This is my first post on the forum. I have been lurking for a while and have gotten a lot of good info here. Thanks for the forum.
I have an 83 F350 6.9 which I bought new, it has 112,000 miles on it. It is now using quite a bit of oil and during acceleration pukes out a tremendous amount of grey smoke. I have replaced the CDR but that was no help. I am now going to try replacing the valve guide seals and see if that helps cut down the oil consumption and smoking. The truck starts easily so I am hopefull that the compression is still OK. I don't have the tester to check it. The truck is in Baja, and lives there full time, it is now my "beater" truck. I have the Ford maintainence manual to guide me. I looked up the procedure and the book says to use a "valve spring compressor tool" T83T-6513-A, I don't have one, is this something that I could fabricate down here? I have a pretty complete shop. Next it says to install a seal guide on to the valve tip using tool T83T-6571-A using a light hammer, same question, is this tool something I could fabricate here?
My next question is which seals do I need? I see 2 different parts listed for the 6.9. First is a Felpro SS726281 Long oil sheild, and then there is a SS72628 Short oil sheild. I found these at RockAuto. How do I know which I need or maybe I should just buy both and bring them down.
Since I am doing this job about 400 miles away from the nearest reliable auto parts store I need to have everything with me when I get back here to do the job, so any and all help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Larry
PS One thing I just noticed in the Ford maintainence manual is the illustration of the valve spring assembly shows a stem seal on the intake valve , but no seal on the exhaust valve, did they originally come without a seal on the exhaust valve? The only thing that has ever been done to this enging is right after I bought the truck Ford did a recall and as I remember they replaced the heads, that would have been in late 83 or early 84.