After start - we put a stopwatch on it. Curious that across 8 7.3's there are no 2 that are the same time.

 

email me the pics and i can put them up for you. I pm'd you my email address.

 

Got the pan & heads off of eng #2 - this one was missing one jet. Lower end insp didn't see much. A couple of jets were loose (wiggled) but hadn't come out yet.

Top is a different story - piston looks "toasted". Pitted surface, dark grey to black appearance. Can definately see signs that this one was about to go. No obvious cracks but we could see the top had eroded - some metal splatter is visible on the valves and surrounding area. Piston top looks like someone beat it w a hammer - this one might have had the "star" pattern like the other truck but with all the pitting, etc its tough to tell. We're going to hunt up some penetrant dye to see if that reveals any cracks.


Amazing this thing held together! I'd say that just goes to show how sturdy these engines really are.

 

That's the typical burnt piston I see when the jet is missing, not long before it burns through and loses all compression!
Jim & fat Monty

 

3rd engine may have succumbed - i'm on the road but the guys called me this morning saying it was blowing smoke and running rough. They pulled the oil filler cap off and they were getting lots of blow-by.
I won't be back home till Sunday - i'll just have to wait to look into it I guess. Well at least we got to 2 of them before it became an issue.

 

Sorry to hear that! Maybe it's not fatal yet!
Jim&fat Monty

 

If you need someone to hold up a fence post while you have a bevvy, She's the deal

 

I got to looking at the 3rd engine this morning - appears that the inj for cyl #4 isn't working. When we ran the buzz test #4 was barely audible and sounded different than the rest. (Almost like a click-click vs the bzzzz the rest made) Whether this is related to the missing jet or not is unknown at this point since we don't know what cyl the jet is missing from. The blow by isn't as bad as I'd envisioned it to be - its there but not real strong. Its not smoking too bad but its enough to know something's up. Were going to pull the injector and see what the tip looks like and see if we can peek down into the cylinder w/ a small borescope. No noticible change in the oil level and it's not diluted w/ fuel - a good sign.

 

Ok need some help - the inj that isn't working is not the cylinder that has the cracked piston. #6 has athe nice crack across the middle. The inj is on #4 - Weird but I guess that's the breaks. Now for the help part - is there somebody that can rebuild this inj?

 

Casserly via Clay at Riffraff is the route I would go.

If it can be rebuilt, Cass would be my first choice.

Stewart

 

Would love to drop a whole new set of inj in but this has been a "costly" event so trying to keep my accountant errr "wife" happy. Luckily harvest is around the corner for us hence the need to get all 3 back on the road...

 

I understand.

Just one more reason to call Clay and check on the cost of getting that lone injector rebuilt, versus buying a replacement.

Stewart

 

I'll look up Clay in the morning - it'll take us about 7-8 days before we'd be ready for inj again. We're doing the same things to this one we did to the other 2. Oil cooler rebuild, turbo pedestal o-rings, etc.

We're gett'n good @ this - not sure it was a "talent" I necessarily wanted to acquire though.

 

Just let me know, all that is in stock.

 

Well finally got the last one back together. Learned a heck of a lot about how to get the engine out of one of these trucks. Used 5 of the eight pistons we purchased. If anyone ever just needs a single I'd be happy to sell 'em one. The burnt ones are now being used as paperweights around the shop. Did find out that single pistons are available through napa. Our set came from the local navistar dlr along with the injectors. Sorry clay we have an account with them so we can get stuff on credit w/ a discount. They were very helpful with some of the issues we had.
Glad we're done! I hope the next time is aways off.