on the motor?

You had the wife rev it up and then shortly, shut it off it sounds like .... then later started it and she rolled some smoke out you say?

I think there's a good chance no damage, especially if you got a couple - 3 quarts at least out of the engine. Your reving the engine just prior to shutting it off would pump oil up top and letting it wind down after creats high vacuum pulling oil into chambers sometimes, resulting in a big puff at start up.

I think you were looking for the smoke and so took notice, it's likely done it before. I have a 2001 Mercury GM with just over 60 K that has done it on very rare occasion since under 10K on it, but it uses NO oil between changes and runs like a top. I've had '98, a '00, and a '06 Crown Vic police cars and once in a while, they all done it and none of them used oil. None do it every start up, but they all did it on occasion.

Hope so anyway.

 

Might want to see if Motorcraft can help you out. As in defective filter. It's worth a call.

 

I am still waiting for our 1999 Expedition to break. It was run multiple times where the oil pressure gauge went to 0. I would say it has probably like 20-30 minutes of oil less running, 140K miles, and somehow it still runs like a champ. It has been about 10K miles since it was put through hell.

 

It really is hard to kill a motor if you want to. A friend of mine had an old 3/4 ton with the 312 V-8 and put a brick on the gas pedal. He wanted to see if it would hand grenade b/c he had a new motor ready to go in.

It was non-eventful, that old thing floated the valves until it could'nt run anymore and just shut off. He jumped in, turned the key and she fired right back up and ran like nothing happened. Did this 3 times in a row and it reved for about 3 to 5 minutes each time with the same results. He never could get it to blow or seize. Just yanked it out and put in the new motor.

 

MANY, MANY years ago a friends father owned a wrecking yard and even though he'd raced stock cars for several years, had never seen a rod out the side of a block. He took a Studebaker Champion (how many of you are old enough to remember those?), put it in the wrecking yard and, with plenty of fuel on board, propped the throttle to the floor and let it scream. It ran that way till the tank was empty and never whimpered. Who can figure, can't break 'em when we try and they break when we don't want 'em to.

 

Hopefully this will be my last scare for a long, long time!

That's a good idea.

Honestly I was so worried about the motor, I completely forgot about checking until after the fact and my oil catch can already had some oil in it. All I know is that the dipstick didn't touch anything when I checked the level. The low oil warning light according to her never came on and I didn't attempt to crank the truck before adding more oil. The motor hasn't made any strange noises from what i've heard. After replacing the oil I cranked the truck and let it run for a couple minutes, then revved it a few times, not hard, just up to about 3,000rpms, then I let it idle for another few minutes and turned it back off and it sat there for a little while before starting it when I noticed the smoke. As for the smoke, it may emit some every now and then that I never see but this cloud would have been noticeable at anytime, except for maybe at night. It was a good size cloud of smoke. The motor has over 120k miles on it so far. Thanks!

Their are so many possibilities as to how the hole got there that i'm not even gonna attempt to contact them.

My dad has had this same thing happen with a motorcraft filter on his 99 F150. I'm not sure what's out problem but i'm gonna start paying close attention to the next filters I buy.

Parts fail when you least expect it to happen or are low on money.

Thats pretty crazy.

 

Just got back from a 450 mile round trip and my truck ran perfect. No loss of oil, smoke or rattles. Made the whole trip on one tank of gas, with a 27 gallon tank. Fuel light came on about 15 miles from home. The trip consisted of about 95% highway driving with speeds ranging from 25mph to 70 mph. The 5% city driving was in Hot Springs,AR where traffic was congested bad, due to the holiday.