Long post.. beware..
So in October 2008, after my successful trip out to Moab UT for the national rally, I was heading to another event in NY... on the way up, my tranny slipped a bit, and I went into limp home mode... I fought it just enough to get it up to the event, wheel it a bit and get it home... got it home and brought it to a friend at the dealership to hook up to the computer to read the tranny codes... ended up that the tranny was toasted.... while looking at it though, he also mentioned that he thought I had an engine problem-- sporadic misfire on 4, appearance of coolant in cyl 4 while looking with a borescope, fluctuating rpm's on idle.. but it was still running decently.. so I brought it home, and got a replacement tranny, and swapped it out... not only was my tranny internally messed up, the housing was completely cracked!
At that time, I decided to ignore the engine issues for a bit since my truck is a dedicated offroader, and I didn't notice anything really... was just trying to have it go as long as it could... well, that lasted for about 2 months until I started overheating a bit more, getting more regular misfires, and ultimately, losing coolant heavily... so I decided to tear it down and hope it was either a head gasket or even a cracked head... got it tore down, HG looked fine, brought heads to machine shop, got p/t'd and resurfaced.... when we were unbolting the block from the bellhousing, we had a good amount of coolant come out of one of the holes... but other than that, nothing visibly wrong with the block, but by elimination, I was confident that there was a slipped liner...
So, after weighing my options, I decided to buy a used short block.... A used parts vendor had one that he got out of a truck, it had a known head gasket issue, but he had a few engine guys look it over and no issue... he gave me a great deal on it... when I got it, I made the decision to tear it down to the raw block and get it pressure tested just to make sure... came out squeaky clean... so unfortunately during the time that I was getting the block tested, the garage that I was using became unavailable... so I had to tow the truck back to my apartment... fast forward 7 months to about September , we finally had the block rebuilt outside and back in the truck... started up and ran nicely! For the past few months, I mostly just ran it around town, and took it to one trip to upstate NY (about a 4 hour drive.... did great, temp was great)...
So, rewind to two weeks ago... new years eve day... my girlfriend was driving her 2003 D2 to run an errand and hit a patch of ice, and skid into a pole, she's luckily OK, but her truck is going to need about $4700 worth of repair, luckily covered by insurance... but with that happening, I let her borrow my LR3 and I was going to drive my D2 to work... so monday morning, I get it started, it's frigid outside, about 15F... and start driving to work... get about a mile into it (all backroads), and my check engine light starts flashing... I have a scan-gauge so I checked the code right away, it was a misfire on 6... I cleared it and it started doing it again... then all of a sudden I notice my temp hits 220F and is climbing... I turn the heat on high and pull into a parking lot right there, and the temp is at 260F and climbing so I shut off the truck as I didn't feel it was going to drop w/ the heat on... the engine bay is steaming quite badly.. so I have my gf pick me up in my LR3 and after work I go back and put more coolant in it, and drive it home (was able to make it home just before hitting 190F! ... it was close to home)....
While I knew it was something worse, I was hoping that it was the thermostat or water pump... I took the belt off, water pump felt ok... then I decided to look at my oil cap, and it had a yellow sludge all over it, and the whole filler tube was caked in yellow sludge... so today I got the chance to pull the #6 spark plug.. I put a rolled up piece of paper in there, and it came out soaked in coolant... so I then decided to drain the oil and see what it was.... immediately it was milky..
The attached picture shows a snapple container with the coolant and oil line... I actually got the sample when the oil was 90% done draining, so there was probably a lot more coolant that came out before that..
So... Engine is done, it has to be a slipped liner or cracked block... no coolant chambers run by the #6 cylinder... It's amazing that these blocks can go so quickly... I didn't overheat it at all up until that point, and everything looked great when I had it out of the truck.... so I think I've made the decision to say farewell to this truck in the long run... don't feel like rebuilding yet another engine or swapping another one in and have the same thing happen, plus the truck just had a lot of wear on it.... unfortunately I'm in the process of trying to buy a house, so it has to wait.. but I'm hoping within the next 6 months to either buy another D2 and transfer parts over to, or even look into buying a early 80s d90 w/ diesel engine...
Pic of snapple bottle: http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7640/coolant.jpg
So in October 2008, after my successful trip out to Moab UT for the national rally, I was heading to another event in NY... on the way up, my tranny slipped a bit, and I went into limp home mode... I fought it just enough to get it up to the event, wheel it a bit and get it home... got it home and brought it to a friend at the dealership to hook up to the computer to read the tranny codes... ended up that the tranny was toasted.... while looking at it though, he also mentioned that he thought I had an engine problem-- sporadic misfire on 4, appearance of coolant in cyl 4 while looking with a borescope, fluctuating rpm's on idle.. but it was still running decently.. so I brought it home, and got a replacement tranny, and swapped it out... not only was my tranny internally messed up, the housing was completely cracked!
At that time, I decided to ignore the engine issues for a bit since my truck is a dedicated offroader, and I didn't notice anything really... was just trying to have it go as long as it could... well, that lasted for about 2 months until I started overheating a bit more, getting more regular misfires, and ultimately, losing coolant heavily... so I decided to tear it down and hope it was either a head gasket or even a cracked head... got it tore down, HG looked fine, brought heads to machine shop, got p/t'd and resurfaced.... when we were unbolting the block from the bellhousing, we had a good amount of coolant come out of one of the holes... but other than that, nothing visibly wrong with the block, but by elimination, I was confident that there was a slipped liner...
So, after weighing my options, I decided to buy a used short block.... A used parts vendor had one that he got out of a truck, it had a known head gasket issue, but he had a few engine guys look it over and no issue... he gave me a great deal on it... when I got it, I made the decision to tear it down to the raw block and get it pressure tested just to make sure... came out squeaky clean... so unfortunately during the time that I was getting the block tested, the garage that I was using became unavailable... so I had to tow the truck back to my apartment... fast forward 7 months to about September , we finally had the block rebuilt outside and back in the truck... started up and ran nicely! For the past few months, I mostly just ran it around town, and took it to one trip to upstate NY (about a 4 hour drive.... did great, temp was great)...
So, rewind to two weeks ago... new years eve day... my girlfriend was driving her 2003 D2 to run an errand and hit a patch of ice, and skid into a pole, she's luckily OK, but her truck is going to need about $4700 worth of repair, luckily covered by insurance... but with that happening, I let her borrow my LR3 and I was going to drive my D2 to work... so monday morning, I get it started, it's frigid outside, about 15F... and start driving to work... get about a mile into it (all backroads), and my check engine light starts flashing... I have a scan-gauge so I checked the code right away, it was a misfire on 6... I cleared it and it started doing it again... then all of a sudden I notice my temp hits 220F and is climbing... I turn the heat on high and pull into a parking lot right there, and the temp is at 260F and climbing so I shut off the truck as I didn't feel it was going to drop w/ the heat on... the engine bay is steaming quite badly.. so I have my gf pick me up in my LR3 and after work I go back and put more coolant in it, and drive it home (was able to make it home just before hitting 190F! ... it was close to home)....
While I knew it was something worse, I was hoping that it was the thermostat or water pump... I took the belt off, water pump felt ok... then I decided to look at my oil cap, and it had a yellow sludge all over it, and the whole filler tube was caked in yellow sludge... so today I got the chance to pull the #6 spark plug.. I put a rolled up piece of paper in there, and it came out soaked in coolant... so I then decided to drain the oil and see what it was.... immediately it was milky..
The attached picture shows a snapple container with the coolant and oil line... I actually got the sample when the oil was 90% done draining, so there was probably a lot more coolant that came out before that..
So... Engine is done, it has to be a slipped liner or cracked block... no coolant chambers run by the #6 cylinder... It's amazing that these blocks can go so quickly... I didn't overheat it at all up until that point, and everything looked great when I had it out of the truck.... so I think I've made the decision to say farewell to this truck in the long run... don't feel like rebuilding yet another engine or swapping another one in and have the same thing happen, plus the truck just had a lot of wear on it.... unfortunately I'm in the process of trying to buy a house, so it has to wait.. but I'm hoping within the next 6 months to either buy another D2 and transfer parts over to, or even look into buying a early 80s d90 w/ diesel engine...
Pic of snapple bottle: http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7640/coolant.jpg
