Helping Nilao out with an inframe ...

[Rawze]

I have Nilao over here... He has had an ongoing coolant pressure issue for a long time with his ISX. He was going to go to Mr. Hag's shop and have the head/gasket replaced and stopped by here to visit on his way. Mr. Hag got injured by some burning hot coolant at his shop and closed it for the weekend. We all hope he gets better soon.

I told Nilao,.. with the delay, etc. what the heck,.. I will guide you if you want to pull it apart here, but I am not going to do the work for you. He grabbed some wrenches and the next thing I knew, he was taking his truck apart. -- I swear, he should be a truck mechanic, lol.

[Rawze]

Day one (friday)...

They pulled the hood, radiator, and front end apart to get to the engine/head. I think he is going to try to replace the crank shaft damper while he is at it. I don't blame him. He also pulled a lot of other stuff off so that we can get to the head.

[Rawze]

Day two (saturday)...

We got the oil pan off it and pressurtized tghe system. Coolant is leaking down from around the piston on cylinder number 5. There is no sign whatsoever of it leaking anywhere else, or it leaking from around the intside of the liner around the piston. good sign for where to look once it is apart. Nilao also mentioned using the dimes in the oil pump.

With 600k miles on the engine, he/we decided that if this is all that is wrong,.. head/gasket, then just replace the head, new gasket, and throw it back together this time around,.. and then he can go another 600k and do the whole engine next time around when it gets to 1.2mil.

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Day three (sunday)...

I tell you these guys work fast. I point my finger and next thing I know,.. something else is removed. I have been showing them to make zip-lock baggies/label and store all the bolts with proper names of the components, etc. so they do not get them mixed up. That way the do not get confused when it is time to re-assemble everything.

We got the head off it and it is not too badly worn. As we suspected, the head gasket is bad at cylinder number 5. Here is a pic of it...



It looks like the fire-ring is crushed very badly on one side. How this happened was a mystery at that time, {updated oct. 2017 - It is a tell-tale sign that a liner is dropping for sure}. Clearly you can see the fire ring is seriously flattened out very bad.

I would hate for them to put this all back together, and have it leak again because of a liner issue. I remember when I did my own engine at 955k miles. ALL of my liner heights were perfect, and no sign of problems, gasket looked perfect,... but after pulling them out,.. it revealed a much different story. I had to counter-bore the block because of fretting that was starting to set in on the exhaust side of #5 and #6. This told me that even if liner height is perfect, you could still have issues.

I will be taking a serious look at this today and looking very hard at the bottom of the head where this damage is (and the opposite side to see if the liner was dancing too). This also makes a clear point,... NEVER NEVER assume your problems are minor when it comes to pulling the head off one of these things. BE PREPARED to do a complete in-frame and counter-bore just in case!.

[simon999]

Rawze, did you used forklift like in rebuild videos or some kind of "crane" to lift the cylinder head ???

[Waterloo]

(09-18-2016 )simon999 Wrote:  Rawze, did you used forklift like in rebuild videos or some kind of "crane" to lift the cylinder head ???

Rawze built himself a wooden hoist contraption... It is in some of his other videos...

[Old Driver]

Would an oil analysis sample have revealed coolant running into the oil?

[Nilao]

(09-18-2016 )Bahdan Wrote:  Would an oil analysis sample have revealed coolant running into the oil?

I have had it sampled every service. It has always shown 8-12 ppm of sodium and potassium but it was never flagged. It has never shown glycol and the crankcase filter/valve cover has never shown coolant in it. It was a catastrophic failure of the gasket. I finished the 400 miles of the run and bobtailed here. Now that it is apart we found the liner has been dancing on cylinder 5 has dropped and cylinder 6 has just started to drop. So Inframe it is. Im going to counter bore the block and shim it up. Trying to get the liners out but it has started to rain so that's on hold.

[Waterloo]

Good luck, and you are in good hands!

[Dcolumbia]

You are a good guy for helping people out like you do for free. If anyone is in the Midwest and needs help, hit me up, I have a driveway and most of the tools to do almost anything you need. I don't have a counter bore kit but would love to get one, just can't constitute the cost for just my truck.