Is it the head gasket? Please help diagnose.....

So I'm having more issues with this truck I bought my son a month ago. It's the 2010 Ram 3500 6.7, 184k miles with EGR, CCV delete and 4" open exhaust. Suddenly it is having engine overheating issues and couple times my son said it got to 300°. Yes obviously that is bad, we put a thermostat in it with no change, changed the water pump and still had issues. It seemed to have air in the system and blow it out the overflow valve on radiator into overflow reservoir. I let it get cold, started engine, opened radiator cap and had to put almost a gallon of coolant in as I waited for it to bleed out allen fitting on coolant hose where EGR used to be. This was first time I bled the system with through that coolant hose and now truck holds 180° just fine and doesn't overheat.
But when engine sits and gets cold, I have to bleed it to prevent it from overheating. Not sure what is going on but I've been told its the lower coolant hose which is not leaking and appears to be fine or the head gasket.

Any help is much appreciated?

I guess some more info on it would be after I got it running right and not overheating, I had to get it in for transmission service and the shop I took it too had to to full overhaul on the 68rfe due to 5th and 6th slipping real bad and low pressure. When they got it apart it was pretty tore up and neglected, so I'm pretty far into with this truck already?
Anyway after that shop got it fixed and test drove it, engine started overheating again and they could only test it so far without it getting too hot. Unfortunately I had to scramble to pay them and it took couple days and just got truck back today. But before I started engine I filled radiator with almost a gallon of coolant, started truck and began to fill again and bleed it out the Allen fitting. Bled it, capped it and it held 180° for the 20 mile trip home. So now I'm at a loss, its running fine but I still think there is a problem. Gonna wait and cool it down and see if I need to bleed system again when it's cold.
Sorry for the long explanation guys but hopefully it helps and you can help me before I dive deeper and just pull the head on this thing

Thanks!

I think I may have found the issue, I feel I may be sucking air into the cooling system through this EGR delete fitting pictured. Does anyone else have this possible problem? Does anyone just remove this coolant line altogether and just plug it up on the head and at the bottom where it connects to the lower radiator hose?? I would think the engine should run just fine without it as its just a line that supplied coolant to EGR cooler and then feeds back into engine. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

But a cheap pressure tester from harbor freight and pressurize the system. Shoot that with soapy water.
I don't remember if that hose feeds anything else. I'm curious if the heater circuit ties in and you would lose heat.

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The coolant has to go somewhere? Or did it never get filled properly to begin with?

That hose does not go to heater core thats the hose behind it.....as far as I know that hose is just a EGR cooler 'simulation hose' and just goes between head water jacket and the lower coolant hose.
I'm actually out driving it now and so far so good, holding pressure and temps are steady at 180°

95cummins5.9 said:

The coolant has to go somewhere? Or did it never get filled properly to begin with?

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I hear ya, and I honestly don't know. It had a few temperature fluxations when I first bought the truck and I didn't think anything of it cuz it immediately came back down and ran fine. Then about 2 weeks after I bought it my kid says it is overheating. It literally came outta nowhere and from what I can tell it just blew the coolant into the overflow tank. I did have to add some after the thermostat change and water pump change but I only put back in what was lost.

Gonna head home and park it for evening and see what happens when its cold in the morning. If it has air and needs to be bled then it clearly is sucking air back in somewhere and im gonna start with probably removing that EGR cooler simulation hose.
I'll definitely post updates and I appreciate the help guys, thanks ?

Fill it up with coolant, let it warm up.

Then go drive it and put it under a load, if it blows coolant out of the overflow, and makes alot of pressure in the radiator, you have a head gasket issue.

Ok update.....so yesterday we started fresh and I started engine cold, filled radiator up, bled it out the EGR delete pipe and it ran fine. Took it for a spin and it never got above 188° and clearly the system was functioning properly, thermostat opening after 180°, not blowing it into overflow and keeping it cool. Parked it for about almost 2 hours, started it back up, temp was 130° and seemed fine. Started driving and suddenly it climbed to 240-245° and never got below 215°. Just threw me for a loop with the change from just shutting it down for a couple hours. Came back home and found that it blew coolant into overflow tank and filled it back up again.?
One thing that happened when I shut it down, you can hear a slow bubble in the overflow tank, as if the radiator cap wasn't holding 18psi. So we let the truck cool back down, got a new radiator cap from O'Reilly and unfortunately the new one leaked externally under pressure and still gave the same slow bubble in the overflow tank. So gonna take that cap back and get another. Weird thing during that test was it ran fine again. We had re-filled and bled the system out and it ran fine, never got about 188° again, didn't blow anything into overflow tank, just leaked a little externally since I saw some splatter around the new cap.
So until I get another new radiator cap tomorrow, im still confused about it. Hopefully its just a simple radiator cap and that will fix it but thats just gonna confuse me even more with all the problems that had come about out of nowhere.?

It's the headgasket.

jasonc said:

It's the headgasket.

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Concur.

Unfortunately, you are probably looking at a head gasket. It's it changes on it's own from good to off the rails, that's what it sounds like to me as well. There are far more experts here than I am though.

Edit: And there you go. The expert ^^^^^ tree'd me. If you need a head gasket, call Snedge. He's got your cure.

MLS gasket doing MLS gasket things?
I'm curious what caused the I initial overtemp. The rest is symptom.
I'm guessing a stretched headbolt.
Engine oil clean? No moisture in the CCV filter?

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Truck gave me a few curious temp spikes well above 200 when I first purchased it, didn't think anything of it, truck runs fine.
We changed the oil when we got it to start fresh, T5 Rotella 15w-40, oil that came out was fine, used fleetgaurd oil filter, its not making or losing oil, been checking that constantly during this debacle.
Just ran it with another new radiator cap and this one pretty much did same thing as last but splattered a lot less coolant from the cap but bubbled like crazy when I shut engine down, you could hear it in the cab gurgling thru the overflow tank. It ran fine idling then driving it shot up to 220, stayed there and filled the overflow tank again. Funny thing is it never overflows the overflow tank? it fills it to same level every time, about 2-3 inches from top.
Gonna go back to old radiator cap, vent it and try one more time because I was able to get it to run fine with that cap.
Only other thing I thought of just now is we get a 'perform service' message everytjme u accelerate hard and we had changed out the CCV filter and upon going to change it I found the one in the truck was 'gutted', it actually stuck to cover when we pulled it off not to engine side. I put a regular CCV filter in it and it ran fine but we still got the perform service light so I kinda shrugged it off and just live with the message. I wouldn't think that's bad as going from a gutted filter back to a factory filter would blow the coolant part of the head gasket?
I'm at a loss and appreciate all the help guys, gonna try this one last thing, then maybe get one for those carbon tester kits for radiator and try that to verify combustion gasses in the cooling system.

More weird stuff since above post. I had driven truck home after 20 mile test drive into town but it cooled down to about 146° after hour and half then seemed to be operating normal almost all the way home then suddenly it spiked to 221 and stayed there all the way till I pulled in driveway. Overflow tank was at same level, about 2" from top but didn't overfill and spill out top which it still has never done during this issue.
More funny stuff was the new radiator cap is now holding pressure and wasn't sputtering coolant and also when I shut engine down, I got no more bubbling out of the overflow tank!
I siphoned the coolant out of overflow tank down to max level and was gonna let it cool and try venting system again since new cap is holding and see what happens. I'm with you guys tho, im about to just pull head and see for sure.....

Megadad said:

More weird stuff since above post. I had driven truck home after 20 mile test drive into town but it cooled down to about 146° after hour and half then seemed to be operating normal almost all the way home then suddenly it spiked to 221 and stayed there all the way till I pulled in driveway. Overflow tank was at same level, about 2" from top but didn't overfill and spill out top which it still has never done during this issue.

More funny stuff was the new radiator cap is now holding pressure and wasn't sputtering coolant and also when I shut engine down, I got no more bubbling out of the overflow tank!

I siphoned the coolant out of overflow tank down to max level and was gonna let it cool and try venting system again since new cap is holding and see what happens. I'm with you guys tho, im about to just pull head and see for sure.....

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Pull the water pump out of this truck amd inspect it.

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biggy238 said:

Pull the water pump out of this truck amd inspect it.

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I put a new water pump in it and it's pumping fine. I honestly thought the old pump had failed and the plastic impeller has spun on the shaft but the old pump was fine so I kept it for a spare.

You put a pump in it after the issues began?


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Just had more weird stuff happen.
So after I got home this afternoon after that last test drive where it still got hot and blew coolant into overflow, I let truck sit and cool back down for about 2.5 hours. Went back out and first siphoned the overflow tank out to the 'max' level. Started engine up and coolant temp said 104°. Opened up and took radiator cap off, got a little pressure relief but no coolant blowing out. Opened up Allen plug vent on EGR pipe and put the coolant that I siphoned out of overflow into radiator and waited for more heat out of engine to raise coolant level and pressure and vent out of EGR pipe. Put the radiator cap back on first BEFORE I closed EGR pipe vent, let it vent some.more thru the pipe vent then tightened up the Allen plug. I let the engine idle for about 20 minutes, raising and holding the RPMs up to about 1500 and back down. Coolant temp never got about 174°. Took it for test drive and it got up to 188° then back down to 176° so it was working fine and the thermostat was opening and operating keeping it cool. Turned around down the road and nailed the throttle pretty hard going thru all the gears and coolant never got above 194°. It went to the 190s and immediately showed that thermostat opened and cooled it back down. To 176-181° range. Slowed down and stabbed throttle again with no changed, temp went to 192 and back down to 176. Got home, popped hood and overflow tank was STILL at the max level I had siphoned it out to. Shut it down and gonna let it sit overnight then just start and drive in the morning and see what happens.
So riddle me this Batman, what gives after that test? After that test, I would say it has a sensitivity problem with air in the cooling system but I'm not gonna hold my breath on that theory just yet.......
That new radiator cap is still holding pressure and not leaking, thankfully but when I shut it down I still get a slow bubble coming from the overflow tank that slows down to nothing after about 2-3 minutes like its relieving pressure somehow ?