Trailered home a 1989 F350 dump truck that looks great on the outside, but the 7.3 IDI is something else

[crazydane]

Got the block stripped. The 7 remaining pistons came out with minimal effort (was able to pop them out by hand except one that needed a very light tab to get the top ring to come out). They all appear to be in excellent shape:

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Rings too. Not a single ring in any of the 7 good pistons was sticking. Rod and main bearings are also all in great shape:

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Bores all look good too I think:

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I'll try honing #5 and see what I get.

 

[IDIBRONCO]

If you use this engine, I'd be VERY reluctant to reuse the injectors. With 8 burned off glow plug tips and #5 piston that's been burned away so badly, I'd suspect leaking (pouring on #5) injectors. At least have them pop tested first.
Honestly, with your intended use, I wouldn't be too worried about #5 cylinder if it hones up half way decently. Get a new piston and you should be fine. That's just my opinion.

 

[The_Josh_Bear]

Besides #5 that sure is a pretty engine! I'm with @IDIBRONCO and think if I was you, I'd do the hone and see what happens. On the penny-pinching side, you can get just #5 bored. As you said it won't introduce more significant compression than any other engine that has natural variability. Shoot I have one cylinder at 250psi and the rest 360+psi and my pickup runs pretty stinking good.

For 500 miles a YEAR you could run on 7 cylinders. So anything you do with that cylinder is gonna be better than a dead one!

 

[crazydane]

@IDIBRONCO Very good advice on not reusing the injectors from the '92 engine. I took apart the odd bank injectors and cleaned them in my ultrasonic cleaner:

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Take a closer look at these guys:

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No surprise #5 looks the worst.

Compare the shape of those to this one off one of my original '89 engine:

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That piece should not have a taper at all from what I can tell. So I'm going to ultrasonically clean the rest of the injectors from my '89 and then test them. If nothing else, the '92 injectors will give me plenty of extra shims to play with.

I ordered this cheap Vevor pop tester:

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I know it comes with metric adapters, so it won't work directly with the IDI injectors. Anyone know what adapter I would need to hook up to our style injectors? Amazon sells like 2 or 3 other testers like the above, but they all appear to be exactly the same, just sold under different brands and they all cost about the same.

As I was taking apart some more of the '89 injectors, I did notice some of those might not be the greatest. Like the small pins on this guy were not straight:

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There appears to be 2 distinct style of injectors, some have 6 point caps and others have 12 point caps. Both take a 15mm socket to take off. As long as I stray within one style or the other, I'm assuming the components are interchangeable?

 

[crazydane]

I did hone #5 a good bit and this is where I'm at right now:

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You can feel those groves, but a fingernail doesn't catch in them anymore.

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I'm waiting on a 4-5" micrometer to get here so that I can properly calibrate my bore gauge so that I can measure the bore on #5. I guess I'll just keep honing until I reach the upper limit for a standard bore and hopefully the grooves will be all but gone at that point. But if not, with a new piston and rings, it will be a hell of a lot better than before and as @The_Josh_Bear pointed out, for my intended purpose, that should be plenty good.

On the other 7 bores, should I NOT hone them and just put the pistons back in when the time comes? Or should I go ahead and hone them and get new rings since I have the engine tore down anyway?

While I have the engine out, is there anything else I should inspect/replace since I have easy access right now?

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I know I need to fix/replace the engine harness connectors on both sides. This is the truck side:

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Are male/female 12 pin connectors like these still available? Any aftermarket alternatives that might be better?

 

[IDIBRONCO]

On the other 7 bores, should I NOT hone them and just put the pistons back in when the time comes? Or should I go ahead and hone them and get new rings since I have the engine tore down anyway?

I think that you should hone the rest of the cylinders and put the other pistons back with new rings.

 

[crazydane]

Agreed. I got this far, so might as well. Just waiting on the 5" micrometer so that I can take some measurements and start going to town with the hone.

 

[crazydane]

I got my Fowler 5" micrometer and think I was able to figure out how to zero out the bore gauge @ 4.1100". After making sure the micrometer read 0 with the 4" calibration stick it came with, I set it as follows:

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I then put the bore gauge in #7 first and got this reading near the top:

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And this near the mid/lower section:

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I then took the same readings in #5. These are my numbers:

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According to the service manual, #1 - #6 can be no bigger than 4.1115" and #7 - #8 max out at 4.1120".

So my #7 is barely within spec before honing and #5 is out of spec by 0.00505".

Also, max allowed taper is 0.003". My #7 is 0.0011 which is good, but #5 is 0.0054, which is almost double the spec. I'm sure honing with cheap 3 piece stone didn't do anything positive for the taper.

I never could get the "Setting Bore Gage to a known size" to work, but I'm pretty sure I got it calibrated to where it showed 0.00000" repeatedly when inserting the gauge in the micrometer.

And I choose MIN before rocking in each bore. So do these measurements look to be in the ballpark of what I should be getting?

Anyway, maybe just bite the bullet and take the block to a shop to have #5 bored to 4.1300 (so I can use a .020 piston from the original engine) and then have them do a proper hone of the other 7 holes? Hell, maybe just take them all to 4.1300 so I can reuse all my 0.020 pistons. I need 8 sets of new rings anyway.

The place I spoke to last week, that specialize in diesel engines and are quite familiar with the IDIs, said they could have my block in and out in between 3 - 4 hours and that would include hot tanking and putting in new cam bearings. Shop charges $110/ hour. So maybe not that bad of a deal?

 

[IDIBRONCO]

They can bore, hone, hot tank, and install new cam bearings in 3-4 hours? I'd say that's not too bad at all. Before you go all out on that route, be sure to measure your old pistons to make sure that they're all still in spec. If all else fails, I wouldn't be too worried about the #5 being that far out of spec. These old girls can run great A LOT farther out of spec than that and you'll never know what they look like inside.

 

[crazydane]

Very good point about tearing down the original engine and pull the pistons to measure to see that they fall within .020 spec. I already know the one with a messed up wrist pin is no good. I never got any further with that block than to pull the heads. Good to know these engines perform well outside the listed specs! Will definitely keep that in mind.

Before I start tearing that engine down, I'll need to clean up / rearrange the mess from the engine that's already torn down, lol:

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In addition to the pistons, I plan to re-use the heads from the original engine, so I'll want to tear those down as well and inspect them closely for cracks, etc.

I'm going to price out the cost of new pistons (.010) vs. a full set of rings. Part of me wants to do this right and just bore the block .010 over and get a full set of new pistons and rings. If I do that, maybe I'll start using this truck for errands where I'm currently using my 2002 Duramax that's pushing 150k miles and properly register it vs. getting farm tags. I purchased the Duramax new and the only issue I ever had with it, was getting the injectors replaced under warranty when they started dumping fuel in the crankcase. So very happy with it after 22 years of service. Been hauling a lot of logs with it too over the years:

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And its still going strong. But I miss driving a manual truck. Used to have a '82 F150 with the straight 6 300 and NP203. Talk about bullet proof.

 

[crazydane]

I got the injection tester today, but the pressure gauge doesn't register anything:

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Started an advanced replacement. Should have it early next week. Other than the gauge not working, it seems decent enough and I was able to test all 16 injectors I have on hand and they pretty much all suck, even after ultra sonically cleaning some of them. Spray patterns are very uneven and some leak like crazy and others pop at almost no pressure at all. So it looks like I'm in the market for a new set of injectors. Heard good things about CDD here on the forum, but understand they are pretty backed up. Might try calling them tomorrow to get an idea about lead time. The injectors are also a mix of a several different types. The '92 had 8 'BB' ones, but the '89 has 4 'D', a single 'BB' and 3 without any letter(s) stamped on them:

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Also took a look at my 2 IPs: (left is from original '89 engine and right is from the '92)

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The '89 pump looks the cleanest and doesn't have all that cruise control / AT stuff on it. Not sure what the make of the plate?

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The '92 one has a lot more numbers on it:

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I'm leaning towards using the original one from the '89 engine, but was also thinking about sending one off the be rebuild. Maybe if I call CDD, I'll talk to them about that as well.

This weekend I hope to have time to tear down the '89 engine completely and see those pistons are decent and if I want to take the '92 to .020 and reuse those pistons or just hone the bores and re-use the STD pistons.

 

[Old Goat]

There was a thread not too far back, where someone bought one of these off shore Pop Testers. It was not cleaned before being assembled and was full of manufacturing bits of metal.
Would be a good idea to take it apart and be sure it is very clean, or you could/can contaminate your injectors from spraying or popping correctly.

Did some searching and cannot find it.


Goat

 

[crazydane]

I'll definitely do that when I receive the replacement. Its the Vevor brand I went with. Have some of their other stuff and it seems decent. I also looked at the Mophorn brand, but they appear to all be the same and in fact, looking at some of the comments on the Amazon reviews, the Mophorn ones are actually the Vevor ones anyway. The only other one I see on the jungle site is the ABN one, and it has fewer reviews compared to the Vevor brand.

Anyway, I ended up ordering a set of rebuild injectors from Tim @ Accurate Diesel. He said the folks that rebuild injectors for him has done so for 15 years and the customer experience has been good. I went ahead and had him throw in a set of bullet style glow plugs, installation kit (basically new return lines and fittings) along with a set of heat shrink bullet IDI connectors since the ones on both of my current harnesses are in pretty bad shape. He's giving me $50 credit for the 2nd set of old injectors that I have, which seems fair.

Going to try to start it up with the '89 IP and see how it goes. Don't need to spend money rebuilding one if I still have some life left in the one(s) I already got, especially for the annual miles I'm looking at.

 

[Old Goat]

I bought a new Tractor seat for my Kioti CK-30 from Vivor. (made in China, isn`t it all?)
Now Iam bombarded with their Pop up add`s.

Seat was decent, came with new seat tracks, but funny thing, Seat belts are connected to the Seat, so if you hit something hard and the machine stops, you and the seat flip forward.

Just need to move them to the body mounts. Made me laugh.

Wonder why this went to bold type?
Maybe the new Vivor Type Writer Ribbon I just installed the Lap Top?


Goat

 

[DaveBen]

I DO remember. a seatbelt that was attached to the seat frame. I can't remember which vehicle it was in nor the year. This was back when seat belts were first required in cars and trucks.