removing cylinder heads...no fun!

[mucekok]

am still tracking down the demon in my latest project duece. still have a dead hole, lots of fuel smoke under throttle, and oil leaking into the exhaust, but no blowby. have replaced all the injectors, lift pump, and now the turbo. have decided it may be time to pull the heads and replace them. has anyone out there pulled both heads at the same time without removing the intake and exhaust manifolds? i will be replacing them with the heads off an engine i have laying around and reuse the manifolds from it as well. am trying to eliminate a step here. any advice? any suggestions before i pull the heads? not really looking forward to this.

 

[WillWagner]

Before you replace the heads, pull the exhaust off and run it at 1000 rpm or so. Look in the exhaust ports and see if the oil is comming from the guides or the cylinders. I don't mean to sound snippy, but how do you know there's no blow by? Did you measure it? For all diesel engines, there is a measurement for the crankcase pressure. You cannot tell if it's high by feeling it. Only if it is way past the used engine spec, can you feel it. The engine will start passing oil way before the used engine spec. The smoke comming out of the tube is different than crankcase pressure. Is the smoke out the tailpipe oil or fuel? Oil is blue, fuel is white, or black..depends. What does the smoke smell like, oil or fuel? Try to find out what's wrong before you throw parts at it. You will still need intake and exhaust gaskets if you pull them as an assembly. Gotta loosen all those nuts so the heads torque right. Only an opinion, not trying to be a butthead.

 

[Dave_McConnell]

Pull the manifolds and the heads separately. Not a bad job. Its actually quite satisfying after it is done.My then 14 yearold daughter, soldier B and I did it over a couple of days. I was very happy to change ALL the gaskets. By the way White Owl Truck Parts is a great place to buy a gasket set or any thing else. Real good people.