Manimalmother

So just for grins I decided to further inspect my head. I don't have mag particle equipment here but I do have dye penetrant we use for inspecting weld. I can only find 2 cracks with the dye pen, and they are small. Cannot visually locate any others. I'm thinking this head is repairable.

Picked up the head today. Cracks in every exhaust seat and some of the intake seats. Found a reman Cummins head from a shop in Ohio. Magnafluxed, valve job, decked, and o-ringed for $1200 to my loading dock. Pulled the trigger this morning. Also bought everything to delete my wife's 6.7 today. It was an expensive day.

I'm going to pick it up lunchtime tomorrow. I know D&J performance says that some cracks are acceptable and want pictures before they accept it as a core. Will know more tomorrow.

so the new shop just called and said the head is full of cracks and can't be repaired. awesome. apparently first shop didn't magnaflux it.

Me too please

I like those. Where'd you get em?

Picked up the head from the first machine shop today and got it to the second one. First shop had cleaned the head, ground the valves, and started the seats when the problem with the guides was found. He showed it to me and it was obvious that they needed replaced. He charged me $120 for work performed so far. Second shop is going to replace all 24 guides, machine the head for tophat seals, finish the seats, deck the head and reassemble. $700 plus cost of guides and seals. All told I'm going to be right at $1700 into this job if I don't have to buy anything else. Fingers crossed.

I wasn't burning any oil either. Weird.

So my mechanic uncle found another local shop that says they can do the guides. I guess best practice is just to replace all 24 guides at this point.

So the machine shop just called me and said they can't finish the head. He said that 16 of the valve guides are bad and need to be replaced. He recommended another shop in Charlotte that has equipment large enough to do it. Looked them up and they have terrible reviews. Unsure what to do at this point.

I happened to have an M12x1.75 bottoming tap at work and used it. It did not remove any material until the bottoms of the holes. Actually went most of the way in with fingers, then put the handle on. I used axle grease on the tap to catch most of the chips. I am also going to remove in freeze plugs in the top of my head and tap the holes for M24 plugs. I've only ever heard of them blowing out on high revving high HP trucks but I figure it's cheap insurance. The small .375 external freeze plugs are also being removed and tapped 1/8"NPT for brass plugs.

Just finished bottom tapping all the stud holes in the block. A job in itself. Still waiting on the head back but the machinist said there's no cracks anywhere and the valves all cleaned up. Leaving for work for a few days should pick it up Friday morning.

That's the exact plug that's problematic on mine. Going to see what the machine shop says about it.

Got the head off tonight. I think my head gasket might have been weeping, but the small freeze plug on the backside of the block had a pinhole in it pissing coolant out. Headed to machine shop tomorrow.

I just went through this on my wife's truck. What year is yours? Are you not using a canbus interface?

Mike what is your arp headstud torque procedure?

The guy I'm using does all the engine machine work for the counties fire apparatus and heavy equipment. He quoted $400-$450 for clean, inspect, deck, and as he put it a "valve job". Does not include gasket. I will be buying the gasket and the studs seperately. This is also me pulling the head.

Check out my turbo install thread where I milled the divider and enlarged the wastegate hole on my hx-35

Thermostat was the culprit. Changed it Friday and drove the truck all weekend. Sits between 190-200. What a pain in the *** to change though. That EGR crossover tube makes everything difficult to get to.

Well I put this off for a while but started smelling coolant this morning in the drop off line at my kids school. I had to run into work without looking at it but came out at lunch to a pretty good puddle under the truck. Pretty sure it's coming from the back side of the head. I called an engine machine shop in town that quoted me $450 to clean, inspect, and deck the head. Does this seem about right or does it seem high? They do not offer O-ringing but send stuff to a shop that does.

I didn't mean to open a can of worms. I'm going to give the napa a go as I can just pick one up locally!

I thought the Cummins thermostat was the go to? It is for 2nd gens right?

Truck is my wife's 2011 3500. Lately I've noticed that the coolant temp never gets above the low 180's. Ambient today was in the 60's and driving it never got above 174. Truck has 80k miles and is bone stock. Possible stuck thermostat? Or something else? Heat blows nice and hot.

Did the codes come back after you cleared them?

Idles fine? Does it run fine until 2000rpm and just stop revving or does it stumble?