i have had to rebuild many diesels, but i can't match dave. ouch. when i bought my ford it had a bad engine. so i located a 97 powerstroke diesel that had been burned from a salvage yard for 300.00. i bought it thinking i could put my 7.3 idi parts on it. well it was a totally different engine. so when i bought my remanufactured engine from a local fellow i let him have my old engine as a core and also the 7.3 powerstroke. he gave me back the 300.00 for the powerstroke and charged me 2500 installed for the 7.3 idi. it runs great and he says it will last a long time as long as i don't turn it too fast. he says never to cruise this engine more than 2200 rpm. i will take him at his word and hold the rpm down. thats why i had to locate the 355 rear axel ratio. the truck is almost finished now. (getting paint and upholstry.) i am not much for messing around with timing, injector pumps, turbo's, and other horsepower enhancers. i would never consider putting butane or gasoline in my engine, because i believe it would shorten the life of the engine. i knew this thing was slow when i bought it, i accept that. however i know it has power and torque to pull my trailer, but i know it will slow down greatly when i get to new mexico and 8000 ft elevations. i will just have to back off and drop down a gear. after i make that trek in april i will know more about it. i had a non turbo 8.2 liter gm diesel in a 1980 ford 700 dump truck. it was advertised at 175 hp, i used it ten years and never had a problem, and it was running great when i sold the truck 5 years ago.

 

Hind sight is always 20 20 but,
What I looked at was 6.9 rebuild local estimate was 3 weeks down time and dollar estimate 4 to 6 grand depending on how bad things were with a 90 day warranty.

OR

Order from Reviva and get a 7.3 turbo upgrade for 6650 with a complete 3" exhaust and a two year unlimited mileage warranty. Plus the reseller I worked through worked with me real well and I wound up being down for 1 day to do the swap.

Then with all the problems I have been down for four weeks with a blown motor twice, now I have more down time for the tranny repair and dollars out the wallet to rebuild it again.

I also asked for a list of what was replaced in the engine and what was reused during the rebuild. Confidential was the reply, guess it is a CIA motor or something.

It is a good thing Minneapolis is as far from me as it is, otherwise I might be in jail or worse.

I would be embarressed to put my name on the one I had apart to find out what broke.
I thought very hard about doing a tear down and reassemble on this one before it went in my truck so I would know the torques and clearances were right at least. But I did not due to possible warranty issues again.

At this point in time I can only chalk this up to a very well learned lesson, or at least an expensive one.