plowrup,
Thanks for your interest and help.
I've also heard that the early 8.3's had problems with their pistons and that allot of them burned holes in the piston tops. That's what I was expecting when I pulled the head.
Two pistons have been replaces with new rod bolts, but the other four look original. The hour meter says 5,300 hours on it, but it's a 1989 model and the belley plate under the engine is totally packed in sand and I have aftermarket tracks.
The injector nozzles looked pretty bad, with the one from number 4 cylinder breaking off as it came out. I lost a few pices, but was still able to get the core price for it with the others. I bought new nozzles.
The head has been redone, but the original valves were fine and reused. New spirngs and stems. It's ready to pick up, but I'm waiting on everything to be done before I pay. They hope to have the bushing honed today, but it might not be until tomorrow.
In hindsight, I've wasted a week here running back and forth on these bushings. If a little play in the wrist pin and the connnecting rod bushing is normal, than this has been a total waste. For piece of mind, I'm glad I've done it.
The engine itself is spotless. I don't know diesels, so maybe this is normal, but there is no crud or buidlup of any kind. Every internal metal piece is shinny new looking!!
The rod bolts weren't expensive, and I ruined one taking out the piston in number six anyway, so after a few people mentioned it, I went ahead and bought all new rod bolts.
I'm reusing the head bolts and haven't ever heard you shouldn't, so they're keepers. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Everything seems simple enough to me now, except for the valve timeing. Finding TDC for each cylinder seems kind of tricky and I'm hoping the valves opening and closeing as I turn the crank will be fairly obvious.
The only time I've adjusted valves is on a VW in highschool, and it was always running at the time.
Hopefully tomorow will be the magic day and I can start putting it back together.
Eddie
