New engine for my F-600 Dump Truck

[Wayne County Hose]

Eddie, don't worry about the bolts. They do not go into oil passages. Don't use teflon on them. I'm not sure, but if anything they go into water passages at the front and/or back of the head. Use a sealant on them if they do, if not, use nothing. You may want to check, but I don't remember my engine using a turkey tray and other gaskets, I think it was either/or. Many engine kits give the standard gaskets and you get the turkey tray if you would rather use that for an intake gasket. I would bring the intake, and all the gaskets to your engine guy. it is much easier to look at something in your hands than thru a computer.

 

[Eagleview]

The problem with the steel shim gaskets with the pressed sealing ring in them is that if the bolts are even a little loose the gaskets will leak (were the bolts tight?). As the sealing ring will not re expand , a composite gasket will to around 5 thou . I think with the torque grind the cam would have , around 200 degrees @ 50thou lift you should have had 21 inches of vacuum or more unless the ignition timing is out a little . You may well have had all cylinders leaking a little at the manifold and sucking in oil and not be evident on the vacuum gauge . You can rule out a cracked manifold as the splash tray would prevent oil being flung at the base of the manifold . As Wayne County Hose said , i'm also pretty sure the splash tray is optional , from memory Fel-Pro do a Teflon blue composite gasket which is the correct thickness to take the place of the triple laminate you have . In regads to Silicone , have you seen what Petrol does to it ? After you get it going , and the smoke does not clear after say 30 minutes i would still run some clean petrol through it . To ease your mind , from the tests you performed it should be OK :-compression quite good , vacuum quite good , still has power , no oil in water , no water in oil , no knocking , not miss firing has not had a problem until now so ring gaps were stagered etc .

P.S. The reason i mentioned to block off the exhaust crossover was because in my mind , your truck would be working in a pit with little breeze , always in a low gear and traveling slow and frequently turned off . The results of all that create a very hot under bonnet temp as little air is drawn through the engine bay and as heat rises , the carburettor acts as a kettle and boils the fuel . Perculated fuel causes vapour lock and hard starting and wasted fuel via evaporation and the last thing you need is more heat . If you have experienced this it may be worth while , check to see if Fel-Pro have a gasket with this port blocked off , it usually has a brass plate with a small hole in it .

 

[EddieWalker]

Eddie;

With the low hours on the motor I was thinking that maybe you have a air filter/housing problem and "sanded" the motor.

The guy who machined the block for me thinks I've been sucking dust into the engine and ruined the oil rings. There is some evidence of dust on the carburator inside of the air filter, so that has me concerned.

Is it possible to ruin the oil rings, still have good compression and no blowby? If I'm having blowby, how noticabe will it be? My Cummins 8.3 diesel engine had allot of blowby. Oil was actually coming out of the dipstick holder when I pulled the dipstick!!!! There isn't any noticable blowby and with good compression, I have my doubts it's the rings.

Another issue for concern about the rings is that while running the truck, it started to run really rough. I kept working it, but new something was wrong. Later on, I found out that I was missing a plug off of the intake manifold and had a massive vacume leak. I was running the engine in dusty conditions with a huge vacume leak. My guess is that allot of dust got into the engine at this time.

I'm trying to decide if I should put the manifold back on, or pull the heads and oil pan off to check the rings? I think this is a wild goose chase, but I'm not comfortable with what I've found on the intake gasket. If I had found a clear leak, that would be different, but it it's there, it's very small.

From the time I replaced the spark plugs to this time around, I have around 12 hours on the engine. The first 10 hours were good, but the last two were bad, with allot of smoke and then the vacume leak caused it to run really rough.

Can dust get into the cylinders and ruin the rings, especially the oil ring, and still have good compression and no blow by?

Thank you,
Eddie

 

[Eagleview]

Not in that amount of time....Were the manifold bolts tight ? You said you may have used the wrong bolts , you should have a look at the ends of those bolts to make sure they were not bottomed out and giving the impression they were tight . It's a 2 hour job to put it back together from were you are now and $20 worth of gaskets . Why go any further if you don't need to ? My thoughts are that the exhaust was stuck in the dirt as is clearly seen in the photo which turned the engine into a compressor with the gases trying to vent out of the valve cover gaskets and oil breather . The backpressure and a cough would have blown off the vacuum caps . It probably made the intake gaskets leak as well causing oil to be sucked in creating all the smoke . You cannot tell if steel gaskets are leaking other than tell tale oil tracks past them . If you had dusted the engine it would be evident with compression readings being low as well as vacuum readings being low .

 

[Wayne County Hose]

The oil rings are very low tension. If dirt is going to affect rings, it will be the compression rings. I have run engines for years with no air filter with no ill cylinder wall/ring effects. Now some here may crucify me for this, but I'm just trying to make the point that if my engines are fine, then Eddie's with that little amount of time is fine. If you had blowby on that engine, I would think your compression readings would be at 100 or lower.

 

[RobJ]

We used to block the crossover with a thin piece of metal, I think the chevys had a gasket set that would do this. Its just there to heat up the carb to get the engine warm.

if you "dust" the engine, the compression rings will go first. If the oil is left dirty the oil rings will go. You can wack an engine sooner than you think, since the oil was clean...probably not the case.

Looks like your gaskets just came apart, they are not, as I recall normally in 3 pieces. Different engine makers used different types. As a kid I didn''t rebuild that many Fords.

But sounds like you are sucking oil through the intake somewhere...or through the engine. As mentioned a while back, pull the pvc and run for a while. Other than that, hmmmm. Its tough when the engine runs fine...just smokes.

Rob

 

[john_bud]

Eddie,

The middle port with the oil is the exhaust cross over it is used to both heat the manifold and for the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation). The old EGR plates under the carb were cast aluminum and often failed. That may or may not be the problem. Having oil there could just be a red herring. You may have simply a leaking intake manifold gasket set.

It's especially common if the machine shop is run by someone that not very ambitious or doesn't understand ford engines. When you mill the head, it sits lower. The "V" gets wider. To compensate, you have to mill the bottom of the intake manifold. Usually, not a problem with a 0.005" clean up. But, it may have had the heads milled and the block deck milled in the past too. If the bottom of the intake is not milled to match, the port sealing will be marginal as the gap will have been enlarged.

I would guess this is your issue. Sometimes you can eliminate the end cork gaskets and just use RTV and the manifold will settle down more to compensate.

Just remember that even after you fix it, it will continue to smoke until the muffler and pipes are burnt clean. That can take a couple tanks.

 

[kmdigital]

Eddie, as Iron Horse says, check that muffler. You say it keeps coming off for some unknown reason. Is it because it's partially restricted, and the back pressure is too high? If nothing else, put the intake back together and run it without a muffler to see if that helps, if you can stand the noise.

Obviously, if you can see straight through the muffler, that isn't it, but my guess is that it isn't a straight through muffler, and it could have some sort of internal blockage.

 

[RavensRoost]

Eddie, I remember reading and looking at pics of your pond, dump truck, and dozer threads and thought for sure you would have this whupped by now. Must be busy season for you. Update?

RavensRoost

 

[EddieWalker]

Sorry for not updating this. I took off the heads and brought them to the machine shop. They looked at them and said there's no way that they did those heads. I told them that they had done them and showed them the receipt where they had replaced four valves. Then they found their stamps that they put on the heads and the owner took over. He said he'd take care of them.

The valve stems were so worn out that the valves actually wobbled.

He said that he spent allot of time making sure they were right this time and that he used the very best valve stem seals that there are. I don't have any receipts for this, so I can't say what it is that he did, but I keep asking around and he still comes up as the best and only place to get any machine work done. Case, New Holland, Kubota and Napa all said the same thing.

They are here and I have the day off tomorrow. If it dosen't rain, I'll be wrenching.

Eddie