TikToker Buys $2,000 Ford Truck With Milky Oil Disaster, But Her Glove Test Reveals It’s Not What Everyone Thinks

A woman paid $2,000 for an old Ford truck and quickly found out why it was so cheap. TikToker Caylee Penderass shared how she fixed the problem in a video that got more than 1.4 million views.

According to Daily Dot, Penderass said the truck had a big issue right from the start. “Best part is I paid $2k for this thing because if you dip a rag in the coolant reservoir, it’s entirely filled with milky oil,” she said in the video. When oil mixes with coolant like this, it usually means the head gasket is blown, which costs a lot of money to fix.

But Penderass wanted to make sure before spending all that money. She put a glove over the coolant tank while the engine was running to see if combustion gases were getting in. “I don’t see any air. Now, 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 explained on her TikTok video. The test showed it was not a blown head gasket but something else called an oil cooler heat exchanger.

Turns Out It Wasn’t The Worst-Case Scenario After All

The truck came with a Ford 6.0-liter Powerstroke diesel engine, which has a bad reputation for breaking down. Sinister Diesel, a company that sells diesel engine parts, says the oil cooler in these engines can get clogged or break, which makes the engine overheat. When it breaks, oil and coolant start mixing.

Penderass figured out this was what happened to her truck. “On these six o’s, it’s usually the heat exchanger, which is an oil-to-water heat exchanger buried deep in the V of the block. Still not an easy job, but way cheaper than doing head gaskets,” she said in the video. The fix was still really hard though. She said it was “the worst engine I think I’ve ever worked on” when she started taking it apart.

Just removing the oil cooler took eight hours. Then she spent five more hours cleaning all the parts. She put in a bunch of new parts including a new turbo, gaskets, filters, a fuel pressure regulator, an oil cooler, a thermostat, and a fuel injector control module. The whole job took about two weeks. Her experience shows why it matters to check the details before buying a used car, especially when the price looks really good.

A week later, Penderass ran the truck hard to test if everything worked. She looked at the coolant tank and saw the repair was good. “I have a mix of Simple Green and distilled water in the coolant tank. And look at that. Residue, but no oil,” she said. When everything was done, Penderass had spent $2,500 on parts and put in 50 to 60 hours of work. She said in the caption that she still thought it was “a win” because now she had another truck that worked. 

People in the comments were impressed, with one person writing, “This lady so much cooler than I’m ever gonna be.” Someone else said, “I was a senior master certified Ford technician for 10 years at a dealership. 10/10 would let you work on any of my vehicles.” The amount of effort she put into caring for her vehicle really stood out to viewers.