Head gasket ?sorta? blown

[BigJDW]

I'm pretty sure the head gasket is blown on my truck. The part that gets me is its my daily driver and i put a minimum of 500m a week on it. The only time its giving me a problem is when i hook a trailer to it and the trailer has been empty. The time before last that i pulled the trailer it split a hose so i replaced it. this time it blew a hole in the coolant tank. I've been trying to blame other things but I'm pretty sure its the head gasket. Any only else had this problem.

 

[Cr500]

You should put a pressure gauge on it to see for yourself what's going on. 7.3s have normal head gaskets, if blown you would likely know, like oil in water, vise versa, water in cylinder, etc. a sticking thermostat, bad radiator cap, blockage inside radiator, especially if early 95 with the brass job could cause high system pressure.
Do you notice your temp fluctuate much before something breaks?
If have a heat gun or something you might start taking readings around and see what it tells you.
Is your cooling system really nasty?

 

[Biggreen96]

I would be willing to bet you have a cracked injector cup. Need to pull your injectors and pressure test your cooling system and watch to see if you get coolant in the cups.

 

[Cr500]

If injector cup was broken/ cracked etc there would defiantly be diesel in the coolant.
The diesel fuel would eat everything in cooling system that is rubber. Hoses would feel like sponges. If a late 95 with plastic reservoir you would have trouble getting cap on/ off. The seal on cap would be hammered. And of course if you couldn't see it you most defiantly would smell it.
Coolant smell weird?

 

[BigJDW]

It does have a bad injector cup I've been putting off fixing because of the price and i really cant afford to have my truck down. I started to figure that the fuel was messing with the plastics in the cooling system but didn't figure it could eat enough of the tank to put a hole in it. So it sounds like i need the do the cups before i worry about the head gasket?

The temp only goes up to the R when it acts up, normally its between the N and the O.

 

[Cr500]

That is totally your issue. Head gaskets are fine. The diesel, even if tiny tiny amount will ruin everything that is not metal.
It ruins the thermostat as well, but luckily it will likely stick open, rather than closed.
It's not that the diesel act like a drill bit to your degas bottle, rather the bottle likely had a small crack or flaw already, this problem just amplified it.
You keep driving truck you'll be replacing the radiator and everything else, your molded tanks are crimped on to core, which are sealed by orings.
I'd say if things are deteriated bad enough for you to split a hose or make your bottle leak you are going to need to replace a lot of parts.
Your oil cooler orings won't like this either.