I would like to know if others have experienced this, generally speaking in other engines, but specifically in the 2003 era 2.7 TwinTurbo. Have you heard of or experienced overheating that is apparently not repairable?? The situation is that my mechanics have done everything they can think of, replacing some components and running temperature and flow tests, spending a couple thousand dollars along the way. It's possible that the problem is a head gasket, but the cost of replacement is equivalent to buying and installing a used engine. The engine otherwise seems to be in good shape with good performance, though it loses a bit of oil. 184K. I love this car and have spent around $15,000 in repairs since I bought it two years ago. So I'm probably going to double down and go for the engine replacement. But it would be very helpful to me to know if this situation sometimes occurs in older engines.

 

2.7T head gaskets rarely fail although overheating is a primary cause.

What were the results of cylinder compression test and leak down test?

Where is the lost oil going? A dripping leak? Out the tail pipe? Into the coolant?

 

thanks for the reply. Mechanics may not have done the tests you mention because apparently an engine swap is no more expensive than a head gasket rebuild. And yes, the car did overheat probably because of failure of the electric fan, which may have caused the head gasket to fail.

Oil leaks out around the engine, I believe from or adjacent to the turbos. Slight leak, which apparently is not uncommon in this car.

My question is whether overheating can become a chronic condition of an engine block with no apparent solution.

 

With this generation the first question you must ask is "is it really overheating". The temperature sensors are resistive negative temperature coefficient (resistance goes down as temperature goes up) and for whatever reason they drift downward in resistance as they fail and cause you to show overheat on the dash when there in fact is no overheat.

Second question would be what condition the viscous fan coupler is in, if it's not working well, you're going to have overheat issues under various driving conditions unless the weather is cold.

I would be curious as to what tests they have run, running flow tests seems to imply that they are aware of water pump impeller erosion issues and have ruled this out; I would assume thermostat has been ruled out as well.
Have they checked for combustion gases in the cooling system? And when it overheats, or when you think it is overheating, is it actually blowing coolant out the coolant reservoir cap's relief valve? How much coolant do you lose/have to add?

Assuming that the radiator is flowing well, the heater core is flowing well, etc, and you are absolutely positive that it is indeed overheating and not just reporting false overheat on the dash, then you need to check for combustion gases in the cooling system because blown head gaskets usually manifest in this way. Of course, maybe you have a small leak and are only blowing into the cooling system under high boost, but it doesn't take long for such a leak to get worse and blow combustion gas past the head gasket all the time.

Agreed that the oil leaks are likely unrelated, probably your cam tensioner/adjuster gasket leaking down to the turbos, very common.