Cummins isx15 high pressure fuel pump

[imalumberjack]

I bought a truck that this happened to, not good. Mr. Hagg on here helped by giving me his cleaning procedure and if your near Georgia that's where I would take it.
For starters I would do two things .. remove fuel pump and look at how much of the plungers is missing and damage to pump ( its near $4000.00) next drop the pan and pull no.4 main and look for damage to crankshaft journal. If crank journal is acceptable then the process is something like this: you need to remove oil pump (check for damage) oil cooler, jake head, rocker arms and flush engine oil system (I used diesel then flushed with 5 weight oil at end.

After doing this myself these are my thoughts: when I started I am looking at what caused the damage ..two pieces of ceramic material about 3/8's by 1/4 inch? How much damage can something that small cause? significant! what it does is shatters down to smaller pieces while in pump, somewhat like a rock in a crusher, and it disperses these pieces a little at a time to travel through engine. the ceramic is very hard (harder than bearing material) it seems to get trapped in a bearing then continue grinding. When I flushed mine I used layers of material to filter flushing medium so I could see what was in there ..what I came up with was about a teaspoon of metal and three teaspoons of sand? that's what it looked like to me? I rolled in new mains and rods and truck is running today ...this has been a project and I have not run the truck hauling yet but its getting close. Sooooo ......the problem is this ....I am sure the engine I put together will run for awhile ..maybe a few hundred thou? maybe not? and I am ok with that, it breaks I fix it? .........what kind of reliability do you want? Buying another engine to put in? what If you get the engine that had the same thing happen to it? I'm not sure there is a good answer, you can spend a small fortune to completely rebuild? an in frame may not clear the damage?
And lastly from what I seen in damage to mine it seemed to be contained in the area of first travel .... fuel pump, gears out of pump, oil pump, main bearings.