No real idea why they caution against tightening valves with a piston at TDC. Once would think that at least one of the valves, if not both, would be closed.....

Good to hear you got it to turn. Rust probably was the issue there.

Looking forward to hearing your results.

 

I've seen water in oil, but never oil in water like the photo you posted. You said it ran rough or not at all, but with that much coolant in the cylinders it would smoke like an old school truck mount mosquito fogger. If you did not fully drain your block, that coolant you showed in the cylinders was from pulling the heads, draining the radiator is not enough with that oddball thermostat. Not smoking means looking for your leak somewhere besides or in addition to a head gasket. These are typical head cracks, very common, open to the coolant jacket. Hard to see until the head is very clean. Take a piece of bar stock, 1/8 x 3 or so, drill it, bolt it to the head, make valve stem to add a bit of air over the jacket, pressure test them yourself. Warped heads, not that I've heard, unlike the thin deck 5.2/5.9 Magnum blocks.



Here is another place to look, the corner of the intake manifold at the front. One of the V-10s I tore down was corroded enough here to look like it could start leaking coolant into the crankcase at anytime. This one not so bad, but you can see how little meat there is to form a seal. Besides that, every one I have had apart, the long bolts through the intake right here are corroded, meaning some form of humidity, along with differential or galvanic corrosion, whatever they call it, right? The coolant passages at the top of the timing cover mate to the block, but inside the engine. More meat here for a seal, but if the timing cover/chain changers messed up, there might be a good leak there.



I have some junk cracked heads. The machinist tells me that a ceramic sealer in the water jacket would fix it, but I am wondering about expansion of the crack when heated. I bought this Harris flame spray welding set. Going to practice welding cast cracks in heads, then see about a ceramic liner.

 

The caution is to allow the lifters to bleed down enough to avoid bending a pushrod due to overly tight valve clearance. If you prefill your lifters by soaking them, lifters on the base of the cam lobe, that is sitting at TDC, might have no clearance. Tighten the rockers down anywhere you please, just do so slowly/carefully. I then turn the engine over slowly by hand a couple of times to watch the valvetrain for binding and give the lifters that need it a chance to bleed down. I would also caution you to very carefully check that the fulcrum is fully seated on the pedestal. That little separator plate can wiggle loose and end up under the fulcrum. I'd be willing to bet that some of the reports of broken bolts/pedestals were due to folks with a false torque that later worked it's way loose. The oil needs to bleed up the pushrod or back past the check valve. ARP makes some sweet studs for 5.2/5.9L Magnums that work for the V-10. Just need four extra of everything.
Don't believe the parrots that tell you the world will end if you can't keep your pushrods in "as removed" order. Look at the tips under a magnifying glass, they never have. Nice and smooth right? The pushrod tips are oiled under pressure directly from the galley that rises straight up from the oil pump at the front of the engine. Some of the best oiled parts in the engine. I keep mine in order, because that is the way I was taught in the early 80's when I started. But I don't lose a second of mind time when they (almost inevitably) get mixed up a bit. I would definitely caution you to check carefully the fulcrums, however. The get splash oiled from the pushrod and seem to gall/sieze in engines that suffer from poor maintenance, another source of broken rocker bolts I am sure. I blame the accountants at Mopar for some of this. The pathetic little thimble of an oil filter they spec'd for this engine likely spends most of it's time in bypass, filtering nothing. Get a 51515 Wix for more filter area/oil capacity.

I built these heads with stainless, backcut Manley valves for a Viper. The retainer sits about .100 higher than the Magnum truck valve, but clears the rocker just fine. The machinist cut the spring seats slightly and subbed the LS1 springs and lightweight retainers you see here. He had a shop out of SoCal to regrind one of my spare camshaft cores and the resultant lift bound the stock springs even with the higher installed spring height. Nice deep three angle valve job, and I gasket matched and bowl ported the heads. Cut the short turn radius a bit and slimmed the pushrod boss down.

 

Everything you said makes sense!

So, this truck has been run n like crap for months! Been throw n parts at it until it died in my buddies driveway. I'm in Alaska and we are having an actual winter this year! I know my radiator has had a leak for years. Course ground black pepper, believe it or not, has been quite effective. Until now. So the truck died, wouldn't start. So when the weather started get n colder. I added some antifreeze to the radiator and plugged the block heater in. The block heater instantly started making a sizzling sound? Figured it was just warm n up cold moisture? Ordered a camshaft position sensor that took ten days to get it here. I changed it out and the truck fired right up! It ran for maybe 30 seconds before it fell on its face. Backfired a few times and died! So I checked the oil and that's the picture I posted of what it looked like when I drained it. I'm a fisherman. So I've had flooded cylinders before. I screwed up by not pulling the plugs and crank n the coolant our of the cylinders. Our mechanic at the lodge I used to work at. Would turn it over. Get the water out and then spray WD40 in the spark plug holes and it would fire back up.

But? The thing I keep thinking about, is the fact that the truck never got up to temp and the coolant was present? It's like when I poured it into the radiator. It flowed right into the crankcase. A buddy of mine told me he had so much slack in his timing chain it wore a hole and let the coolant in! I didn't pull the timing chain cover. It's just a roll on the dice right now. I read these engines are known for cracking around the head bolts? Pretty sure that's what I'm dealing with! Some orifice is let this coolant in? The manifold looked quite well? The only thing I noticed about the manifold was the rear manifold gasket was lifted up. The head gaskets all looked good! Possible breach between the cylinders? Not much clearance there?

My hands are tied this winter! It was a crappy year for fish n and there ain't no work in this dump of a town! So lack of funds and lack of parts available here on this island. Making it tough to get a proper diagnosis or deal with it correctly? If this doesn't work. Truck might be head n for the crusher? We shall see........ Thank you for input! I really appreciate it!

 

Heads weigh 73lb or so bare, about 83lb fully dressed, I have weighed them.
I cheat. I completely strip the front of the engine, pull the radiator, that's the way I was taught. I can easily sling these heads myself, (well maybe not "easily"), but I get it done no problem. I can stand on the steering brace/sway bar and reach the back. I can also sit on the bumper for the work in the engine box, much easier.


The blue tape keeps small parts out of the engine. Years ago I dropped a small bolt down an intake. A magnet taped to a piece of copper wire fished it out, but not until I (twice) s**t myself worrying about it. Your life would suck if you did that not realizing it.


When I talked before about wiring, your problem was the truck not running, and this is one of the types of things I was talking about. This is an injector connector. I had a problem with one on cylinder six, but the wires could actually touch, intermittent operation. A ground anywhere else might lead to an injector that sticks open. As you can see in the prior picture, I've been replacing the wire connectors.


I use a piece of vacuum hose split lengthwise to hold the intake bolts out of the way for installation. If you go to HughesEngines website, you will see this throttle body. I had them rework it for me, first one they ever did, but very similar to the small Magnum ones the already produced.

 

We use NAPA GOLD filters on all out boats. Wix makes them! They are always bigger and hold more oil! So if those filters are good enough for a million dollar boat. They should be good enough for a dodge V10! I have always used Lucas oil stabilizer in every oil change. This truck never leaked a drop. Never Smoked at all. Even with 200k on it. Foolishly didn't change the radiator! Now I'm paying the price!

 

Davis Unified makes these coils for the Viper, but they work just fine in an OBDI '95 if you read the wiring pinout and change the harness. The LiveWIres for the Viper don't really work, even thought the sales gal told me they would. That is a four hole injector "upgrade" for a '96-'98 style injector. I installed a newer manifold, bypassed the EGR, to use some of these injectors I had rebuilt by Dr.Injector out of Sacramento a few years back. This particular one is from a couple of sets I bought rebuilt off of Ebay for spares. I have a pretty good stash of some of the stuff unique to these engines, especially gaskets/sensors/wiring. Some of the wholesalers/retailers are getting out of the V-10 business.

Good luck with your project, Mike.

 

Definitely have rolls of blue tape on site! Taped up the intake as soon as I pulled the upper plenum manifold. Held many different length bolts blue taped to the parts they came off.

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

 

I can see electrolysis on the thermostat housing mounting surface of the manifold? Didn't know if it was the imperfections of the mold out of the foundry or if it really is electrolysis? This thermostat housing has always seeped a bit of water! Took it to a mechanic and he overtightened it and cracked the housing! Still charged me $200 bucks!


I absolutely kept the pushrods and rocker arms in the same order!

 

Here's the manifold intake ports. Plus this other photo. You can see how clean the driverside valve train is? Plus the block is rusty under the cylinder head on the driver's side. So our problem started here and compounded from there.