Was driving along, just loving life and the sound and power of my CTD, but when I stopped for a break, I could smell diesel at the rear of the truck. Broke out a flashlight and saw there was oil and diesel dripping from everywhere underneath and the rear of the truck was heavily coated. Oil level was 4 inches high on the stick. Restarted the engine to see the pressure was very low at idle. Turns out 2 injectors were sticking open. Had them replaced them along with changing oil and filter. My best guess is that this happened over a 50 mile stretch of highway driving at 75mph w/ no load. Engine sounds great and pressure is back up. I have driven it 700 miles since, and the only thing I can really say I notice is that the oil is the cleanest I have seen it since the truck was new. My question for those that have experience with these engines is this: What are the odds that I got lucky and dodged a bullet, or am I likely to have done damage to the internals or the turbo? How much fuel can these beasts stand to have in the sump? Have I heard tales of guys pouring in a quart of diesel or kerosene for cold weather useage?

 

I say you are very lucky to have caught it and fixed it. Only time will tell about the turbo bearings, unless you tear down the turbo. With it getting fed fuel and OIL I would tend to think it is fine.

As far as cold weather I would never put anything in the engine sump other than oil. If you need oil for cold weather than you can drop down to 5W-40 diesel engine oil, versus the normal 15W-40.

 

I've been known to add a quart of kerosene to the engine, let it idle for ten minutes (at normal operating temp), then change the oil and filter. I let the engine/pan drain well. This, in an effort to remove any gum type stuff.

You may very well be OK albeit a clean engine internally. I would think that if you were driving the truck smartly during the time the oil was diluted including no heavy loading, no harm has been done

If I felt I needed to supplement the oil for winter operation, after consulting the owners manual, I'd do as jrs_dodge_diesel suggests.



(NOTE: Don't ever add a solvent as diesel or kerosene to an engine that has never been taken care of due to the threat of really big clabbors of stuff blocking the engine oil pump pick-up. )

 

well you just thoroughly flushed out your engine lol.

i wouldn't worry about it.

 

My 04.5 did it to me twice. Both times drove some miles prior to noticing the rapid use of fuel. Second one was while traveling doen the highway going thru Kentucky. After ward called Cummins and they didn't seem to think that the mixture of fuel and oil would do too much if any damage. If it had been gasoline it would have destroyed it but diesel does have some lubricity in it. As far as the oil pressure think at idle oil was so thin it wouldn't generate any pressure and probably did not do any damage.

I couldn't stand the worry about dependability and with quite a few other issues with the truck I took a loss and traded for the 07 in my signature and haven't looked back but did have over 70000 miles on the 04.5 with the last 20k with no problems other than very poor mileage, maybe another failing injector which seemed to be a very good weak spot on them.