I've got a little bit of an update on things!
Start out with the 350 engine. I FINALLY received the correct piston rings, and that happened to be part number ENGINETECH R10258 with a shallow oil ring. From what I found out, the 87-95 TBI blocks use that shallow oil ring at .165" where my mistake was buying not one but two different sets at .200"
So I finally have some pistons in the block, now I can resume assembling it and cleaning parts. Just got around to that last night.
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Next up, ZF6 Duramax.
Another kid up here my age is also named Gavin, and actually lived in Sonora which was half an hour away from where I was living two years ago in Oakdale and ironically we had mutual friends with people down there. He's been up here for two years as well. Another odd bit, his girlfriends parents have a large chunk of land here and have a guy named Mike also on their property, and he recognized be but I didn't recognize him. I actually sold him some Peterbuilt parts when I was working at the junkyard years ago so that was crazy! He did logging in the area.
Back to the truck - Gavin bought this pretty cheap, and the story was that it used to be really nice with a flatbed and was really clean, but it needed injectors so the guy started pulling it apart and then it got repoed. Then someone else bought it and drove it for a bit then ended up just starting to part it out and at this point in time now the truck has sat 6 years so it needed some fixing and replacement body panels. It's a 2005 ECLB 4x4 2500HD with a LLY/ZF6.
I helped him out for probably 4 days on this truck and we got it back together with new head gaskets and studs, and used my duramax for reference seeing where things went. When it was all back together we had an issue where it would crank twice then stop with the security light flashing so we tried some other things like a key relearn and messing with sensors, but turns out the computer plug wasn't seated the whole way and when he fixed that it fired up.
It's not perfect yet and has an exhaust leak around an injector but we were trying to get it off his brother's property so I followed him for probably 10 miles and all the smoke gave me a gnarly headache following behind him but got it home and now he can mess with it there.
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My duramax!
In the middle of working on his truck, the first day we tried working on it the snow started coming down pretty hard so we ended up going back to my shop and swapped my dented up drivers side door with the Idaho replacement and honestly it matches pretty good. Swapped all the guts out with my few month old AC Delco window motor assembly and put my tinted glass and door handle in.
The truck is less than 100 miles from 299k, so I'm right on the cusp of 300,000! Actually right now I do need to rotate tires and need to replace the front end bushings they are starting to make noise to sound like a horse drawn carriage and it annoys me!
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Other smaller shop projects.
Finally started messing with my Dodge yesterday for the first time in over a year, threw a code for a bad coolant temp sensor so I replaced that and now I receive 6 different codes that all have to do with the throttle position sensor but what's weird is the throttle works fine controlling the throttle body. I am now 100% positive the fuel pump is out because it just doesn't make hardly any pressure and I can get it to run on ether but that's it. So maybe by not getting fuel pressure it's being goofy with the throttle I'm not sure.
Gavin's girlfriend's truck needed a master cylinder and an oil change so we brought it to the shop and did that. Not sure what year F250 it is but has a p-pump 12 valve Cummins with a NV5600 and a 205 divorced tcase. This truck is a pain for me (6'2) to even crawl up into.
You can also see my banged up duramax door in the corner!
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My employee yesterday dropped off his 03 Yukon XL that they bought back in January (I went with them because they wanted me to check it out with them and I said it passed all my tests for the price it was a decent deal) with I think close to 300k as well but it drove super nice and the guy was a one owner who took care of it.
It's in the Stubbs Shop for some intake manifold gaskets and a fuel pressure regulator to help because it has a little bit of surging at idle so it should be a quick job I plan on doing that today.
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Last night my coworker James stopped by and we changed his studded tires out. He wanted to put a bull bar he had on his truck but it turns out they were wrong and it was late enough in the night I didn't want to start getting into some welding stuff.
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In addition, a Cali friend named Beau is up here visiting some of his family and drove his grandpa's truck up, its an immaculate 89' c1500 RCSB with a 350/700R4. I told him the only mod I would do to that truck if it was mine would be dropping the rear end down a bit and a compass/temp mirror.
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So that's this update! Still haven't received my gooseneck hitch in the mail and the gooseneck trailer is still being used until he finds a new one so I still have a little bit longer to wait but I'm hoping within the next two weeks it'll happen!