/ Putting a Cummins 24V with VE mechanical injection pump into my 2008 F250 with failed Navistar engine
#1
westcliffe01
Veteran Member
This project has been on the slow train for some time because of the difficulty I have experienced in getting the donor 5.9 engine worked on in a machine shop, but finally after more than a year it seems things might finally start moving....
This story starts in late 2010 when I bought a 2008 F250 down in Texas. Pretty close to where Eddie Walker lives. Got it with 70k miles and no snow or salt exposure. Over the following several years I babied the thing because I know the reputation of the Navistar 6.4 engine, but then 2 years ago while doing a 3 mile trip to a storage place the oil seals on one of the turbos failed and dumped about half the engine oil into the exhaust system. The odo was on 117k miles. I laid down a smoke screen that any battleship would have been proud of. Got it towed to an independent diesel shop because I already knew how backed up the Ford dealerships in the area were, seems a perpetual situation.
They took a look at it and said that if they pulled the cab and replaced only what was absolutely needed for the turbo job, the bill was going to be about $6500 and there were several other known weaknesses on the engine that could fail at any time, thus I would not be getting a reliable engine unless those were addressed. If I started adding on the extra issues the bill was quickly going to balloon to $17k. I said NO. I asked them what they would give me for the engine as a low mileage core, they gave me $3500 and I said "pull the engine". I took the $3500 budget and bought a 2001 model Cummins 24V VP44 engine from Colorado. I figured the engine must have about 200k miles on it so I would freshen it up before putting it into my truck and get rid of the VP-44. I did not have the cummins injection pump controller for the VP-44 and those are really expensive (~$2000) and the VP-44 often fails because the vehicle has a poor lift pump that with time flows too little fuel causing the pump and its embedded electronics to overheat and fail.
Picture of the donor engine. Hard to believe how much wiring is on such an early (20 year old) diesel engine...
I pulled apart the engine and took it to the first machine shop where there were something like 26 engines in front of mine for processing. 3 months later I went and picked it up, untouched and took it to a second machine shop about a 90 minute drive away, they had said that they should be able to work through it in the next 2 months. As of today that's about 9 months ago, its now mid winter but they finally have cleared their backlog and we worked through the machining quote today. Basically $3500 for all the machine shop work, which includes re-surfacing the head, new valve guides, re-cutting the valve seats, pressure test, boring the block 0.020" over, re-decking the block, new cam bearings, re-facing the valve lifters, grinding main and big end crank journals. So that absorbs all of what I got for the Navistar core engine, so thus far I am out of pocket about $1500 for the donor engine and another $1000 for a Mahle rebuild kit that has pistons, rings and bearings together with a gasket set.
I bought a Gen 1 ram timing cover that is compatible with the Bosch VE mechanical injection pump. I did a lot of work on sources for VE pumps in the US but people want so much money for 300k worn out core VE pumps that I finally gave up and directly imported a brand new VE pump from china where they are still in production.
My search for VE pumps also lead me to a source for NOS Onan generator VE pumps for the Cummins 6BT engine but configured for constant speed 1800 rpm operation and with a smaller plunger (9.5 vs 12mm diameter) since the engine at 1600rpm needs less fuel than a truck at 3600rpm... I ended up investing some of my retirement money into some inventory of the Onan injection pumps and I then bought all the parts needed to convert these nice german made injection pumps over from the generator version to the truck version (many new internal parts including new hydraulic head, cam, feed pump, governor etc)... So sometime this engine project is over I will be making a significant number of VE pumps to sell to those who want a "1 wire engine"....
Of course the 24V engine was never set up for the VE injection pump, so I will be using thread adapter bushings to connect the 12mm delivery valves on the injector pump to match the 14mm nuts on the end of the injection lines for the VP-44. I might need to make a short extension if the VE pump turns out to be shorter. Finally I will be getting a new set of injector nozzles which are set up for a 245 bar cracking pressure vs the 300 bar used with the VP 44 or else the injection timing will be off and it might also be a strain on the pump itself. The peak injection pressure is higher than 245 bar regardless but I want my engine to last another 300k miles and I found a shop that will charge me an extra $50 on the set of nozzes to set them up right. Compare to the common rail engine where 1 injector is $1200 !!! Not saying I would not like to have the common rail engine but its just too expensive and too much complexity in integrating the engine with all its electronic systems. By going VE I should have an engine that starts very easily and makes a modest amount of power, will last me for years and I can fix anything on it myself. The narrow engine also means that I should be able to work on anything on the engine without the need to pull the cab.
I got the transmission adapter for my 5R110, the new flex plate to interface to the Ford Torque converter to Cummins crankshaft, engine mounts and other various bits from Destroked.com I elected to buy a new torque converter with a lower stall speed of 1200rpm which would better suit the low revving characteristics of the Cummins engine. There is a procedure to make the Ford transmission controller re-learn the shift points so there should be no further tweaking needed to run the transmission. I will just have to feed the ford ECU a tach signal so it knows the engine speed.
The adapter plate was $795, the flex plate $625, motor mounts $345, Ford starter $200. The machining of the parts is top notch, many thousands of trucks have already been converted using these parts, given that every Navistar 6.4 engine will be out of service one way or another by 120k miles.
So now I wait for the engine to return from the engine shop. The engine is too heavy for most engine stands so I have elected to mount the block vertically, like is commonly done for aircraft engines. Im making a platform consisting of 2 layers of 3/4" plywood glued together with several casters underneath and will then use tubular spacers to bolt the block vertically to this dolly. This will then allow access to all parts of the engine as the build progresses. I will update this posting as we reach that stage of the build.
This story starts in late 2010 when I bought a 2008 F250 down in Texas. Pretty close to where Eddie Walker lives. Got it with 70k miles and no snow or salt exposure. Over the following several years I babied the thing because I know the reputation of the Navistar 6.4 engine, but then 2 years ago while doing a 3 mile trip to a storage place the oil seals on one of the turbos failed and dumped about half the engine oil into the exhaust system. The odo was on 117k miles. I laid down a smoke screen that any battleship would have been proud of. Got it towed to an independent diesel shop because I already knew how backed up the Ford dealerships in the area were, seems a perpetual situation.
They took a look at it and said that if they pulled the cab and replaced only what was absolutely needed for the turbo job, the bill was going to be about $6500 and there were several other known weaknesses on the engine that could fail at any time, thus I would not be getting a reliable engine unless those were addressed. If I started adding on the extra issues the bill was quickly going to balloon to $17k. I said NO. I asked them what they would give me for the engine as a low mileage core, they gave me $3500 and I said "pull the engine". I took the $3500 budget and bought a 2001 model Cummins 24V VP44 engine from Colorado. I figured the engine must have about 200k miles on it so I would freshen it up before putting it into my truck and get rid of the VP-44. I did not have the cummins injection pump controller for the VP-44 and those are really expensive (~$2000) and the VP-44 often fails because the vehicle has a poor lift pump that with time flows too little fuel causing the pump and its embedded electronics to overheat and fail.
Picture of the donor engine. Hard to believe how much wiring is on such an early (20 year old) diesel engine...
I pulled apart the engine and took it to the first machine shop where there were something like 26 engines in front of mine for processing. 3 months later I went and picked it up, untouched and took it to a second machine shop about a 90 minute drive away, they had said that they should be able to work through it in the next 2 months. As of today that's about 9 months ago, its now mid winter but they finally have cleared their backlog and we worked through the machining quote today. Basically $3500 for all the machine shop work, which includes re-surfacing the head, new valve guides, re-cutting the valve seats, pressure test, boring the block 0.020" over, re-decking the block, new cam bearings, re-facing the valve lifters, grinding main and big end crank journals. So that absorbs all of what I got for the Navistar core engine, so thus far I am out of pocket about $1500 for the donor engine and another $1000 for a Mahle rebuild kit that has pistons, rings and bearings together with a gasket set.
I bought a Gen 1 ram timing cover that is compatible with the Bosch VE mechanical injection pump. I did a lot of work on sources for VE pumps in the US but people want so much money for 300k worn out core VE pumps that I finally gave up and directly imported a brand new VE pump from china where they are still in production.
My search for VE pumps also lead me to a source for NOS Onan generator VE pumps for the Cummins 6BT engine but configured for constant speed 1800 rpm operation and with a smaller plunger (9.5 vs 12mm diameter) since the engine at 1600rpm needs less fuel than a truck at 3600rpm... I ended up investing some of my retirement money into some inventory of the Onan injection pumps and I then bought all the parts needed to convert these nice german made injection pumps over from the generator version to the truck version (many new internal parts including new hydraulic head, cam, feed pump, governor etc)... So sometime this engine project is over I will be making a significant number of VE pumps to sell to those who want a "1 wire engine"....
Of course the 24V engine was never set up for the VE injection pump, so I will be using thread adapter bushings to connect the 12mm delivery valves on the injector pump to match the 14mm nuts on the end of the injection lines for the VP-44. I might need to make a short extension if the VE pump turns out to be shorter. Finally I will be getting a new set of injector nozzles which are set up for a 245 bar cracking pressure vs the 300 bar used with the VP 44 or else the injection timing will be off and it might also be a strain on the pump itself. The peak injection pressure is higher than 245 bar regardless but I want my engine to last another 300k miles and I found a shop that will charge me an extra $50 on the set of nozzes to set them up right. Compare to the common rail engine where 1 injector is $1200 !!! Not saying I would not like to have the common rail engine but its just too expensive and too much complexity in integrating the engine with all its electronic systems. By going VE I should have an engine that starts very easily and makes a modest amount of power, will last me for years and I can fix anything on it myself. The narrow engine also means that I should be able to work on anything on the engine without the need to pull the cab.
I got the transmission adapter for my 5R110, the new flex plate to interface to the Ford Torque converter to Cummins crankshaft, engine mounts and other various bits from Destroked.com I elected to buy a new torque converter with a lower stall speed of 1200rpm which would better suit the low revving characteristics of the Cummins engine. There is a procedure to make the Ford transmission controller re-learn the shift points so there should be no further tweaking needed to run the transmission. I will just have to feed the ford ECU a tach signal so it knows the engine speed.
The adapter plate was $795, the flex plate $625, motor mounts $345, Ford starter $200. The machining of the parts is top notch, many thousands of trucks have already been converted using these parts, given that every Navistar 6.4 engine will be out of service one way or another by 120k miles.
So now I wait for the engine to return from the engine shop. The engine is too heavy for most engine stands so I have elected to mount the block vertically, like is commonly done for aircraft engines. Im making a platform consisting of 2 layers of 3/4" plywood glued together with several casters underneath and will then use tubular spacers to bolt the block vertically to this dolly. This will then allow access to all parts of the engine as the build progresses. I will update this posting as we reach that stage of the build.
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