That is actually Ford red 1200 degree ceramic paint. The silver is also 1200 degree ceramic paint. I am at 4000 dollars before I put a new turbo on it this evening. Found an oil leak that was driving me nuts turned out to be a crack in the oil supply header on the turbo.

Since I replaced the turbo, there are no more Reviva parts on this engine. That is probably a good thing.

I think there will be several people that think it is on fire when it is installed. Hope the rain holds off a couple more days.

I keep looking at it thinking I may have gone to wild, that black truck will have a blood red heart though.

I wish I had that 1947 F3 that I had when I was a kid. That would be sweet now. Flat head 6 with a fully non syncro 4 speed tranny that would pull stumps in granny gear. It was even the deluxe that had the tube AM radio, took five minutes to come on since you had to wait for the tubes to warm up before it played.

 

Very impressive. Hope you have years of trouble free driving. This is the third replacement or the fourth?

 

The engine looks nice is the turbo polished?

 

Two years ago December I installed a Reviva reman turbo upgrade 7.3.
Blew three of them up, 2700, 9700 and 17,000 miles respectively.
They replaced them all under warranty and sent me a fourth engine.
I took it apart before I installed it and refused to install that motor since I found the same problems in an engine that had not even been unbolted from the shipping pallet yet.
After much haggling they bought me out.
I replaced that engine with a salvage yard engine with close to 200,000 miles on it by my guess, so that was engine number 4.
It lasted 5 months and something let the piston rotate in the cylinder, it had a six month warranty so I never got to open up the bottom end to see what broke. But they did replace the engine.
When I picked it up, it had been rebuilt recently looking at the amount of red silicone around all the gaskets. So much that I was figuring the oil pickup was full of silicone.
I decieded to rebuild it before it went in my truck.
After looking inside, the cam and lifters were new, but the rest had not been touched recently. It had at some point been bored 20 over, but that was some time ago looking at the cylinder wear.
So I bored it another 10 and went through everything.
Started by magnafluxing everything, it was all sound parts.
Replaced the valves, valve springs, rockers, pushrods, oil pump, bearings, pistons, rings, cam bearings, polished the crank, balanced the internals, milled the pistons down, installed head studs, new thermostat, replaced the turbo, new block heater, all the gaskets and seals, and painted everything with high temp ceramic paint. I added my 94 turbo IP and injectors and header wrap to every pipe I could figure out how to wrap and then soaked the wrap with ceramic paint.

So since this is the fifth engine in two and a half years, I hope I don't have to do this again for a while even though I am getting very good at swapping engines.

Now I have a 7 liter engine that has 19.5 to 1 compression that will be running over 20 PSI of boost when it gets broke in. That first 10 thousand miles is going to kill me, but I will manage to survive.

Learath, my turbo management computer is my very large right foot.(13 DD Mattahorn miners boots, steel toes, steel sole plates and metatarsel protection which is pronounce "very heavy right foot")

ram2miller, the turbo is painted with ceramic aluminum paint, 1200+ degree stuff.

Engine assembly is complete, now to insert it in the truck and get it fired up.
Saturday should be the day for smoke and smiles here in Nutter Fort.

 

so you've got 10,000 miles to go before you're going to dyno it and let us know what you're making?

 

I want everything seated and worn in good before I stand on the loud pedal.
Breaking in a new motor is a PIA to do it right.

 

Dave, I didn't think you could bore the older engines. I thought the cylinders were already too thin.

 

WOW!Looks like my last sweatheart!

 

trike,
That is why I went back with a 6.9.
Cavitation is not near the issue on the 6.9 blocks that it is on the 7.3 engines.
Since a 7.3 is a 6.9 that has been bored 110 thousandths, I am still better off being bored 30 thousandths than a stock 7.3 is.

You should sleeve a 7.3 to rebuild it even though you can buy 20, 30 and 40 over pistons for the 7.3.
All the problems I was having with the 7.3 Reviva engines were sleeve related.
So now I am running a 7 liter engine with no sleeves that always seem to drop in the cylinders which in turn cracks the block.

I gambled 6500 dollars on a sleeved 7.3 reman and lost even though they shipped me four engines. When I took the heads off the last one they shipped me and the sleeves had dropped down in the block 10 thousandths while the engine was still bolted to the shipping pallet. That was enough sleeves for me, I never want to see another one.

So I started thinking about a minimal bore in a 6.9 block to give me fresh cylinder walls without sleeving it. I did not really want to go 30 over, but this block had alrady been bored 20 over, so I did another 10 which cleaned the cylinders up nicely.

If this one blows, I will loose it all since I built it myself.
The machine shop that did my work had done sleeves before, and always had problems with them. So they quite doing rebuilds on the International diesels.
Even though they have been in business for 30 years, me being the kind of person I am walked in and said to them they were doing it all wrong using 7.3 blocks which have to have sleeves.

After I went through my logic about the 6.9 engine, exactly what I wanted done to it and what I intended to do with it the owners though I was onto something. So they agreed to do the machine work I wanted the way I wanted it done as a test engine.

They will be watching how this unfolds even closer than you guys will be.
I am gambling 4500 on this engine in round numbers.
I see no reason it will not run several hundred thousand miles without any problems if I don't get to crazy with the boost and power thing. I have tried to address every weakness the 6.9 has that I can which is compression ratios that are to high to run much boost and weak head bolts.
I had the piston tops milled down to lower the compression ratio from 22.5 to 1 down to 19.5 to 1 so I could run more boost.
I also used head studs to address the head bolt stretching problems.

This should leave me with a 6.9 turbo engine that is stronger than the original engine was. I ran that engine like I stole it for 300,000 miles. If I make it to 30,000 without blowing it up, I did better than Reviva did with 3 engines. They reman several thousand engines a year.

This is how I live my life, run it till it breaks, figure out why it broke, then make it better than it was before I broke it.

I have done all that with this engine, now I just have to find out what it can take before it breaks since I improved it.
I have 4500 dollars that says it is bullet proof.

Update, the engine is in the truck this evening.
Tomorrow I finish the connectons and fire it off for the first time.

 

well Dave, all i can say on the upcoming firing party is this:
i hope you put 2 big columns of pure black smoke out of the stacks on first fire!

 

Dave did you get the smoke to roll?

 

Smoke is rolling, so is the truck.
Had a few set backs today, but about 8 this evening I went for a ride and put about 30 miles on it.

So far so good.

 

Dave:

Its a little late now, but have you considered ceramic coating the pistons? That much with the boost you will be running could prove deadly. If i remember correctly, you were running an intercooler, but i didn't see the hat for it on the picture you had on page 1.

This is probably a worthless post, as I am appearently addressing the IDI God.

 

I have mixed feelings about ceramic coated pistons.
I also have mixed reports about the benefits and drawbacks.
I did consider using them, but opted not to.
Several reports of the coating flaking off which could cause either valve or turbo problems in the right circumstances.
My luck says turbo problems since it is more expensive.

I would like to have an aftercooler, but I have a 1/2" steel plate from frame rail to frame rail starting at the top of my bumper down to about 10 inches below the bumper that is part of my snow plow bracket. Since it sits right where the aftercooler needs to set, I have not figured out where to locate it.

I don't know about IDI god, I just have different ideas on how to get from point A to point B.

I did wrap everything I could with header wrap and then soaked it with ceramic paint to keep the heat in the exhaust pipe till way past the turbo. Seems to have added a couple pounds of boost to the lower RPM boost levels. I will not know for sure till I get some more miles on the engine so I can stand on the throttle some.

For only easing it around right now, I am pleased with the results.

 

Sounds and looks awesome!