As the title says, I am most likely picking up an 89 next week. From what I have gathered so far it has a noise when running (owner thinks its a cam bushing). Has 350k miles so I am told, I plan to keep the truck for business since it has a 9' box on the back. What would be the best approach? It holds 60 psi oil when cold, take off the head send it to machine shop to examine and clean up then dive into the engine or is it better to take the entire engine to the shop and let them do their thing? I have no problem with dis and re assembly. Just want to make sure block and head aren't wasted.

 

Just because this guy "thinks" it's a cam bushing...doesn't mean anything! Don't tell him that though....you can use the cam bushing issue to help bring the price down.

There are a lot of different places, and components, that can cause all kinds of weird and wonderful noises. I would do a little detective work once you get it home. Might turn out to be something simple.

 

Thanks, my original thought was with that milage the valves being out of tolerance, but the more I thought about it the more a rebuild kept sounding good lol. I am just waiting for an answer from the guy and i'll be hopefully picking it up next week. If it happens I'll use this thread to post up my findings.

BTW Ive followed your thread, I dig the crew cab!

 

Thanks!

 

There's only a cam bushing on the front journal of the cam, the rest of the cam rides in the cast iron block. It's very unlikely for it to have spun, unless the engine was starved for oil at some point, then you would have a rod or main bearing problem. If that's the case, cut the oil filter open and look for glitter, or send an oil sample out to confirm it. Actually as I'm thinking about it, the turbo is the first to go from lack of oil.

Depending on how loud this noise is, i would guess valve adjustment is way out, or the flexplate is cracked. When they break, the engine still runs normal, but it makes a heck of a racket in neutral or park, but usually get quiet as you load it up in gear, hint, hint.

Any oil leaking badly, like from the timing cover area? Any more than a slight (2 second) puff of smoke on start-up out the exhaust?

Buy the truck as cheap as possible, fix what's broken, and just keep driving it till the body/frame rusts off. Overhauls on these engines are not cheap.


-Mike

 

Thanks for those pointers. I have not looked at it yet, going next week if all goes planned.

 

350K isn't a lot on these engines. I too think valve adjustment. or as Mike said flex plate is cracked.

 

I think he typed 350K.

 

I thought I did too that's what I get for pushing enter and jumping up to walk the dogs.

 

So I am told its 350k, the speedo says 88xxx so either its 388 or it quit working and that was an estimate lol. Forgot to mention it is a 5 speed.

 

The odometer gears are a known failure. Also, my '90 has the million mile odo. I do not know what the '89 has.

 

89 was last year of 5 digit speedos....

 

And cable driven speedo as well...less likely for the gears to fail on an 89.

 

I wish they kept the cable drive speedos. So much easier to diagnose...

At least my '82 MB has the million mile speedo and it's cable drivien.