I replaced the head gaskets and lifters on a 6.9L international diesel engine. When removing the passenger side head it makes life much easier if you remove the heater core housing first. As you can see by the picture you do not have to do this but if you do make sure that you put the heater core housing back on before you put the valve cover back on the head. I have 25 hours this week with a total of 25.
Good stuff Ryan. Happy to see that you have the blog up and working after today.
ReplyDeleteA story...
When these first came out we had several "line trucks", crew cab 4x4's, that a 4 man crew would use to carry gear, tow a trailer and work from remote sites.
In the spring of the year out of Fairbanks, AK the crew was driving in and out of a right-of-way day after day and there was one spot where the across the "road" kept getting higher and higher. You know where the air intake tube is, right?
One day the water is high enough that the air intake picks up a gulp of it and stops; abruptly...no, make that very abruptly. It was brought in to me to get going. Luckily they were smart enough to not mess with it in the field.
I pulled all of the glow plugs and cranked it over and there was water in the back cylinder on the right side, back by the heater core. The glow plugs went back in and it cranked right up...but had a miss.
After a compression test revealed that the cylinder in question had no compression I pulled that head to find that the piston did not come up as high as the rest. The connecting rod had been "shortened" by the hydro lock.
I installed a new piston, rings and rod and the last I heard it was still running.
I learned about the forces involved when one cylinder suddenly is stopped by a hydro lock. We took those low air intakes off and re-routed them.
That engine was well built, but not much of a power house when we loaded them down. We weighed one in, truck and trailer, fully loaded with men, gear, fuel, line hardware, guts/feathers and all at just over #25,000.
Jeff