I finally have a Diesel suburban

[KirsL]

And now both heads are swapped out.
Found the problem, too. Gasket popped between cylinder 2 and the forward most coolant passage.



I'm going to try and get it all buttoned up this week. Because next weekend, I need to deal with this.

I have a plan to flush the system to try and get all of the stop leak stuff out. And whatever nasty coolant is left out also.

 

[Truckman4life]

Always good to find the failure.

 

[KirsL]

Yep, that spot is where they tend to fail on these engines.

Now it's to just put all the other parts back on.

 

[KirsL]

Not done yet, but some serious progress was made today.


So a couple of the ground straps are broken due to age and corrosion.


I think I'm going to just replace them with a piece of regular 10 gauge wire.

I never got why they used bare braided wire.

 

[Big Ray]

Well that was a long day. I was hoping to at least get the heads pulled. But various things kept fighting me.
The intakes on these are pretty straightforward. The stepside I can have it off in about 30 minutes. This one fought me for an hour and a half.

View attachment 462389
I finally got it out of course. Problem was the last tech to work on the truck rammed all the bolts in with an impact and held the trigger for at least 10 uggas. And most of the bolts have a stud end for a secondary mount, yep, ran them down hard too.

But this little heat shield between the turbo and injectors, that fought me for way longer than I want to admit.
View attachment 462391View attachment 462392View attachment 462393View attachment 462394o

Even though I can't get the turbo off, I still need to get to the injectors to pull the lines off. So this shield has to come off. Two tiny 7mm head bolts hold it down and two slide tabs. Well, it was rusted in place. But, it's out.

Tomorrow I want to get the heads installed at minimum.

Good to see I'm not the only one that flips off difficult parts! Lol

 

[KirsL]

Good to see I'm not the only one that flips off difficult parts! Lol

At minimum it's the appropriate response, lol.

 

[KirsL]

It lives!!!

Buttoned the last couples thing up today and got her started.

Now, since the injectors lines were removed. I was expecting it to run a bit rough for the first couple minutes. But even after running for a good 30 minutes, there was still a decent miss happening. Enough to have the engine shaking and not idling smoothly.

I didn't mess with the injection pump itself, so no need to mess with timing or timing relearn.

So I'm leaning towards it being the injectors. The PO left his maintenance log with the truck and its pretty thorough.

There's no mention of injectors being done, ever.

400k+ on 6.5 injectors would be insane but is plausible.

Of course a new set would set me back another 600 bucks. Right in the middle of finalizing a home purchase.

So now I'm debating pulling them from the stepside. Since that's down from its headgaskets letting go completely. It's only getting drive around the yard at work if needed.

Yeah, it's pulling both of them apart to swap them. But it saves me money and time. As I can do the swap on Tuesday when I'm off.

View attachment 20231223_173436.mp4View attachment 20231223_173305.mp4

 

[KirsL]

An after Christmas wrench day.

So after some more checking, it seemed like cylinder #5 was not firing properly.
I also double checked grounds and sensor plugs that had to be messed with for the head swap.


Now I figured I would chance it and swap out just that injector. It made minimal difference. Hindsight, I should of just pulled them all to start with. But oh well.

So I needed to move the stepside inside. Haven't tried to start her in about two weeks. Turn the key on and the batteries are just about dead. I left my dash camera plugged into a constant power source. Oops.
Charge them up, go to crank it, dead stop. #7 filled with coolant again. Pull the plug and crank it over to purge the coolant.
Finally get her started with one injector from the suburban and it's smoking like a freight train. Yeah, they're all shot.

Finally get them both inside.


Took about 2 hours to swap both driver side sets, the easy side. Started the burb up out of curiosity. Not perfect but noticeably better. Ok, not wasted effort.

Now to just do the turbo side. But by then it was around 7pm.

But, progress. Wish it was more, but it's moving forward. I did drive it around the yard today.

 

[KirsL]

Today I finally got everything all buttoned back up and started her up.

Started pretty quick for having to bleed the air from 4 cylinders. So now it's running with all 8 injectors from the stepside. It's way better, but still not right. So I let it run and warm up some. Then I start driving around the yard.

Nothing has changed so at this point I pull back into the shop but I leave it running. I get out to grab a drink and when I look back. I see something dripping. Look under the truck and sure enough, it's leaking. Back up and check what the puddle is, it's fuel. Ok, but from where???

I grab my borescope and start looking in all the hard to see spots. Then I find it, fuel is spraying from one of the injector lines on the pump itself. And the pump valley is flooded with fuel.

Pull the intake off and start checking each line. All where tight until I got to number 5, it was loose, doh.

I had threaded it on and had it hand tight. But I must of missed putting a wrench on it to actually tighten it down.

Checked all where tight, cleaned up the fuel spill. Reinstalled the intake. Fired her up, idled smooth as silk.

Was late, so I didn't test drive again. But, I think it'll be just fine now.

 

[KirsL]

Been driving the truck for the last couple weeks, so far so good.

Did have an issue come up the one day, but I have that down to a loose connection on the engine harness. Luckily, a replacement is available for this and has been ordered.

Today I wanted to flush the cooling system out. To try and get more of the stop leak gunk out.

I also installed a coolant filter to help speed up the process.

Of course, I couldn't use whatever bracket that was offered, lol. I didn't care for the placement they chose. So, I made my own.
Came out pretty good and I like the placement a lot better.

 

[centexk5]

Good luck getting that stuff out. I had an old 4Runner that a PO had put that stuff in it and after 3 years of running coolant flushes and radiator cleaners through it, I still had nothing but brown coolant. Called a couple of radiator shops and they said good luck and have fun.

 

[KirsL]

Yeah, I know the only sure fire way to get it all out is replacing parts and deep cleaning others.

Any amount I can remove is better then not.

 

[Truckman4life]

Open up all the drains you can and plug a garden hose into a heater hose and let her idle. Does Dawn dish soap help any with that stuff?

 

[KirsL]

Never tried dish soap. Might have to look into that.

Next step is to flush with a garden hose.

I'll run it as is for a few weeks.

Once I change that harness out. It's onto getting the stepside up and running again.

Plus house projects, lol