Passenger side Head Shots.
Plenum gasket:

Cyl 8 That yellow carbon is hard as a stone.

Cyl 6

Cyl's 4 & 2 Ignor the red thing, it was put in to catch shavings while trying to extract the plug threads.

Good news the cylinder walls look good. But they been getting 1.5 qt of oil with each tank of gas for probably 100K miles lol.

 

Jesus, that's some serious neglect. I'll bet those plugs are the originals.

You did right by dumping those heads.

 

let me know about those heads you ordered, i want to get those too

 

The 5.9 is back together.

I got the heads from Cylinder Heads International they are also HeadsOnly on eBay.

The new ones were a little lighter then the old ones (3lbs or so ea) The angled valve jobs looked clean. Overall they looked like the place knows what they are doing and were pre-painted in grey.

The engine is a different beast now. Before the head change 900 rpm idle that was fairly smooth, now it feels like I put a performance cam in, the engine now chugs with a idle speed of 600-650rpm. A touch of gas and it pep's right up and growls with a "I CAN BREATH HA HA HA HA". It definetly revs higher then before, it would ping out at just under 3k before, it can shoot right up to redline now.

Might take a look at the timing this weekend. 600 rpm is a bit low but it isn't so low that it stalls "yet".

Next month I think I'll order some shorty headers.

 

Mine idles at 650 in neutral or park, and about 600 in gear. AFAIK that's normal. 900 is high.

 

Glad your truck runs great now.

 

600~650 is a good idle for a stock engine that doesn't have vac leaks. If everything was working properly, a higher idle will "feel" like there's a little more power as your closer to the TC take off point when you rev the engine. I noticed it immediately when I had hemifever up my idle to compensate for an alt charging issue with my underdrive pulley. The adverse effect of high idle is MPG loss in town driving and the truck doesn't "ride" as smooth at idle. I actually had hemi up a tune to 820 or so RPMs, but I don't like the vibration.

Enjoy your new in-town MPGs.

 

Murphy has decided he likes my couch.

Started and ran fine and drove it to work, Got off work get into truck and won't crank. Since the starter wouldn't even click I went straight to the relay box. Something has gone amiss.

Played with the relay box, relay clicks but power wasn't making it to the kick on lead. Traced the lead and found the plug, jumped the wires to start the truck and got home. Noticed A/C and Defrost aren't working now either. Once home shut it down, tried again and it fired up.

Got up today and again will not crank. Jumped the leads to start, still no AC. Tested relays all are good.

Smacked the box around a little sprayed contact cleaner in all of the relay butts and now it will crank/fire up but A/C is still not working. Through a meter on the clutch leads to be sure, no power.

Until I can crack open the relay box and find/fix the wiring faults I can not trust it. 25 days and $900 since the chaos began it is still about as useful as a Tonka.

Update: Cracked the relay box open, all connections good, then while reinstalling the battery I saw the problem, a ground from the harness that mounts to the body above the drivers headlight was open on the low side. 1 strand of copper was all that left the rest were broken. Did a patch job and now it's cranking fine. Will solder it when the weather cools a little.