I need some fresh ideas or.... I'm buying a new truck.

[towcat]

heath-
just for the record, my '92 went from El Paso, TX to San Jose, kali running on 7 holes. same situation as yours. Unfortunately, I was getting ready to ship out, so the truck sat when I made it into kali. 6 months later, I finally got time to give it some attention. still ran the same. conclusion was a bad head gasket on a ford "factory" rebuild.

 

[hesutton]

heath-
if you're going to do that, then at least pack a 5/8" wrench and isolate the dead hole when the condition arises again.

I've not had much success with that technique. I did that two different times before replacing the injectors with Mel's new BB's. Really couldn't (at least with any certainty) isolate what cylinders were bad or not. They all changed the idle when cracked open. But, three of the 8 were dismal *******/leakers, the worst would only occasionally pop open at all. Most of the fuel went straight out the return? I was surprised that I couldn't tell more from cracking the injectors lines.

I know how you feel. I have not regretted buying the Dodge. The 6.7 CTD has awesome power and it will stop like no pickup I ever had! Love the manual shift 6-spd auto w/tow haul and exhaust brake. All together it turns a haulin trip into a breeze. Sometimes forget I have 12-14,000# hooked.

Honestly, buying a newer truck is the last thing I want to do. But, we have this new (to us anyway) camper, and my wife wants to go camping with our daughter, not sit at home on my time off while I **** around some more with the truck that was bought to pull said camper. Gotta draw a line somewhere I guess.

Heath

 

[hesutton]

heath-
just for the record, my '92 went from El Paso, TX to San Jose, kali running on 7 holes. same situation as yours. Unfortunately, I was getting ready to ship out, so the truck sat when I made it into kali. 6 months later, I finally got time to give it some attention. still ran the same. conclusion was a bad head gasket on a ford "factory" rebuild.

Headgasket is my #1 suspect! What sucks is I pulled the freaking thing because it had a small coolant/oil headgasket leak, not leaking compression though. I wanted to get it "fixed" before adding the turbo. I'm wondering if using the Hylomar on the VR headgaskets was not such a good idea. Never used it before, and may never again.

Heath

 

[towcat]

Headgasket is my #1 suspect! What sucks is I pulled the freaking thing because it had a small coolant/oil headgasket leak, not leaking compression though. I wanted to get it "fixed" before adding the turbo. I'm wondering if using the Hylomar on the VR headgaskets was not such a good idea. Never used it before, and may never again.

Heath

hylomar is not your problem.
a bad fire ring is most definitely.

 

[hesutton]

hylomar is not your problem.
a bad fire ring is most definitely.

I'll lick my wounds, deal with it, and start fresh.

By the way Calvin, what can you tell me about F650 "proloader" crew cab's, particularly, what engines to look for/stay away from? I've looked at some with Fuller 6 speeds and they have my a bit "*****" for a medium duty.

Heath

 

[Trying my best]

Honestly, buying a newer truck is the last thing I want to do. But, we have this new (to us anyway) camper, and my wife wants to go camping with our daughter, not sit at home on my time off while I **** around some more with the truck that was bought to pull said camper. Gotta draw a line somewhere I guess.

Heath[/QUOTE]


Don't let my wife see this, she might get ideas

 

[hesutton]

Don't let my wife see this, she might get ideas

She's the one telling me to buy a newer truck........... if I get rid of the crew cab IDI. That's not going to happen.

Heath

 

[icanfixall]

Heath... Arte you able to run an F650 rig without issues like we have here in cali with the smog upgrades. If you don't have the same issues in your state cali will be "selling off" planty of the rigs that size. Remember this though... they are going to have much higher gears in the differancials and the spring package will be tuff to run mt all the time.... About the fire rings and your new VR head gaskets. This may be your issues but. Locating this tiny leak will be tuff and seeing it before you installed the gaskets would have been impossible. I'm begining to feel like this is your problem. To recap... The engine runs fine with no load on it. Runss without an issue. Then you place a load on it and it pushes out coolant thru the overflow tank. So the engine is getting worked harder and it causes the coolant to "expand" beyond its containment.... This should be telling you the coolant is getting hot and expanding but your gauges are telling you something differant. Compression leaking into the coolant will displace it. Then hot spots cause a mess of the heads. Your a brave person to want to drive it till the camping season is over. Thats sometimes a good thing too. Let it develope into something but knowing full well it can leave you stranded in a camp ground. Its not like going flying with a bad engine but its still a risk too. What you could do is run something like KW Block Seal thru the cooling system. I'm not a person that will do this myself but also you could keep a couple of bottles of Bars Stop leak Pellets behind the rear seat. Nothing will "fix" a piece of missing head gasket but the small size of your leak may just stop up completely too. KW requires the flushing of all the coolant. Then run just KW in water for a certain amount of time.... Drain and let sit overnite... Refill and you it like nothing was wrong.... Thats a lot of work for a repair but its worked great for many years in big rigs that can't be shut down for a long repair....

 

[towcat]

I'll lick my wounds, deal with it, and start fresh.

By the way Calvin, what can you tell me about F650 "proloader" crew cab's, particularly, what engines to look for/stay away from? I've looked at some with Fuller 6 speeds and they have my a bit "*****" for a medium duty.

Heath

heath-
none of the newer diesels are going to be problem-free. the general consensus with the guys who are forced to buy new rigs (2007 and up) for commercial use is that we are going to have to deal with the same BS that gassers went through back in the 70's and 80's. no one has a good solution and more importantly, stays out of the shop and on the road. I was towing for AMR back in 2007 when the 6.0 was released in ambulances. no matter what anyone tried to spin the situation, I have a pic of the local heavy ford dealership with a AMR in every one of their repair bays. that fiasco cost AMR a whole bunch of city/county contracts that still reverberates to 2011 when AMR lost the county of santa clara contract. previous poor performance was heavily cited. there was politics involved too, but the avail units for response was the whipping boy.

 

[subway]

Heath, have you tested the coolent itself to see if there are blowby gasses contaiminating it? should be an easy test any local garage could perform if you dont want to buy your own kit.

 

['94IDITurbo7.3]

get an education.... it is done on large, slow speed diesels all the time.

Would a 3cyl enigne in a new holland tractor be considered a large, slow speed diesel? b/c i did my comp. test on that at op. temp.

 

[flareside_thun]

get an education.... it is done on large, slow speed diesels all the time.
Testing compression tells you one thing, testing combustion tells you something else.

either way, at this point it is irrelevant, the heads need to come off to see what the problem is.

There are better ways to get a point across other than acting like you're better than everyone else.

 

[Darrin Tosh]

Darrin, thanks a lot for the phone call buddy!

Good Talking to you Heath, I feel your pain.

I have another suggestion for you, What about picking up a $6 or $7K Dually to get you through the rest of the camping season, put your truck back in the garage and get it fixed. Once it is back on the road, sell the Dually. At that price point it wont go down in value and you would probably get your money back out of it.

Missys Happy you get to go camping for the rest of the season, you are not on pins and needles pulling the camper with a wounded truck, and you would not hurt it any further either.

Just a thought,..Let me know if you would like some help with that.

 

[Black dawg]

Heath, have you tested the coolent itself to see if there are blowby gasses contaiminating it? should be an easy test any local garage could perform if you dont want to buy your own kit.

it can be tough to prove a leak with one of those kits in a case like this, only fails when worked hard. What Ive done in the past in cases like this is run the over flow hose out from under the hood and go give the vehicle a good beating. It is usually pretty obvious.

 

[wmoguy]

Good Talking to you Heath, I feel your pain.

I have another suggestion for you, What about picking up a $6 or $7K Dually to get you through the rest of the camping season, put your truck back in the garage and get it fixed. Once it is back on the road, sell the Dually. At that price point it wont go down in value and you would probably get your money back out of it.

Missys Happy you get to go camping for the rest of the season, you are not on pins and needles pulling the camper with a wounded truck, and you would not hurt it any further either.

Just a thought,..Let me know if you would like some help with that.

stellar idea Darrin! Thats how I ended up with a 2nd IDI pickup.