My Engine ruined due to coolant leak at 62,000 miles. Is the cause due to bad gaskets ? If so, what is the correct gasket set # that will fix the problem if I decide to repair. I wouldn't want to put the same bad gasket set in the truck and have it fail again later. If bad gaskets is not the cause of the problem, then I may decide to write it off as a total lose and get another truck. Need any help you can give me to help me decide. Any help and/or comments would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

By coolant leak do you mean coolant leaked into one of the cylinders and hydrolocked your motor? If so then unluckily you are yet another victim of this issue for the 97-98 4.2s. If this was your issue then yeah it was bad gaskets, specifically the timing cover gasket. Ford made them too thin so over time they shrank and allowed coolant to leak into the #1 or #4 cylinders. Since water doesn't compress, the next time you started your motor it bent the connecting rod.

Ford has since upgraded the gaskets so any new ones you get should be fine. I'd recommend you get them from the Ford dealer.

If you want more detailed info you can check out the 97-98 Hydrolock threads over at www.v6f150.com

I caught mine before it locked, had them replace the upper&lower intake manifold gaskets as well as the timing cover gasket. They had to rip the whole top end off the motor but since then I have't lost a drop of coolant. If you can do this work yourself you'll save big $$.

 

it got mine in 2003. $4,000 for a 0-mile factory engine. good news is it came with alum. intake manifold versus the plastic ones found on earlier models

 

aluminum gaskets ?

 

No he means the intake manifold itself is aluminum. Ford for some reason put aluminum intake manifolds on some models and plastic ones on others.

Also if for some reason you need to replace your 4.2 with another one, to make sure you avoid this issue in the future, look on the drivers side valve cover, there should be a sticker with the engine build date on it. Any motor built after Jan. 15, 1998 will have the upgraded gaskets. Provided of course that someone hasn't switched valve covers.

I managed to prevent this from happening to my motor because of forums like this one. One tell-tale sign of this issue is that the coolant level in the overflow bottle will start going down but there will be no visible leak, since its going into the cylinder.

 

Amen, bro. When I started seeing the slow coolant loss with no external leaks, I did some on-line digging and quickly realized that I had gaskets that were nearing the end of their lives. I had them changed before hydrolocking. You could definitely see that it was only a matter of time if I had let it go.

 

I just found this thread and had a question. I too have a 97 V6, and back in 2002 (86K miles) had the timing cover gasket replaced by the local Ford dealership. Now I have 130K on the truck. A month ago I noticed the coolant level kept slowing going down. Had it checked out by a local repair shop (not Ford) and sure enough the leak is at the timing cover and the gasket needs replacing again.

Shouldn't the gasket last longer than that??? I noticed someone said the gaskets are better now, is this correct?

 

They prolly used the cheap Felpro gasket which will shrink again over time. I'm surprised the dealer didn't use the Ford gasket. Ford did upgrade the gaskets for the timing cover from 3mm to 4mm way back in 1998.

 

Thanks for the input ! Looks like it's something that I'm going to constantly watch. I''m not sure what gaskets or type of gaskets they used. I have 30,000 miles on the new engine.