6 7L POWERSTROKE COOLING SYSTEM OVERVIEW

hey y'all this is Billy here at power strip help comma here with Tom Brown hey Bill certified lubrication specialist except you don't talk about cooling today does that make you a certified coolant specialist I hope not more damn headaches about coolant than I've ever had about oil we're going to talk about it so oils easy huh Oh oil is dirt easy coolant will drive you nuts really yeah I mean there's you know I get it I got emails all the time about you know should I change every cat coolant and I say no and the reason I say no is because the chemistry that's in the forgo coolant is the correct chemistry for the entire system the metallurgy of the parts in the the coolants themselves will interact sometimes in a very negative way and it's a delicate balance it's something that requires some knowledge that you know Tom here is going to tell you about today to fully understand how to keep your truck running as long as possible because if it's not cooling and it overheats for something dumb that you could have done something about something silly that that would be tragic so that's what this is all about you know bill research shows that 50% of diesel engine failures are caused or related to improper cooling system maintenance 50% 50% that's a huge number you know people think there's all kinds of other problems but the biggest problem is cooling system neglect well one of the courses that you take at engineering school is called thermodynamics and thermodynamics deals with it's it can get kind of hairy and complicated especially in systems like this but the basic idea is is how does heat move like air conditioning air conditioning is not cooling the inside it's removing the heat from the inside of the house how do you how do you effectively take this heat that's built up inside this engine now if we had the materials we could run these engines hotter but we don't the thing that limits these engines is to be able to maintain the integrity of the molecules of the aluminum and the steel and the iron and the and of course keep the oil so that it doesn't get too hot and lose its ability to lubricate so it's very very important that the proper temperatures and then maintain inside the engine and that the heat is removed from the engine that's what these cooling systems are all about is to remove the heat from the system so Tom I'm gonna hand it over to you brother all right so what I want to talk about today is the cooling system that's on all of the 6.7 liter power strip trucks that came into production in 2011 so an overview of these systems the first thing I will tell you about is that these trucks all have a primary and a secondary system they basically have two cooling systems and for general purposes two radiators will go and board that a little bit so but there's some similarities and I want to talk about this real quick these trucks all came from the factory starting in model year 2011 with Motorcraft orange coolant here is a bottle of the concentrated version of the Ford orange concentrated antifreeze and coolant this product is also available in a pre diluted which means it comes 5050 already mixed with distilled water so this is the product that came from the pact with the truck from the factory the next thing I want to talk about and I don't have a bottle of it here with me today but you can go online just go to Amazon our Wilson and type in Motorcraft DC 12 there's a cooling system revitalizer product this is part of a critical maintenance step for maintaining these trucks and then the third piece I want to mention right up front here is the rotunda test strips that are available from Ford or online and the part number for those is 328 - 2050 so I'm going to cover these maintenance procedures in just a little bit but I just want to lay that out in front so on the primary system what you have is a primary typical rate a radiator cooling system that's got about 30 quarts of coolant in it plus or minus early models had slightly less than that later models had slightly more because of a change I'll mention here in a second and the primary system cools the engine itself the engine oil cooler so now this is how we're cooling the engine oil and it provides coolant for the heater that keeps the inside of the cab of truck warm and then on 2015 and later modeling your trucks the EGR cooler was brought over to the primary system ok these trucks are these engines are all equipped with two thermostats there's a local thermostat in a high thermostat the low thermostat starts opening at 190 degrees Fahrenheit and it is fully opened by 212 degrees Fahrenheit the high side thermostat starts opening at 198 degrees Fahrenheit and it's completely opened by 217 degrees so what they're doing there is they're stair-stepping that opening to help control the warm up of the engine that way that the if they just had a single thermostat that opened up it would allow it would cause too much liquid to go through the engine when it was starting to warm up and this helps them stair step up to that operating temperature over here on the secondary side we have a 12 quart capacity plus or minus again the earlier ones were a slightly different than that later one slightly different as well but 12 is so the good average number there and the secondary system provides cooling for the fuel cooler the automatic transmission cooler the charge air cooler which would be like what you would think of as an intercooler on the older vehicles and then for the first generation and when I say first generation here I mean from a cooling perspective the EGR cooler was provided coolant by the secondary cooling system in the 2011 through 2014 like the primary system the secondary system has two thermostats as well they operate a little bit differently but on the low side of the secondary system it starts opening at 68 degrees Fahrenheit and it's fully open by 86 and the high side thermostat opens that in 13 and it's fully open at 131 now I want to go over what you're supposed to be doing to maintain the cooling system on their six point seven trucks for breaks these down into two different service schedules you have a normal schedule and you have a special schedule the easiest way to describe this is the special schedule is what we used to refer to as a severe duty schedule basically if you are driving short distances without letting the engine warm up all the way you're towing heavy loads you're driving high speeds you're driving in dirty conditions you're falling into this special category go back and consult your owners manual and see what those conditions are but I always tell people I said if you have any doubt as to whether you're in special or normal follow the the special service schedule is going to protect your truck and you a lot better but I'll start off over here in the normal schedule so if you take a truck from brand new you're supposed to be checking the coolant in the primary and the secondary system every 15,000 miles or six hundred engine hours and by checking it I mean you're using those Rotonda test strips that I mentioned earlier in the video that are available before you dip it down in the coolant follow the instructions on there and then you read the test strip against the little card that comes with it and it'll tell you what the strength of your coolant is and the freeze and boil protection two times during the first service interval you can add the vc twelve cooling system revitalizer comes in a quart bottle and you add up to 48 ounces of that to the primary system like I said you can do that up to two times based on the results from your test strips and then after the second time when your coolant gets to the point where it's showing the low again or you reach the hundred and five thousand miles or the seventy two months whichever one of those things hits first you need to do a complete service of your cooling system and by that I mean you drain out all of the coolant that's in the primary and the secondary system flush the systems using the appropriate ford motor craft engine cleaning systems and then refill it with the appropriate coolant after you've done that first hundred and five thousand mile service realize that that first service might be earlier than one hundred and five thousand or seventy two months because it's whenever you have added BC twelve twice and you would be getting ready to add it for the third time that's when you need to go ahead and do this first change so this one hundred and five thousand or seventy two months is not later than after you've done that first service then Ford wants you to do another complete service of the primary and secondary cooling systems every 45,000 miles thereafter all of the components are starting to get older at that point and so the coolant is having to work harder and it's exposed to older elements in the system and so they want you to change it out more frequently now let's come back over here to the special schedule which I said like most of you are probably on this scheduler so again starting off with a new truck same as before we're testing that coolant with the Rotunda test strips every 15,000 miles for 600 engine hours again same thing here you're going to add the vc twelve up to two times and then unlike over here where you had that first change if not later than a hundred and five thousand miles now we're going to do that first service at sixty thousand miles or 2,400 engine hours that number is really important and I highly recommend that if you have a vehicle that idles a lot so whether you're an ambulance or you tow trailers and you sleep in your truck and you have the air conditioner going over the heater in a time you ought to be tracking your engine oil and your engine coolant on engine hours and not - because your engine is idling so much when the vehicle is not moving and just like over on the normal schedule after you do that first service now Ford wants you to come in and do that subsequent services every 45,000 miles or 1800 engine hours thereafter the next thing I want to cover is an actual physical demonstration of this system and I've got bills 2011 truck here that we had worked on earlier with our extreme oil change video this is a 2011 so first generation first model year of the 6.7 and I'll go over and give you a go over this and give you an overview of where all the major systems are the only thing that you're going to notice may be slightly different on this truck is that Bill has equipped with equipped this truck with the Mishimoto high-performance primary and secondary radiators but everything is in the same location and it works the same way it's just the Mishimoto products worked with a higher level of efficiency but starting off here at the top and I'll use this long screwdriver what you see back here is the primary radiator so and it works just like any prime a radiator system it's got a thermostat that sits up in the motor now this is the dual thermostat that I mentioned earlier so instead of having a single thermostat there's actually two and these two thermostats work together and they open in a stair-step fashion to better control the flow of coolant in and out of the engine to help the engine warm up more smoothly and without a big drop in temperature when the one of the thing GLE thermostat would open this is just a new thermostat cover that would go on top of the engine and your upper radiator hose would connect to this here as well but so you've got the top radiator hose up here the lower radiator hoses down on the other side we can't see it here in this video because it's hidden up underneath the truck and then you're like I said earlier your heater and your engine oil cooler are all connected to this and we're going to do another video later where we're going to actually do those services on this truck servicing the primary and secondary cooling system and when we do that and get it up in the air I'll give you a better view of where those components are but for all practical purposes the primary cooling system on this truck is the same as most any other engine that has a radiator on what is really unique about the six point seven trucks is the secondary cooling system so it is located so right here where my hand to the left hand is you've got the power steering fluid cooler and down below it is the air conditioning condenser but if you'll notice back behind it right back here where the screwdriver is pointing there is what looks to be another smaller radiator right back here and so that is the radiator for the secondary cooling system so what happens is there's an actually a separate water pump located on the engine and those two systems the primary and secondary cooling systems are completely separate coolant from one never touches the coolant in the other it's just that the engine happens to drive both water pumps so the there's a small radiator cap right up here on top and a small D gas tank similar to the large D gas tank over on the primary system but this one is for the secondary system so fluid starts life here and it gets sucked down into the secondary pump that's mounted up on the front of the engine it's sitting back here up on the top passenger side of the motor it gets sucked into there and then it gets pushed over here and you'll notice this long tube across the front of the truck here I've got the grill removed for you to be able to see this better one of the things I want you to be able to see is right here on the passenger side of the secondary cooling system or the secondary radiator is a thermostat housing here's the thermostat that goes in there this is what is known as the high temperature thermostat works just like any regular thermostat and it sits up in this little housing right here just like that sits right inside of there then this hose right here carries coolant down to the transmission oil cooler that's mounted up underneath the truck again when we get the truck mount up in the air I'll show that to you what's really special about this secondary system is this pipe right here so this crossover pipe right here connects to thermostat housings to each other so again like I said coolant is going to come from the secondary water pump into this unit right here on the passenger side of the truck and when the thermostat on this side is closed it's going to push all that fluid across over here and it's going to bring that fluid back through the lower side of the the secondary radiator secondary radiator is actually two radiators inside of one unit there's an upper half and a lower half or portion because there's actually the lower portion is about one-third of the size so the bottom third of that secondary radiator is where the fluid comes through first and then there's fluid going down to the transmission cooler as the thermostats open when they're designed to open so then so that coolant is coming across here when the engine is cold and then come over here on this side if you'll notice right down here this would be on the driver's side lower corner of the secondary radiator there is another thermostat this is the thermostat level it's what it looks like goes right in there just like a regular thermostat does make sure you can see that again it goes right here in this housing right here and then there is a hose back here behind that carries fluid up into the charge air cooler which I'll get to here in a second so these two thermostats along with this crossover pipe and this two-part secondary radiator control at different times so when the when the vehicle is first started up most of the fluid is going to become for the secondary system is coming through this pipe in a small amount of it's going go through that lower section of the secondary radiator and then as the secondary system warms up its going to open up the upper poor upper chamber basically and it's going to allow that secondary coolant to flow through the entire unit and then back up and I'll get up here to the charge air cooler now okay so here we are looking across the front of the truck from the driver's front fender and so right here is the upper radiator hose of the primary system I'm gonna see if I can get zoomed in down here a little bit because right here is the charge air cooler that cools the air coming out of the turbo before it goes into the engine now this unit right here is cooled by the secondary system this is a primary system hose right here so these are not connected but down in here it's gonna be hard to see there's a hose that brings fluid from the secondary radiator back up to the charge air cooler and then you can see this one a lot easier there's a hose right here that brings coolant back over to the secondary D gas bottle so that completes that route the other thing that's going on on the secondary side and you just can't see it there's too many components underneath the hood here is that the secondary coolant is also going down and cooling the fuel now there's a fuel cooler mounted down here on the in by the engine and so it's providing coolant for that as well and the way the truck is sitting today we just can't see it so that kind of completes that circuit for the charge or the secondary system it's going to bring that coolant back over here into this secondary system D gas bottle here's a little bit closer view of the secondary cooling system passenger side thermostat so it's just housing right here and this line right here is going down to the transmission oil cooler and this is that crossover pipe I was mentioning earlier that carries most of the secondary fluid until the secondary system warms up and then I'll move over I've got the air cleaner lid removed right now just so you can see a little bit easier here's the air intake going into the engine and down right here if you can see where the screwdriver is pointing there's a belt right here and then this is the secondary cooling system pump which is driven by the engine but again this system is completely separate from the primary system and those coolants never touch each other this pipe right here that kind of looks like a air-conditioning pipe is actually a coolant pipe for the secondary system and on the 2011 through 2014 models this is your EGR cooler and the secondary system is providing the coolant for it on the 15 in newer models this unit is cooled by the primary system here's a little bit closer shot of the secondary cooling system driver's side thermostat down here on the lower side of the secondary radiator you can see the tank of a secondary radiator right here again this is a Mishimoto high-performance secondary radiator so it has a shiny appearance to it your factory Ford models would be blast black plastic tanks right here but could be how they operate is the same and as I mentioned earlier this is the type of thermostat that would go in that little housing right here so those two thermostats working together along with that big crossover pipe and the two chambers in that secondary system provide all of the cooling for the secondary system and like the primary system the engine cooling fan the big plastic fan that's mounted up to the front of the engine it's pulling air through the front of the vehicle and airs coming through the vehicle when you're driving down the road and so that air is doing multiple jobs as its coming through the front of the truck so the first thing that air coming through hits is your power steering cooler the next thing it hits is your air conditioning condenser right here the third thing it hits is the secondary cooling system radiator right here and then finally it makes its way back to the primary cooling system radiator back here so the primary cooling system is really getting you know it sits in the last position and it's actually doing the most work so a lot of air has got to come through here at a very high velocity to keep this whole thing's cool I want to thank you for tuning in today to learn more about the six point seven cooling system so today we went over the overall system design and then I took you out to a 2011 vehicle and gave you an overview of the vehicle itself and a couple of upcoming videos will actually do a coolant service on that same vehicle of the primary and the secondary cooling system just to recap my name is Tom Brown I'm a certified lubrication specialist my number is six seven eight seven eight seven three zero two eight and you can email me at info at best - synthetic - oils calm thanks again for stopping by and look forward to seeing you again real soon on an upcoming video

Channel: powerstrokehelp

Views: 25,142

Rating: 4.9499998 out of 5

Keywords: POWERSTROKEHELP.COM, ford powerstroke diesel, ARCHOIL AR9100, ARCHOIL AR6200

Id: h-r0Qb1wNks

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2019