WTF Friday returns this week in catastrophic fashion, and the victim was this poor 6.0L Power Stroke...
This is why you always pull over when you hear engine noises, have a CEL on, and nothing but smoke and fuel coming out the tailpipe. And you especially do so if you drive a 6.0L!
This truck was driven for two days with a bad injector in the number three cylinder. And not just any bad injector—one where the nozzle actually split in half! That's right, nothing but straight fuel in that cylinder did some serious damage: the extreme heat melted the piston something awful, and burned a hole through one of its respective exhaust valve seats. The breakdown of the piston was so severe, it got into the top compression ring, dislodged it, and sent it throughout the engine where it was chopped up into dozens of pieces. A good chunk of the piston ring could be found, embedded, in piston number 7.
Other observations I made:
*The downpipe is wet inside, straight fuel was literally pooring out the split nozzle and made its way out the exhaust valve, into the turbo, and out the tailpipe.
*I'm told the truck probably ended up dying due to the engine oil, which, the high-pressure system needs to be a certain viscosity/thickness, was so diluted the truck couldn't fire the injectors effectively anymore.
This engine's pretty trashed.