My 6.9 has finally met its end of life.
I see smoke and hear a tapping unbecoming of a diesel.
I have played around with the fuel and timing until I am blue in the face.
After it hydro locked, life hasnt been the same for me.
And No, I havent done a compression check yet.

So now, I am at a cross road, so to speak. Rebuilding my 6.9, or trading up to a 7.3 4X4.I havent seen this new contender yet, but I am told that my truck is in better shape and I might want to put my body parts on it including the bed. But mine is a duelly.I wondered if I could put my duel rear under the new truck while I was at it.
Some questions I have are, am I replacing my engine with a 7.3 or am I replacing the entire truck, with it ?

What am I getting into with a 7.3 that is supposed to make me better off ?
What might you guys want to know about this newer truck first before you were to commit to it ?
Is my 6.9 worthy of a rebuild when compared to a 7.3 4X4 that probly looks like crap ?
Can I borrow your compression test kit ?

Click the photo link to see the truck I can no longer justify driving but would hate to give up on.
Despite no rust and good paint, its bad engine and 3 spd. trans have reached thier "end of life".
Your thoughts are appreciated......

 

How many miles on the 6.9L????

I would say keep you truck ( looks really clean from the photo ) and find a good place to re-build your 6.9L...

From Daves stories a re-built 6.9L seemed to be the way to go... he learned that the hard way

 

I would check the mileage difference between the two. Is your 3 spd in good shape? Is there any way you could swap the 7.3 (maybe transmission as well) into your dually (seeing how clean it is)? Also, the problems Dave S. had were with sleeved 7.3's not stock ones.

 

My vote is rebuild the 6.9.
Do a minimum bore to straighten out the cylinders and give you a fresh surface for the rings.
Replace the cam and lifters.
Replace all the bearings.
Replace the oil pump.
Rebuild the oil cooler.
Use head studs.
Get the IP and injectors tested, replace if needed.
Magnaflux and carefully inspect everything.
Replace the valves and valve stem seals, valve guides as required.
Use good parts and good gaskets.
You will get a good engine, you already have a good truck.
With the money you save, get an overdrive or turbo or both.

Once you wear out the 7.3, it is done, you have to sleeve it to rebuild it.
You could get two or three rebuilds out of a 6.9 if you do minimum bores each time.
I had a good machinest, he got the cylinders clean and true only taking out 10 thousandths.

I was very lucky that the reman had a good warranty, so I did not really lose much money. But I did have a lot of frustration to deal with through the ordeal. I also got rather good at diagnosing cracked blocks, blown head gaskets, cracked heads and dropped sleeves. I also got rather good at swapping engines. I also learned that quality control is not what it used to be.

I know I made a few enemies in Minnesota and California, but I really don't care, they were not the kind of people I like anyway.

 

Here may be a good time to ask this question....

My buddy has an '87 6.9L and the guy who owned it before him installed a kieth black cam in it...

Are there many options for 6.9L performance cams???

Cheers
Bob

 

I know what your talking about.... I really can appreciate all that, as I have a 351 stock block. "a virgin"

Here, I have no idea what your are talking about... lol

I can handle disassembly and reassembly of the engine, but as for a overdrive and turbo, I am not too sure I either want to get into it, nor pay someone else to "screw" up the install.
Though I would like to experience both, I would have to go cheap on ya, and do the install myself, and with used parts at that !

Dave, we talked about turboing this truck before. I forgot the what where and how much of it.

Same thing with a overdrive, but I remember it being after the trans, and people saying it sucked.
Now my friend here tells me he had seen one that turns 3 into 6 and shifts smoothly. How much.

I am broke, so it seems, the best direction to go is to rebuild this trucks engine, and bang my head against a brick wall and forget about buying a turbo, overdrive and a 7.3 parts truck for another year...


Mr. Bob and friends, thanks for the comments.
I dont know how many miles are on this truck.
The trans seems fine to me.
I really like this truck, though it could be 4X4 w/ a crew cab, and a class 5 hitch, as well as two new fuel filler hoses and a tailgate.
But I would like more to be able to pass this truck on to the next guy in good running condition and not as scrape or as a parts truck.

Thanks for all this input, I hope to read more support for keeping this truck with its 6.9 alive and kicking.

Dave, you dont really have to explain that story as it sounds like it may have been a nitemare. Thanks for your response, I am pleasantly surprised by it.

 

In a nut shell I bought a 7.3 turbo reman engine a couple years ago.
After 27,000 miles I had the fourth engine to install under warranty, I tore it down before I unbolted it from the shipping pallet. I found the sleeves were dropped down between 5 and 7 thousandths on an engine that had never been fired and refused to install it.
After a lot of phone calls and name calling I got a buyout from the company that did the reman work through the reseller I bought it through.
What a fiasco.

I have more miles on my rebuilt 6.9 so far than I got out of the first two engines I installed that a "professional remanufacturing facility" did.

6800 dollar reman engine and I had to walk more in the 16 months they were in my truck than I did in 19 years of driving it since I bought it.

NIGHTMARE? You must be into understatements tonight.

 

Well, my nitemare begins from now. I have been useing the truck to pick up my son from football despite all my efforts to decline this task to my wife.
It finally blew tonite. Its on the side of the road as I type this post.
When it laid to rest on the shoulder, after a few minutes I wanted to hear it spin so I hit the key. It didnt spin.
So, now instead of a minor rebuild we are moving up to a major rebuild with some unexpected new parts added to the list.

 

Advance Auto ditributes, Recon engines. They have this 6.9 available for about 5200 and give 850 back for a core block with no holes.

That is alot of money. I will have to pull this motor out and have a good look at her before I make a purchase like that.

 

There's a shop up here selling rebuilt 6.9's for $3995.00 Cdn, have a good rep, apparently Dave S. has even talked to them??

 

im not sure were your at in jersey but i may have a motor for you. its a 6.9 not sure what year ill find out. i work for a construction company and the ttruck that the motor was in was in a really bad accident. they were going to give it to the junk yard but i told them i would buy it from them. the motor ran great had about 200k on it. the motor was not touched the accident pretty much tore the back of the truck off. if your interedted let me know
mike

 

Brownieboy, I am near AC.
It will be some time before I can get to this job. See, money is tight and all.
I am planning to start driving my 67 stang after its been sitting for almost 10 years in the yard..
I wanted to stop driving my truck before somthing like this were to happen. Now that it has, I am sort of glad because now I get to tare it out and have a good look at it. I just didnt think it would have come to this.
So what do you think, Timing chain ?

Anyway, it would be nice to have a few options but I just cant commit to any right now.

This will be happening after the new year if I know my budget.

Apparently, regretably, I am in no hurry.

 

thats cool i totally now about the money situation im in a crunch myself till i start my new job with the next month. well if you do need the engine when you do start the rebuild let me know becuase it will probably be sitting in my garage doing nothing.

 

Today, I went to go an start ripping and taring at this motor.
I cleaned out my garage to make work space for the job ahead.
I sprayed penatrating oil on everything.
Then the next thing I did was open the radiator cap to have a look.
For the first time since I owned this truck, the level was gone.
Thats right, it looked bone dry inside. Not only that it looked as though someone had put in some kind of product to stop leaks. The fins were coroded with the stuff.
So I pushed everything back into the garage and closed all the doors including the hood of my truck.
I give.
I suppose the next thing to do is to take out all the glow plugs again, and see if I can "squeeze" the coolant out from the cylinders.
As it is the motor wont turn by hand at all.
How can I cut my losses here ?

 

No timing chain, all gear drive.

You may be looking at solder bloom around the tubes in the radiator. Looks like white fuzzy crystals.

If you blew a head gasket and dumped coolant into the cylinders, it should have drained into the crankcase by now.

Bad thing is you aren't really going to know what happened till you get the heads off.