7.3 tear down/rebuild (hydrolocked)

frankenwrench

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I'm sorry to hear that. I haven't tried to contact Justin so I have no personal experience. I also can perfectly understand since I'm the same way. I was using those two as examples of people who I would trust their work enough to pay them to build an engine for me. There may be a few more, but not very many.
I will never badmouth his work (justin) because I don't have personal experience with his work ( afore mentioned as to reason why ) but I have heard nothing but praise from others who have his parts/services. Wes, however, WILL call back and provide excellent p.r./ customer service and I have several of his products that are phenomenal. May take a while due to high volume of parts production/builds, but he is one man. Lol. I believe he recently hired a hand to keep up better. Also, doesn't Conestoga diesel as well as Russ repair do builds? Or are they just parts? Either way, all four are some of the best made parts for these old beasts!
 

Knuckledragger

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Jake,

Sorry to hear about your hydrolock, I have extra rods if you need one.

If it has not already been done, spend the extra money to have the rotating mass balanced. It is well worth the cabbage for the smooth running engine.

I would actually go with the sleeve, down to 6.9l so you don't have to worry about cavitation.
 
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79jasper

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As far as I know, they just do fuel/air parts, but I may be wrong.
There were talks of selling complete engines. Don't know if it came to fruition.
Wouldn't hurt to ask.
OTOH, searching for good machine shops by word of mouth and personal experiences can turn up results as well. IMO, a good machine shop is just that.

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hesutton

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Jake, sucks you're having to completely rebuild the engine. Looks like you're making great progress though.


Also, doesn't Conestoga diesel as well as Russ repair do builds? Or are they just parts?
Mel was offering complete ready to drop in reman's with studs and what have you. Wouldn't hurt to call and talk to him or Suzi.

Heath
 

Jake_IN

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Finally have a short update.

Well its been awhile, but I finally got my parts back from the machine shop. They were swamped with work (Their bread and butter is the medium and heavy duty diesels) and have several commercial customers that take priority so my stuff got bumped a few times. Price ended up being a little bit more than I expected (especially when this truck isn't even worth that much), but I'm happy with the service. I did see on the invoice that i got charged twice for the gasket set so I need to ask them about that. Either way I'm looking forward to finally getting moving on this again.

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Jake_IN

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Been slowly working on cleaning and taking measurements of the block so this update won't be very exciting. This is more of the time where you kick back and grab yourself a beverage, put on your favorite tunes and take things nice and slowly. No need to rush.


Remember kids, just because the block was finish washed doesn't mean its clean. You gotta scrub them bores!!!
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Each bore was scrubbed until the rags came out clean....that was a time consuming process.
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Decided to take the completely unnecessary step and stone all the gasket surfaces to take off any burrs or high spots while quietly whispering sweet nothings to the block. Then thoroughly cleaned the surface and surrounding area to make sure all of the abrasive was removed.
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Time to take those mics back out and start measuring things until you're cross-eyed.
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After measuring all of the bores and the pistons, below is where I currently sit. A couple of the piston clearances are technically out of tolerance. I'll go back and remeasure them but I'm assuming they are measurement error on my end.
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Still have more measurements to do. Just wanted to give a quick update.
 

hacked89

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I like how you treated yours to a romantic night, took it to the machine shop spa for a bath, whispering sweet nothings to it and obsessively cleaning its holes.

I spit shined mine and vaccumed the old gasket and metal shavings out.

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chillman88

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I like how you treated yours to a romantic night, took it to the machine shop spa for a bath, whispering sweet nothings to it and obsessively cleaning its holes.

I spit shined mine and vaccumed the old gasket and metal shavings out.

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As @IDIBRONCO would say. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut on this one LOL
 

drewr13NJ

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I had a similar situation happen to me. Bought a truck a year ago with multiple red flags... It hydro-locked when we tried to start it on the test drive! Should have walked away then. Anyway, first we replaced the head gasket on driver's side, then finally figured out #8 had pinholes in it the whole time! Truck has 107K mi on it, so I figured it didn't have enough miles to have cavitation issues. Ended up spending about $1200 in machine work (8 holes sleeved, block deck skimmed, heads checked and milled). Had the machine shop check the rods and he said they were fine. I probably have $400 or so in gaskets and head bolts. I got lucky when it came to some engine parts. A friend of a friend gave me some bootleg bearings and rings from when he worked at the engine plant in Indy. The machine shop had my engine from Mid July till November! Hopefully it goes back together with out any hick ups!
 

Jake_IN

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Nice to see my little comment in the middle of my last post didn't go unnoticed :rotflmao

Another small update. Measuring ring end gaps and i encountered a bit of a problem. I have some broken oil rings!
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I wish I could tell you what happened. I'm not sure if these got broken during transport or what. So it looks like I need to order some rings.

As far as ring gaps go. Everything checked out nicely.
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Jake_IN

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Question for the brain trust.

I was assembling the parts for my Typ4 cam. And the fuel pump cam lobe (came with the cam) is NOT a press fit. I can slide it on and then spin it round and round once it is past the key. Has anyone seen this before?

I'm tempted to take a pin punch and punch some spots around where the cam lobe sits to try and raise up the surface and get it back to being a press fit. But I decided to ask before proceeding to do that.
 
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