Need Suggestions/Advice on Rebuild

MPatty

Registered User
Joined
Mar 25, 2019
Posts
12
Reaction score
27
Location
Farmville, NC
I bought my truck (a 1993 F250 IDIT with a ZF5 Transmission) last year. The truck has been repainted and has obviously had the engine out at some point to paint the firewall. The Vin on the truck is M (which if not mistaken is a N/A truck) but has a factory turbo on the truck. When I bought the truck there was no history on the truck. This is all to say I have no idea what internals it has, if it has been rebuilt, or the mileage on the motor.


Recently the truck has been losing coolant. I haven't seen any coolant in the oil, haven't been making oil and haven't seen oil in the coolant. I haven't had any smoke. I have started to see coolant on the driver side back of the block around the head gasket. There is obvious coolant in the area and dried coolant immediately under the head gasket. I don't see any coolant leaking when sitting or when at idle so I'm guessing its leaking under pressure.

If i'm going to have to replace head gaskets, I would rather pull the motor and stud the heads. Here is where the questions come in. What all should I accomplish while the motor is out? Currently Im not in a rush to get it done because oil coolant don't seem to be mixing; however, over a 300 mile trip from Eastern NC to Va mountains I lost about a half gallon of coolant.

At a minimum I plan on having the machine shop go through the heads and I will stud them. If the cylinders look ok and the rings are good should I just leave the block alone? Should I pressure test the motor before pulling it to see if I should start planning on more repairs or just see what how it looks when I pull it? Ideally if everything looks good when pulled I would like to spend my money on the following

Headgaskets
Valley Pan
Studs
Downpipe
Exhaust
Oil Cooler seals
Turbo Seals
Camshaft
Wicked wheel
comp 910 Springs
 

Philip1

Supporting Member
Supporting Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2019
Posts
448
Reaction score
366
Location
Northeastern Nevada
Since you don't know anything about the truck and you'll have it torn apart, you might want to inspect your main and rod bearings to see if there are any excessive wear on them.
 

lotzagoodstuff

Supporting Member
Supporting Member
Joined
May 19, 2007
Posts
2,726
Reaction score
668
Location
Carmel, IN
Looks like a pretty solid diagnosis of an external head gasket leak only happening under load/cylinder pressures. Compression test and pressurizing the coolant system to see if you can verify the gasket leak before tear down is a great idea too, but you'll find out for sure when you pull the heads.

I think your list of rebuild items is pretty solid too. The only thing I would say is buy a camshaft from Russ (Type4) and I'd follow his suggestions on valve springs.

If you are going to have the motor out +1 on inspecting bearings, and sealing up the oil pan and maybe rear main seal while you are in there.
 

aggiediesel01

Full Access Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2016
Posts
531
Reaction score
417
Location
Houston, TX
+2 on all the above stuff. If you choose to add the camshaft you should decide before taking your heads to the machine shop so you can have them do the extra work to make sure valve recession is within spec especially since it's likely they'll deck the heads to flatten them. I would request to them that they only take the absolute bare minimum cut to flatten instead of the typical take a big enough cut to get it done in one pass. It's fine to assume it's a N/A motor but check the serial # of the block and look for the clues in the heads to verify what you've got. All the turbo details can be easily reviewed in the coffee table book.

https://www.forddoctorsdts.com/coffeetablebooks.html/
 
Top