1996 KW T800 Semi Tractor

[Anonymous-0]

We have a Caterpillar C10 engine in the KW and it is drinking water. It has a slight miss when the engine is running and it will drink 2 gallons of water in a couple easy hours use. It has around 350,000 miles on it and is in very good condition otherwise. We recently aquired it very reasonably priced so we can spend some money and still be OK. Do these engine have a weak spot, head, gasket,....? Any insight would be helpful . I guess they are electronically controlled engines so it's easy to dump some money in a hurry. We haven't tore into anything yet to investigate. Thanks for any guidance.

 

[Anonymous-0]

First thought is Head Gasket,that said check all your Head Bolts to see if any are broken. A 1996 probably has a Million Miles on it so it will be way over due for some engine work. Your professed water usage[I hope it is not anti-freeze] indicates a serious leak!

 

[Anonymous-0]

I never had a head off a C-10 But have you thought of leaking injector tubes and I need to double check to see if they have them but I think they do. Also there is a warning in the tune up section (its been a couple of years) to be carefull inside the engine while it is running because of the 90 to 100 Volts of D. C. Current

 

[Rickey Hornback]

Check for a pitted liner

 

[L.C.Gray]

If the previous owner hasn't maintained his cooling system properly you could have a case of cavitation. Cavitation can erode pinholes in wet cylinder liners and cylinder heads. Some diesels are bad about cavitation.

If your engine isn't equipped with a water filter add one. Coolants do "wear out". The filters have a chemical block in them to replenish lost/spent chemicals in the coolant. When you have your truck serviced they can check your coolant with a test strip and determine when the filter needs to be changed to bring the cooling system back into balance. If you don't want to go the filter route, you can also buy test strips and additives (such as DCA4) and do your own.

Newer trucks run better coolants {such as Cat ELC extended life coolant) and don't need as much attention as the older ethylene glycol coolants do. You can switch to ELC, but flush thouroghly, don't mix 'em.

If you have the pinholes the only alternative will be replacement of the liners and check and replace the heads as necessary.

 

[Leland]

if a c-10 is the same as a 3306 it could be a head they do like to crack