Rich, I have much respect for you if you're willing to travel and help him. You Sir, are 'the man'. Well done!

 

How many times have we seen other members do the same thing? This place oozes brotherhood.

Jeff, could you please PM your new phone number I don't have?

 

Just realized I did not buy cups from Clay - so I cleaned out the local dealer - got 5. Hopefully no more than that are leaking.

 

Rich has prolly 3-4 anyway. Good luck I hope it works out for ya.

 

Just found 7 more in a box, we're good. I'm a few sandwiches short of a picnic these days.

 

Hope it works out Jeff. Rich god bless, you guys are great.

Chet

 

A *****ty job is not so bad when a friend is there to help.
Reps to you Rich! (when I can)
Jeff, Your in good hands, Good luck with the fix.

What a Brotherhood

 

Got to just love this site. I'm sure you will be up and running by monday.

 

Man oh man, what a day. I got tutored in cleanroom diesel work. I had no idea how clean I needed to have those holes. Rich got #2, the only one leaking, sparkling clean and we seated the new cup. Its curing now. We'll give it a pressure test tomorrow and button it up. This clean thing is the issue - I'm not doing it well enough. Another trick to finding this leaking hole was draining the block completely via the block heater, and spraying a bit of silicone in the holes while applying 15psi to the degas. Then the offending hole showed up. I think I missed #2 when Ken and I found #6 last time.

Well, she'll be ready for the next guy. And I can ask a better price now. Thanks Rich, and thanks everybody.

 

Hate to see you sell her, but if you have to good luck with the next one when the time comes. Glad you got it located. Rich is the man!

 

Glad you got it figured out. Are you sure you still want to sell it? Good luck with what ever decision you make.

Reps to you Rich! You the man.

 

It saddens me to hear you have to let it go...

 

I still think selling her is the best for this stage of my life. Granted unemployment will pass, so the other considerations are the three kids I'm raising and will build vehicles with. Joe's '69 chevy pickup is almost ready for paint, so I'll have plenty to do working with him on that rig. My daughter's rig is next - we'll start it in a year or so, so it's ready when she drives. Then my youngest son. After my wife and I get these kids launched, I could see us getting a diesel truck or motorhome and travelling the country.

 

Jeff, if you need anything done on your truck, call me. I missed the posts on here and didn't know you were struggling. My shop is always open and I can make time available.

 

My time is short here, but I can show everybody what was going on over there.

With all my VC-popping practice, I've amassed quite the collection of contraptions to make the job faster/easier, and BWST is demonstrating the glow plug removal tool here:


Jeff drained the coolant from the radiator, but didn't drain the block. We sprayed all of the cups with Silicone spray, pressurized the cooling system with air to 15-16 PSI, but we couldn't see any leaks in any of the 8 cups. Since air passes through tiny leaks much easier than liquid does, I popped the block heater out to drain the coolant from the engine. One more visit to the air puffer-upper thingy (and the inspection camera) gave us a positive result in #2 cup:




Hallelujah! The test showed an obvious leak, it was just one cup, and it was #2 - the easiest cup in the whole truck to replace. As we're doing high-fives for such a break, it starts to rain again. Well... we can only have so much good luck, but at least we're mostly under cover.

We jump on getting that cup out, so it can set for 24 hours. Once the cup was out, it was time to inspect the hole - in an effort to find out why it didn't hold its seal. Here's the bottom:



Here is a shot of the wall:



This is when, in deference to Jeff's effort the first time around, I need to point out that sealant won't adhere to that. For sealant to really work, you want metal-to-metal contact... so it has to be "clean, clean, clean" to quote a video I saw on cups. After all... that's the surface the factory had when they installed the cups the first time. Rather than just sitting and preaching, I walked the walk (with a Dremel and a cone wire brush):



Critical note! Cover the fuel rail with painter's masking tape before flinging debris around in there with thousands of RPMs of a steel tornado. You don't want that in a place where only filtered fuel belongs.

After spraying some silicone on the cup insertion tool, we placed the cup on it and really cleaned the cup surface too. Any oil or moisture will make this a wasted trip. I apply sealant to the leading edges, then let the insertion drag the sealant back along the sides, and spread in the bottom.



After installing the cup, we checked the outer edges to make sure we bottomed out and the sealant spread all the way.




A little careful cleanup (no spraying solvent in there, it will wash the sealant) with Q-Tips and alcohol, it's ready for a photo:





We spent the rest of the day prepping the other 7 holes for button-up, then we parted ways for the night to let the sealant cure.

We pressure tested the system the next day and everything looks solid, so it was time to finish installing stuff, button up, and crank it up. All is well.

My tools: Kawasaki rotary tool with a flex extension, and a cone-shaped wire brush.