This is a pic of my uncle's 7.3 taken just a couple of days ago.... It has under 150,000 miles on it. It was running down the road, then it shut off.

 

It will run the way you drive it.

 

Too bad for your uncle.

 

chester, what happened to your uncle's truck?

 

We don't know yet. But it wasn't good.

 

From the looks of it - I have to agree...

 

Actually, I should've asked before, what's the fluid on the ground? Diesel, oil, tranny oil, coolant?

 

HUEI injection vehicles will not run without oil. And it looks like you lost all of it from either the drain plug or a loose oil filter. Fix the leak and fill it up with oil and it should still run fine.

 

It's engine oil, and it is pouring out of the torque converter dust cover... In fact, it drained for a long time after I tried to crank it. It was still on the stick. I don't know what broke, but it went so catastrophically that it lost oil pressure at highway rpm and shut the motor off. It was really pumping it out.

That puddle came from oil that was trapped in the bellhousing, it ran out of the little vent at the bottom.


Edit: You know, I didn't actually get under the truck. We just called a wrecker and towed it to the dealer. He just got it back from getting his 3rd transmission installed. The dealership changed the engine oil while it was in, and I bet they left the old filter gasket on the filter housing when the put the new filter on. It was kinda chilly when he cranked it up that morning, and the thick oil might have blew the seal out.

But it looked like it was pouring out of the bellhousing vent. I just can't imagine a rear main letting loose and pouring that much oil out, that fast.

Whatever, its the dealership's problem now.

 

You might want to check his Turbo Pedestal O-Rings, HPOP O-rings and fittings.

 

Needs to junk it and swap in a V10!

 

Do you have a v10 in that F350 rig of yours? It looks like it... but I'd figure I'd ask.

 

The oil isn't coming out of the trans bell housing, guaranteed. If you had opened up the hood and looked on top of the engine you would have seen oil down in the valley. It comes from either the turbo pedestal or hpop and pools in the valley and then runs down the back side of the engine and drips off the bottom of the trans bell housing. I can also guarantee that its not the turbo pedestal o-rings as the engine will keep running, you'll just burn up the thrust bearings inside from lack of oil. It was the hpop o-rings that went, hence why it shut off all of a sudden. A couple people have touched on this already. Really this is a $50 fix and you're on the way, its not the catastrophic failure that you're trying to make it out to be. I've had one blow before on a work truck. It sat at the dealer for a couple hours and I was on my way again, and most of that time was spent waiting to get it in the shop.

Out of our fleet of service trucks 6 of them are 7.3L trucks. I've only been left once, and that was when the oil line blew. It didn't take all that long to get it fixed. All of the other problems I've ever had with the 7.3L have been minor stuff I'd expect to see on 100K+ trucks that get worked extremely hard.

 

You guessed it! Just got the truck back today... It was the high pressure oil pump. According to them, it exploded. They had to replace it. The dealer seemed suprised. They said that they had only seen one other explode like that.
The catastrophic failure here is the piles of dough he's spent to keep this thing running. And we haven't got the bill yet, but I bet its gonna be more than $50 when its all said and done.

I guess I'm just spoiled. My 97' F150 had over 300,000 miles on it before it broke down and left me stranded. (fuel pump)

 

If the hpop actually exploded its housing then yeah, thats going to be more than $50 to fix. Strange, though, thats the first one I've ever heard of that happening on. Most likely it had a very small flaw in the casting that over time just finally failed. Freak accident. Some trucks are just lemons I guess.


I know on my F250 since I've owned it (50k, has 132k on it now). I've only had to change the oil, 1 alternator, a set of brakes, and 2 unit bearings. I think I've got about $500 in maintenance invested in mine. I've spent alot of miles behind the wheel of each one of our service trucks and I've only had to deal with the hpop o-ring going on the one, but the rest was just fuel bowl o-rings, a water pump, and alot of fuel/air filters. The old 7.3L has been pretty rock solid for me. I wish I had my 7.3L out here now. I had to start the 6.0L today (6*F) and it took 10min before it idled smooth