July 2018 - I went on a delay from February through July while we did some renovations on the house in preparation for a new addition to our family who joined us on July 6th, 2018. She has been an incredible blessing and I took some time off of everything for a bit. I did find a little time here and there to work on her a bolt or two at a time.....
I knew that the head gasket needed replaced since I pulled the motor from the donor truck years ago. My original plan was to leave it be until the truck was drivable. I was driving it as is in the donor truck for a bit after all so why not?.... I dont know why I wouldnt have just replaced it while the engine was on the ground and fully accessible..
Ive done one before and there isnt much that can go wrong or be difficult to diagnose if something did go wrong. I guess I just wanted to have a completely blank slate to begin with so I didnt stack the deck against myself. With as long as this project has taken, I am pretty glad I decided not to mess with it much because I would have never remembered what all I did to it along the way.
There were a few issues/symptoms that I want to fix before I start messing with any performance mods:
1.) Blown head gasket
2.) I started seeing oil leaking from the exhaust ports at both the turbo and at the head of the exhaust manifold. I figured that this was caused by a blown head gasket. I also thought it could be valve seals. As far as I can tell, the only other possibility causing oil in the exhaust is blow-by?
3.) I also noticed a bit of white smoke and a HEAVY eye-watering exhaust smell while it was running. Also thought the blown gasket might be part of the cause of this as it seemed to worsen some over the years, but Im going to say that this one is related to the impulsive tweaking we did to the injection pump when it was in the donor truck years ago.
4.)There is some hesitation and stuttering/missing as the engine is revved with no load. I am hoping that this is also a side effect of messing with the injection pump.
My plan was to tackle the biggest item that I knew of on the list which was the headgasket.
Here are the items I replaced while doing the head gasket repair:
- Headgasket
- Thermostat & Gaskets
- Valve springs upgraded to heavy springs
- O-ringed the head
- ARP Head Studs
- Pop Tested Injectors
- Exhaust Manifold Gaskets
Picture for reference before I started disassembly:
The oil wasnt present in all of the cylinders. It was worse in the rear two I believe.
These are the front two cylinders. For some reason I didnt get a pic of the middle two cylinders.
You can see the oil at the bottoms of the exhaust ports along with the oil at the bottom of the downpipe flange.
I got the head removed and took it to our local diesel performance shop. I had them O-ring the head and add heavy valve springs as well. They said that the head was in good shape and that the valve seals were good as well. I also had them pop test the injectors and they said that they were in good shape too.
They cylinder walls didnt look too great as it looks like they all had some surface flash rust on them from the amount of sitting that this thing did. I am really not positive what the proper procedure is for this or how it will affect performance and efficiency down the road, but my hope is that it will be ok for a while.
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