I bought a 96 with a bad engine (overheated, at least one galled cylinder). I am going to rebuild it for a daily driver/work truck, and bump it 400hp or so. I have rebuilt several 24v engines (with a little help), and used Mahle rebuild kits, with very good service. Anyone have any must do or must haves when rebuilding a 400hp 12 valve daily driver?

 

while youre tearin everything apart i would do studs, o-rings and HD valve springs to spin past 3200rpm without valve float. you can get away without o-rings but im a better to be safe than sorry guy and if you do water/meth for towing and whatnot you should really do o-rings because of the high cylinder pressure. it also depends on your budget too; a cam, port + polish would be fun to put in but i dont know what your budget is. my truck is an ongoing money pit project. lol

 

I will probably go ahead and do the springs, and I may do a low buck port and polish myself. Does Cometic make a head gasket for the 12v yet? I have been down the o-ring and fire ring road and don't plan on adding enough boost to need etiher one. This will be a low buck build.

 

Where are you located at? I would deffinately do a mild port and polish if nothing else. IMO I would balance all rod/pistons to the same weight, deck the head and block, get O-rings or Fire rings and 12mm studs. Other than that just clean the sucker like there is no tommorrow and put fresh seals, gaskets and bearings everywhere. If you wanted to, put in a cam cut by Greg Hogue, I know him and he will make a profile just for your application.

 

FWIW Do not do a Cometic HG, the have all been blowing out like crazy! Get the block decked and depending on how much they take off get a marine HG that is an appropiate amount thicker...

 

Good to know, I heard they were holding up but that was a while back. I have not been up on the performance stuff for a long time. I am just building this truck so I can burn waste oil etc. I ran it in my other trucks for years but this 08 only gets ULSD, and nothing else.

 

low budget, go with a marine gasket and 12mm studs. dont take the fins out when you do your port-polish job because it causes turbulence and less flow. other than that you shouldnt need any internal mods, you can do the rest once the engine is back in ie: fuel plate, injectors, delivery valves, turbo. sounds like a good project. good luck my friend.

 

Sounds like a cool project, good luck. remember if you enlarge your exh. holes in the head to match that or slightly larger in the manifold so you dont have a ledge. Later

 

Pretty nice truck, the bed is a little rough and the hood could use some paint, but is in good shape overall. I looked at this truck 2 years ago when the engine went south. The #6 exhaust port was wet with oil and it was knocking pretty bad. It had been run low on oil more than once. The turbo is off the engine laying in the back so, I get to rebuild or replace that too. I have 95 175hp engine with a galled cylinder too (minus turbo), hopefully between the two I will not have buy any hard parts other than what comes in the rebuild kit. I will probably sell off the unused parts, to get some more $$$. Looking forward to this project, I have lots of parts laying around the shop that will make this cheap fun. With proper machine work, will a marine headgasket with ARP studs handle a S300 single charger w/g at around 45psi?

 

This thing is trashed, how do you lose both valves? The area between the valve seats is damaged a little but most damage is to the seats themselves. Any chance this head can be repaired (cheaper than buying a new one)?

 

I found those valves. The block looks good (hardly scared, .010 bore should clean it right up), but the head is trashed. Any chance that the valves bouncing around would have damaged the rod or crank?

 

wow... FUBAR!

Crush test the main and rod cap bearings for oil clearance

 

OMG.. what a mess.
You can get fully loaded cummins 6bt heads for cheap out there if you look. I think puredieselpower.com was the cheapest IVe seen so far. 570$ if I remember right..

 

10-4. I am going to take the crank to the machine shop and have them mic it, then plasti-gauge the bearings on reassembly to be safe.

 

Picked it up today, the bumper is in the back. (pic will not load)