1996 1500, 5.2 auto, 180,000 kms. Driving home from work tonight, the bolt holding the heater tube in place loosened off enough that the tube popped out. I don't know for how long, I looked down about 25 minutes into the drive home to see the temp needle pegged in the red. No alarms or anything. Not cool. I pulled over, saw what happened and called my wife to bring tools and coolant. No coolant, had to use straight water, put in 1 gallon. Fixed the tube and started to drive home. The temp stayed about 1-2 needle widths off the red mark. It'll sit till Saturday when I'm off work. The engine had good compression and oil pressure prior to this, with the original heads holding up. I'm thinking that they'll be cracked now, Saturday will tell. I have a 360 I was going to build for it with EQ heads, headers, cam and a bigger throttle body. Just the stock intake right now though. Can the 318 computer be reprogrammed to work with the 360 (since I'll have to program it anyways?) or do I have to use a 360 one? What year range will work? Best way to tell them apart?
Thanks!

 

I have heard myths and tales of these engines withstanding pretty impressive heat and for prolonged periods. That being said, its good youre checking it. In the future it would always be best to get in the habit of constantly watching gauges while you drive, and if you do see it overheat like this, it would've been best to have someone pick you up or bring you proper coolant, or if you had an affordable way to tow and check for damages. It would suck if you had a fine engine when you noticed, and then having things become damaged on the drive home after, always better safe than sorry. Fortunately you have a 360 to swap

As far as the swap goes, I have a 360 swapped into my 01 which came with a 318. I have it tuned/flashed with a tune from Hemifever, it runs pretty damn sweet, never had any problems with it (aside from ****ty heads causing exhaust gasket leak because its not properly flat where we had to drill an old manifold bolt out :P ) I'm not sure if year will affect it or not, but usually you can reuse the computer and just clue it in for the extra cubes. Essentially your computer has no real idea how large or small your engine is, it just will do what you tell it to, even if it would break the engine :P (Thats why you pay others to tune it, and dont start adjusting things on your own with some self tuner :P ) Someone, Probably HeyYou, would be able to tell you more for sure, or even Hemifever if you email him.

 

What is the production date of your truck? I've found that some early model 1996 trucks are OBD-1 with an OBD-2 connector inside the truck, which is the way my truck is. It also has the 46rh transmission instead of the 46re transmission.

 

I only had a couple miles to go, so I limped it home. Hopefully it'll be ok for now, I'd like to get an intake for it before I build the 360. Off hand I don't know the production date, but my OBD2 reader works on it. It's good to know that I can just program the computer it has instead of trying to find a 360 one! A Hemifever tune was in the future for it anyways.