‘50-60 hours of labor and pain’: A TikToker’s $2,000 truck purchase reveals the brutal truth about Ford’s most notorious engine

TikToker Caylee Penderass just proved that even the most “cursed” vehicle can be saved, after she bought a broken Ford Powerstroke truck for just $2,000 and then spent a brutal two weeks and another $2,500 in parts to bring it back to life. Penderass, who documented the whole painful experience in a viral video, didn’t call it a loss when she found out why the old Ford was so cheap; instead, she rolled up her sleeves and dove headfirst into fixing one of the most frustrating diesel engines you can work on.

This is awful for anyone who thinks a $2,000 truck is going to be a quick, easy flip, but to be fair, you have to respect the sheer willpower of getting this job done yourself. At the start of the video, she jokes about her gamble, “I just doubled the reliability of my old Ford truck with one single part. It’s a key to another old Ford truck. I figured if this works half the time and this works half the time, I have one good truck.”

That joke quickly reveals the problem: she paid $2,000 for the truck “because if you dip a rag in the coolant reservoir, it’s entirely filled with milky oil.” Now, if you’re a truck enthusiast, you know that milky oil in the coolant usually screams blown head gasket, which is one of the most expensive and labor-intensive repairs you can imagine. Still, we’ve heard horror stories from trying to buy from car lots, too.

Some trucks aren’t worth the money, unless you know what you;re doing

Penderass didn’t assume the worst. She used a classic trick, placing a glove over the coolant reservoir while the engine ran, to test for combustion gases blowing into the cooling system. After seeing no air, she was able to narrow down the problem, which is a common issue with these particular trucks.

“Since we don’t have combustion gases getting into our coolant, that means the oil is getting into our coolant when it’s in some other situation,” she concluded in the video. The real culprit? The oil cooler heat exchanger, which is infamously “buried deep in the V of the block” on Ford’s 6.0-liter Powerstroke diesel engines. This is better than dealing with shifty dealers, right?

This diagnosis meant a tough job, but as she put it, it was “way [expletive] cheaper than doing head gaskets.” However, my favorite part was when she said, “Anyway, let’s just tear it apart and fix it. Oh, [expletive]. This is the worst [expletive] engine I think I’ve ever worked on.” after realizing how bad things were.

The time-lapse that follows shows a seriously brutal job, with the oil cooler removal alone taking a painful eight hours. In the end, she fixed the problem that plagues many Powerstroke owners.

As Penderass wrote in the caption, “$2000 for a Powerstroke 4X4 is a good deal if you don’t count the $2500 in parts and 50-60 hours of labor and pain I put into it. But hey, I have another truck now so I count this as a win.”