Cat C15 ACERT - blown head gasket - Worth an overhaul?

Sure its not an oil cooler failure?

 

Yeah gotta agree ^^^^. Oil in antifreeze is usually oil cooler, but it doesn't explain your loss of power

 

I've blown a few headgaskets in a Cat. Usually it starts by pushing water out. Combustion games get into cooling system and push water out. You can run this way for a LONG time, just keep adding water. Eventually it will fully blow the gasket and the engine will start drinking water and mixing water in the oil. It will smoke white like a freight train and run rough at idle. But maybe clear up once you get some rpms.
I was sitting in line 100 miles from home when mine fully blew out. Pouring white smoke. I made the probably dumb decision to run home like that. Shut it off in the shop and rebuilt it

 

I agree oil cooler is most likely cause of oil in coolant.

If you decide to overhaul definitely platinum. Keep in mind that may not come with other parts you will need. Turbos, cam and followers ext…..

Do your homework on a place to get your build done. We have found less that quality work from our local CAT dealer. Very sad. Had them cut a 6NZ block for us twice and we had to call somebody else to fix it.

 

Depending on the miles/hours on the engine, a blown head gasket does not automatically signal an ‘overhaul’ is needed. I recall years ago on the farm we had a head gasket give way on our then ‘big tractor’ an IH 856 with the 407 cu in naturally aspirated, coolant began pouring down the side of the block. Got to the dealer, they replaced the head gasket. Tractor ran fine for years after.

 

Only bad thing is you won't know until its opened up. Sunk liner or scoring on the cylinders you may as well put 6 new cylinder kits in it while its open.

 

Adept Ape has a You Tube channel. He works at a Cat dealer. I think he is in Idaho but has people travel from all over to have him work on their Cat truck engine.

 

I have seen his VIDs

I’ll be the first to admit I have gotten out of touch on the CAT engines. Everyone knows them and they just don’t come thru the dealer anymore. I miss working on the simpler engines. We had a customer that wanted a new ECM flashed for an MBN and both of our ET licenses were expired and nobody even knew it because it had been so long.