I've read a few articles about head gasket quality and most say to stick with the ford ones. Felpro and a few others that I can't think of don't seem to have the quality.

 

Thanks. I'll put that into my brain vault!

Might as well get the head fluxed if you end up pulling it out.

Keep us posted if you figure anything out.

 

Thanks for the help all. I will probably pull the head. Before I do, I really want to find the cause of the knock. If its in the bottom end, there's no sense in doing head gaskets just to have something else fail in the near future. I'm replacing a cracked tank on my other truck right now, but once that's done i'll poke around the powerstroke with a stethoscope and see what I can't find.

 

Just went and let the truck warm up and took it for a spin. I can honestly only hear the knock at idle and when i partially touch the throttle, then it just blends in with the rest of the noise. I can't generalize it to one area. With the stethoscope put to the exhause manifold, it was making all sorts of sounds, but it did it on both sides of the motor. It sounds like it's just the motor in general. I can't decide if its just a noise these motors make, or its abnormal.

 

Is it like a steady tick,tick,tick? My truck's vacuum pump does that when it's a cold start at idle. As soon as it warms up, that noise seems to fade away (yes, I know I probably need to replace the vacuum pump). Could also be you have a small exhaust leak maybe? I've head those on the big truck diesels that I could swear was rod knock.

 

the noise didn't fade at all throughout cold to warm. It doesn't quite sound like an exhaust leak, as my 95 460 has a really good one and it's a totally different sound. But I'm not too familiar with diesel exhaust leaks.

 

New update. I went through and unplugged each injector one at a time to see if the noise would disappear, to eliminate injector knock. Well the noise was still alive and well. Realized the best place i could hear the knock was laying under the motor.

 

Oh man, laying under the motor is loud! LOL

 

Its when one of these is quiet that you should worry!