Prior to getting those smoke signals, I had gotten a new set of tires, bolted on a new alternator, changed out the brakes, calipers, brake lines and transmission lines (before coming to Florida, the truck had been up north where road salt had taken a nasty toll). Until then, it was being used infrequently for towing, hauling or just to drive every now and then for the fun of it.
I was holding onto the truck to pass it along to my oldest son as his first vehicle. Hydrolock?! While I had heard of it, I had never dealt with it. Forum members warned that if it got worse, it could lead to hydrolock. Coolant passing through can end up in places where it doesn’t belong. Between the intake manifold and heads are gaskets that apparently have a history of going bad on Ford’s 4.2. Through a few online F-150 forums I learned that others had been having the same problem with their 4.2-liter and attributed it to bad intake gaskets. Damaged gaskets like these allow coolant to flow into the engine and can lead to hydrolock. 1997 Ford F-150 4.2-liter intake gasket from a repair video on YouTube that’s gotten nearly 250,000 views. Neither of these scenarios is encouraging, but replacing an intake gasket to stop a coolant leak is far easier than replacing piston rings to halt an oil leak. Years ago, I had been taught that dark smoke indicates that oil has found its way into the compression chamber, while white smoke means coolant has snuck in. All bad signs!Ī compression test I had run about a year prior turned up good numbers-but that was then and now the truck was churning out plenty of white smoke in our quaint, tree-filled neighborhood. The catalytic converter-a newer Magnaflow-was also running too hot. Granted, the 4.2-liter V6 in this ’97 SuperCab had roughly 150,000 miles on it, but I’d never seen white smoke billowing out of other high-mileage vehicles I had owned through the years.Ī closer inspection revealed a few globules of oil in the coolant reservoir and green sludge on the bottom of the oil cap. The longer the truck would sit between trips, the more smoke I’d see on start-up. It all started with white smoke pouring out of my F-150’s exhaust pipe.
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