Moving Home

[Rawze]

(04-07-2021 )RocketScott Wrote:  The place I talked to sounded ok on the phone. He actually knew about the older big cam engines and wouldn't commit to working on it till he knew he could get the parts

I'm open to suggestions for other builders. Talked to a place in Cali that just gave me a price of $10k without even talking specifics about what engine I had. Another place in Colorado that was going to be around $14k

Is it ok to name names to see if anyone has heard of them?

I am sure if someone were to ask 100 places if they "do a good job".. they will all swear to it... They will all swear they are the only game in town "who can do it right" and "who know what they are doing". - Sounds to me like most ppl simply get caught up in that fantasy land instead of doing some real investigating for their trust and money. - All I am trying to do is open someone's eyes to this fact, but most don't seem to be listening.

AN ISX IS NOT A BIG-CAM... NOT NO WAY, NO HOW, EVEN REMOTELY CLOSE TO ONE AND MOST MECHANICS THAT CAN BUILD OLDER ENGINES HAVE THAT OLDER ENGINE MENTALITY AND WILL SIMPLY DO A COMPLETE S$IT JOB OF AN ISX EVERY TIME!.

-- HOW ABOUT ASKING THEM WHAT LINER HEIGHT THAT THEY NORMALLY SET THE LINERS TO DURING THE INFRAME?. IF THEY SAY FACTORY HEIGHT OR 0.010" OR SOME OTHER BULLS$IT (or even far worse, they don't counter-bore unless necessary), THEN YOU KNOW WITHOUT ANY DOUBT THEY ARE COMPLETELY GODDAMN CLUELESS ON HOW TO PROPERLY EXTEND THE LONGEVITY OF AN ISX!

-- HOW ABOUTASKING THE MECHANIC IF THEY LET THE HEAD SIT OVER NIGHT SO THAT THE HEAD-GASKET CAN CRUSH?.. THEN RE-TORQUING THE HEAD THE NEXT DAY BEFORE DOING THE FINAL 90-DEGREES ON THE BOLTS? --- HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO BET THAT 90% OF THOSE SUPER-DUPER SHOPS MENTIONED HAVE NO DONNA$MN CLUE ABOUT THIS EITHER... THIS IS WHAT YOU GET. . All your likely to get is an answer of "that ain't necessary" or some other stupid excuse bulls$it.


-- Those are just 2 things right there that I would run like hell away from any shop who claims they know how to build ISX engines. MOST ALL SHOPS ANY MORE ARE COMPLETELY CLUELESS on how to build an old engine up so that it will last another full million miles its second time around. - Sure, Most places that do inframes and out-of-frames can build the engine. But if no extra steps are taken to extend its longevity, IT WILL NOT LAST MORE THAN A COUPLE 3 YEARS OR SO AND FAIL AGAIN. This is because most any more have no clue how to do all the extra steps necessary.. they are not "in the manual" per-say so they could care less for anything beyond the minimum that a spec-sheet says. To me, THAT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!.. NOT ONE DAMN BIT!.. ESPECIALLY WHEN YOUR TALKING ABOUT DROPPING $20,000+ INTO AN ENGINE. - YOU NEED A RETURN ON THAT MILLION MILE INVESTMENT, NOT ANOTHER FAILURE 60% OR 70% sooner than expected!

BTW: Why are you pulling the engine out of it any ways?. A rebuild rarely warrants pulling the entire entire engine out... just curious.

AND since your pulling the entire engine out... why not just ship it to Mr. Hags? so that you can know it was done 110% right?. At least they will do all the things talked about on here... that is exactly what they specialize in. Yeah, there is a wait time on it, but that wait time is well warranted of your simply looking for someone to do it all for ya. NO, I am not trying to advertise for them... it is simply damnned near impossible to find a shop that i can recommend with confidence any more these days, willing to do all 100% everythign right and consistently without any compromise. They got enough business without me saying it to any one. If there were other shops that I could vouch for genuinely then I would mention them,... but unfortunately .. there is not.


Here is some related discussion on this topic. I suggest you educate yourself before having anybody touch your equipment. http://rawze.com/forums/showthread.php?t...3#pid48553

Your welcome to do what you want to with it ... I am just here to tell ya so that later on you can't say you weren't warned properly. I see the result of poor workmanship by the typical repair shops on here all the time. It has become genuinely difficult to find anyone that is willing to go the extra mile towards building an engine 100% properly any more, and that is sad.

[RocketScott]

I don't have an ISX, it's a 444xt. I'm sorry that you feel like I'm not listening. I'm in a very difficult position and trying to do the best I can with the limited resources and knowledge that I have

(04-07-2021 )tree98 Wrote:  Why don't you do it yourself?

Once it's out of the truck I'm going to bring it back to my shop and tear it down. I have a friend that worked for Cummins back in the 90s that's going to check it out. I don't have a machine shop or any special tools. If I can rebuild it myself I'm game to give it a go. I can't spend the next month getting it done though

I guess the alternative to that is have the whole truck towed to a different shop or 3 hours back to my place.

[Rawze]

(04-07-2021 )RocketScott Wrote:  I don't have an ISX, it's a 444xt....

My previous post was a warning meant for someone looking to get an ISX built the right way and how difficult it is getting to find anyone decent any more (because I missed that it was not an ISX). It being a different engine, same idea of being hard to find anyone trustworthy still applies, though the procedures that I mentioned about the ISX would obviously be different for a different model engine.

Just getting the word across that am person any more simply can't trust most places. Older mechanics seem to have too many bad habits, are air-gun happy, barely use a damn torque-wrench when putting things back together, and newer mechanics are seriously under-trained. This, even thought they all seem to talk a good game. That is what I am getting at is all.

Mr. 'wildpib' here on the forum says to me once these wise words (quoting roughly from memory here) ...

wildpib Wrote:"There are no more Kung-Foo masters"...

The reason why is that in ancient times when there were, ... the master would teach the student based on the kung-foo book of knowledge.

To prevent the student from turning on his master, the master would leave out one special kung-foo move to protect himself, tearing the page from the book and hiding it away forever.

Then eventually the student becomes the new master, and the cycle repeats.

After many generations of masters and students ... eventually there became no more book.

[RocketScott]

Picked up the engine and brought it home today. Probably start tearing into it on Sunday

[RocketScott]

[RocketScott]

Got some of the engine torn down

Found out that this isn't the original engine to the truck. The ESN on the block was hidden behind some stuff and I never noticed it. My original CPL was 1280, the ESN of this block shows the CPL as 838. NTC-444 vs an NTC-315 (88NT). I'm guessing the shop that did the 'inframe' didn't want to see this thing ever again because they slapped something together just to make it work

Hoping to get the rest of it torn down in the next few days and see the liners and crank. My buddy is getting back onto town on Thursday and can go through what this thing actually is and what we can do to either fix it or build another (better) one

Good times

[RocketScott]

Been awhile...

Got the block back from the machine shop this week. They replaced the cylinder repair rings, line bored the mains, and polished the crank (different crank, I found one used that just needed a polish)



Crank dropped back in just fine. End lash is .007, right tight to the lower end of spec. Flipped the block right side up and put the new cam in

I've been working on little stuff for the past few days. Waiting on parts to come for just about everything. Oil cooler is half rebuilt, cam followers don't even have enough parts to start rebuilding. Got the block heater today...

The injector timing jig showed up this week too. Bought it from an old timer in Dillon, SC that's closing up shop. I've had some really nice conversations with him over the past week (and his wife when she answers the phone)

Also bought a boring tool for rebuilding the oil pump, cool little tool

[RocketScott]

Well that kinda sucked...



Got done rebuilding the engine today. Put the wiring harness on and finished up a few small details. Tomorrow morning I'm going to beef up the cradle it's sitting in, strap it down to the trailer, then take it back to the truck

Hard to tell what was going on with the engine before. I replaced the crank with a used crank that just needed a polish, the cam is new, I rebuilt the cam followers. So with all those new parts I'm not sure how well I can compare the injection timing between old and new. All the old parts 'should' have been the same as what I put back in, in theory

The gaskets on the cam followers that I took off were much thicker than what the rebuild needed. Originally the stack was around .050 and what I ended up at was .024. If all the other parts are equal that means the engine was far too advanced. I also rebuilt the step timing controller and calibrated it. Adjusting it on the bench with air pressure isn't the same as on the truck with oil but I'm pretty sure it was way off too. It was staying in advanced mode for too long

All this is probably just an amusement to you ISX guys. I hope I'm not being a poser by painting the engine red. I hate dark colored engines almost as much as cummins poop beige. The 444xt color was originally called bluk or bluck. Black with a little bit of blue in it. I guess that was to hide the oil leaks

[tree98]

Looks good!!! You run into any problems getting parts?