What's missing here?



My dad works for Freightliner. A couple months ago I struck up a conversation with his service dept. manager (and former Dodge mechanic) on replacing my plenum and timing chain. He told me he had done countless Dodge Ram plenum repairs in his time. He offered to let me use his shop and to help me replace both.

Over the weekend, I drove 2 hours to the shop with my Hughes kit and Cloyes double roller set in tow. I was there to help and to learn but he and another mechanic popped the hood and ripped the engine apart so fast I couldn't keep up. In about 30 minutes, the intake was off and the new timing chain and gears were on!

The bad news is that we found sludge... a LOT of sludge. It was everywhere: the intake, valley, under the valve covers, the oil pan was caked. He suspects that it was caused by either severe neglect or by possibly mixing oils. The good news is that he offered to rebuild the engine for me (no charge for labor). I took him up on his offer! An hour into the project, the engine was out of the truck and we were making plans for a rebuild.

The hard parts appear to be in good shape... including the heads. I only have to pay for the rebuild kit, oil pump, fluids, gaskets, filters and for the machine shop labor. Going to have the block cleaned up, honed and the crank polished.

Any other suggestions? I can't believe how much $$ I've sunk into this money pit over the past 14 months of ownership. Admittedly, I am somewhat excited about having a freshly rebuilt engine though. Should have the truck back in two weeks.

 

Oh, and my plenum was blown in 3 places. I'll have to get pics and post them in the plenum photos thread.

 

Go ahead and work them heads to flow better with all that money your saving on the rebuild.

 

You're the perfect candidate to put a blue strip on their engine block!

 

ROFL....But OP may not understand!


kbizzle - why did you decide to rebuild instead of just cleaning the sludge out? Were there other problems as well?

 

Hmmm... I like the idea of the blue stripe. Just worried that I'll burn through it after I polish and power buff it a few times.

 

Pitch the stock heads. Pick up a set of the clearwater/Odessa heads. The NEW castings, not the reman fellers.

 

As long as you're this deep, do like HeyYou said and also replace the oil pump and get a Fastman throttle body.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions. The engine will be torn down on Monday evening and hopefully all back together again by next Saturday.

Here are a couple sludge shots:

 

That is pretty nasty. Im surprised that the pushrods and lifters were doing their jobs.