After many miles of fairly reliable performance, my trusty Durango's Hemi let go this morning.

Now I need to decide if I want to tackle swapping the engine or just throwing in the towel on it. I've done swaps before so technical knowledge isn't the problem. How hard is it to get the engine out of the 2nd gen rigs?

 

Scanned for codes expecting to get a ton and only got 2 - cylinder 8 misfire and injector 8 open circuit. So it looks like a bad injector and maybe a coil pack.

 

Update?

 

I've narrowed it down to a PCM failure on the #8 injector circuit. I've got to pull the PCM out and send it off for repair this weekend.

 

PCM failure was the culprit. I got it back together enough to fire it up. It kicks right off and purrs like a kitten, but OMG does it smoke...



I'm betting the fuel bath #8 got did in the rings and the contaminated oil was more than the rest of the engine could take...

Now it's time to make some decisions...

 

Overdue update...

Decided to take the chance and replaced the right side cylinder head and all the little things that go along with it. The crappy weather really slowed things down so I just got the engine back together yesterday afternoon. I should be able to fire things up to see just what I've got by next weekend.

 

Final Update - Everything is back together and seems to back to normal. Now it's just a matter of watching the oil consumption for any residual issues.

 

Awesome!

 

So far everything is looking pretty good. I'll just have to keep an eye on it for a while.

 

Ok maybe someone can explain why I'm now getting over 18 mpg (mixed driving) on an engine that was darn close to going to the scrap yard. This is hand calculated 3 times because that just can't be right. Sheesh...