Good source for heads

[JLDickmon]

friends of mine have this glorious '95 6.5, and lo and behold, it's filled a cylinder up with coolant...

who's a good source for recon cylinder heads besides the local boneyard?

 

[towcat]

Either "Alabama cylinder head" or Clearwater cylinder head" will do them fine. Both are running specials on the 6.5 head. iirc....they are even new castings too. You'll need to google up the websites.

 

[chrisk1500]

New Chinese castings that is....

 

[JLDickmon]

Chinese casting be better than broke casting at this juncture....

 

[chrisk1500]

For how long?

 

[towcat]

Chinese casting be better than broke casting at this juncture....

my thoughts exactly.
the 6.5 heads do have some pretty tricky cracks to deal with and if you are a machine shop who knows how to deal with them, you will charge a fortune since they are time consuming. btw. the chinese castings do "look" pretty good and the valve setup is dead-on spec. I've installed a few sets and have had zero problems and these motors are no fun at all to tear down the top end.

 

[dieseldummy]

I've heard from more than one source that the made in china castings don't machine the same as GM castings. Seems that the alloy content isn't the same. The chinese iron turns to powder were as the GM's make shavings. It's just not worth it IMO to run an inferior head.

The best choice IMO is to tear the head off that are on it and determine if they are cracked beyond repair. It may just be a blown head gasket. If they are cracked between the valves there is a repair kit that uses a sleeve to keep coolant from leaking out. If they are cracked from the seat area out to the edge of the combustion chamber then they are probably junk. Although I've seen ones that look pretty bad be re-installed and not use coolant...

 

[Dave Barbieri]

And if they're junk, we come back to the original question:

who's a good source for recon cylinder heads besides the local boneyard?

And the answer is......

 

[chrisk1500]

Peninsular Diesel may be able to point you in the right direction....give them a call because their website is under construction...

 

[JLDickmon]

heads pulled & magnafluxed at local machine shop - passed muster

head gaskets mega-blown around rearmost bolt of both heads...

cause?

broken head bolts!

BROKEN HEAD BOLTS SUCK!

I'll post what magic I needed to remove them when I get them removed...

(I should have walked away from this one - but NOoooooooooooo... I can fix anything: I have an awesome set of tools)

 

[JLDickmon]

pipe wrench and a cheater bar

 

[Dave Barbieri]

pipe wrench and a cheater bar

That is an awesome set of tools!!

 

[JLDickmon]

the one that went through the alignment dowel... talk about STUCK!

here's the rest of the story

got the truck back together, went to fire it... no crank
replaced the starter.

went to fire it, fuel leak.
pulled the intake back off to replace an injector line (how I broke it, I have NO idea).

went to fire it, no clutch.
replaced the clutch slave

runs OK but runs out of wind at about 3200 rpm
replace fuel filter

now, have to degrease it, change the oil again, change the coolant again, wash it and wax it, and buff the rust pits out of the front rotors where it sat for nearly a month while I worked on it a couple hours a night after work...