I've seen plenty of the coolant bypass pipes rot on the heater hose end. It's pretty common. As pennyman suggested, a hydraulic shop could make one (I've toyed with the idea of making it out of copper plumbing pipe and soldering elbows and mounts for the 'steam punk' look lol) With the amount of these engines around I would hope that someone would have a lead on new bypass pipes.
Oh, better add a tip - go to a supermarket and buy citric acid powder from the baking aisle. Dissolve a stack of it in hot water and use it to descale your radiator. Take the radiator out, lie it horizontally with the cap on and the inlet/outlet facing up and fill the radiator with the solution and leave it for a few hours. Pour the solution into a bucket, flush the radiator in both directions with a garden hose and look for debris/junk that comes out of it and if you think it needs longer, refill it with the reclaimed solution. IIRC you've already taken the heater out but this does a great job with heater cores too. They collect a lot of calcification and rust flakes etc and this stuff does a good job of dissolving contaminants in cooling systems. I have heard of guys filling their entire cooling system with a strong solution of citric acid powder and running it for a day or 2 but you'd want to really flush it out afterwards and remove both the heater core and radiator so they can be reverse flushed as the crap from the block will try to plug up the inlet sides of coolant galleries. This will expose weaknesses in the cooling system so if there are and perforations or holes anywhere, it will eat through the corrosion and start leaking.
Wow, that's some good insight. I will look into racing classes, I have already taken the driver education course (lower insurance) and passed perfectly. That reminds me of the movie Ford V Ferarri when Ken Miles had brake fade and went off the track and the car blew up, him in it. You're absolutely right, never thought of that.
I pulled my Jose's out and someone had used well water. Oh and I found out my 2.6 had a cracked block, and it was dripping coolant there, not the raditor. I am gonna get it rebuilt though, it looks rough. I have silicone hoses to go on the truck, I would reccomend those.
Heater's still in the truck, I only had to replace the section of rubber hose on the valve under the dash.
I've got the citric acid powder, and I had a pretty similar plan, but I'l probably add in one or two extra steps... Maybe a garden hose in the inlet and no thermostat, upper hose pointing straight down to the ground and just spin the water pump to get everything I can out of the block, or do the dexcool removal flush I learned from my old car forum buddies (it involves a few chemicals and a spirited drive, pulling a hose and dumping the hot garbage out of the engine while it's still hot, and garden hoses)....And I'm probably gonna fog the radiator with some fresh black paint before it goes back in.
Just need enough time to get it all done.
I'm just glad to hear that you're willing to learn, because it'll only make you better.Originally Posted by Salteen
If the block itself is cracked you might not be able to have it rebuilt, but if it's salvageable I would suggest doing a full rebuild and keeping it just in case. And keep the silicone hoses for yourself, toss them behind the seat in case you suddenly need a new hose on the side of the road 10 miles from anywhere.
Thermostat out is a good idea. Shouldn't need to tell you not to flush a hot engine with a garden hose though lol. My knuckle head cousin did that to a car that he'd just overheated. Pulled into the driveway and jammed a hose straight into the radiator. Split the head... and his dad was a mechanic
Fresh black paint will help heat transference and looks nice too
*side story. A friend of mine owns a '74 Mazda 808 and I offered to do a chemical flush on his heater. I use a pressure cleaner with a bad pressure regulator in it. Filled up a bucket with citric acid solution, one end hooked up to a heater hose, the pick for the pressure cleaner submerged in the bucket and the heater core outlet hanging over the bucket to dump it out. Got it running and within 5 minutes lots of old murky green coolant sludge started flowing along with 'gravel' (rust granules and white calcification - lots of it). Reversed flushed it and it kept coming. This is good! No more crap coming out. Get into the car - floor is wet. The years of crap were plugging up all of the holes in one end tank and it was spraying like a shower head under the dash. The core was bad for a long time and it set him back $400AUD to get one made...
Last edited by geezer101; 01-19-2020 at 07:22 PM.
I went ahead and made a new "How-To" thread for a simplified version of the flush I like to do when I find a problem with contaminated cooling systems.
The garden hose is only used once the engine has cooled sufficiently.
Yeah, anytime an engine overheats you can be damn sure the thermo is shot too.
It depends on how bad the engine overheated, but it's always a good idea to replace it anyways...
Tracking on the new oil pump is now saying it will arrive on Friday instead of today, so I'm still going to be waiting to re-assemble.
Well true, but usually either people dont realise it's overheated until it ceases, or they are sitting at a redlight behind grandma and it's like that for an eternity. Not often do you see a engine that mildly overheats, and usually that's caused by low coolant. But the thermo.on theaw trucks are like a 190 thermo or something really low. I would say 205 is the point the gasket goes, 215 the head, 225 for the block
These engines definitely don't like heat...
That's exactly why I'm taking extra precautions with the cooling system. I'm going to clean out the radiator as much as I possibly can, and maybe pressure test it if I can figure out how to do it myself... Or see if I can find a place to do it for cheap enough. I want to do the same with the heater core, but I really don't feel like pulling the dash back out unless I absolutely have to.
I've got a full three days off this weekend, and my goal is to have the engine ready to go back in the truck by the end of the day Sunday.
Oh, and I found a coolant bypass pipe.
I will post pictures when it arrives...Totally worth it.
If the engine is still out of the truck you shouldn't have to pull the heater blower unit out to flush it. You could get a funnel, plug up the outlet heater hose and fill the heater core with citric acid solution and let it sit for a few hours then dump it and reverse flush with a garden hose. Ideally it would be good if you had a way to circulate the solution through it like I did as it will do a better job (got an old fish pond pump somewhere?)
I meant in order to pressure test it after cleaning.
New oil pump finally showed up, it's surprisingly decent quality from what I can tell.
I cleaned up the cylinder bores a little with the hone, got the cylinder head clean, now to finish cleaning all of the valve train and start assembling the head.
There's one thing that I am unsure about...
IMG_20200126_133050135.jpg
There's an "oil control ring" in the rear main seal housing, is this the correct orientation, or does it need flipped around?
good question, I am getting my g54b out my 82 Tuesday or Thursday, when I get it on the stand I can pull the pan and post pics, I need to look at the bearings anyways.
So I'm extremely glad I opened up the oil pump and inspected it... I had to clean out a few metal shavings (most likely left over from the machining process), but all of the clearances are well within spec.
I packed the gears with plenty of grease (I would have used petroleum jelly, but I didn't have any on hand). I got the oil pump plug installed, I haven't fully torqued it to 50 ft-lbs yet, but it's decently tight. I coated the gasket with high-tack gasket sealant and installed the oil pump onto the block.
I started working on the cylinder head, but I might be looking at finding another head...there's quite a bit of oxidization from sitting out in the open air and I'm not sure yet if I can get the cam bearing surfaces back to a usable condition without going over the clearance limit.
But I did get everything else cleaned up and ready for re-assembly... The rocker shafts are clean (enough) inside, rockers, valve springs, seats, retainers, and keepers are all clean. I had to break out the angle grinder and wire wheel in order to get the build-up off of the valves, and I used a piece of rubber hose and a drill to "power-lap" the valves.
I got all of the sludge out of the oil pan, I still need to clean the outside and prep it for paint.
Use some fine cut abrasive metal polish and paper towel on the cam journal faces to buff them up. You won't be able to remove a measurable amount of surface metal doing this. Considering how badly I've seen journals ripped up, I doubt it will make the head unserviceable. I use Autosol for... everything. It's especially good for alloy and stainless steel. A tip for using it - add a very light shot of silicon spray. I find it keeps the polish pliable for longer and gives a finer finish.
I'll probably try some metal polishing compound once I get rid of all the oxidation.
In other news, I got more things...
The coolant bypass pipe I found on FB.
IMG_20200127_220421854.jpg
The hood prop rod clip and grommet I ordered from Engine Machine Services.
IMG_20200127_213706713.jpg
And a bunch of extra stuff that the guy from FB sent with the coolant bypass pipe...
Chrome alternator bracket, t-stat housing, and some hardware
IMG_20200127_220540499.jpg
Fancy hoses
IMG_20200127_213851866.jpg
Chrome dipstick
IMG_20200127_220321018.jpg
Chrome oil pressure sender, it's unfortunate that I'm not going to be able to use it since I'm running a mechanical oil pressure gauge...
IMG_20200127_214052759.jpg
A couple of fan spacers, and what I'm pretty sure are chrome headlight surrounds for a 1st gen... Also not going to be able to use.
IMG_20200127_220244283.jpg
Me and him talked for a bit about our projects after agreeing on a price for the coolant bypass pipe... After the box showed up he told me why he sent all of this when I only paid for the one thing. He wasn't going to be able to use these parts for his truck, and would rather see it being used by someone who would appreciate it. Since I was the only one to show interest in any of it, he decided that I should have it.
His name is Jacob Gardin, and he is one damn fine human being.
As for the parts I can't use, I'm not going to try and sell them. I'm going to pay it forward and send them to whoever wants them.
And yes, I'm excited for shiny chrome.
Nice haul
I found the original source for all of this chrome...
A couple of years ago someone (can't remember his name) bought a half disassembled D50 from an estate auction, and it came with a ton of extra parts. The original owner had several of the parts chrome plated, including the oil pan, timing cover, valve cover, brackets, pulleys, skid plates, block plate, a box full of hardware, and this stuff.
Jacob bought this stuff from him about a year ago because he was going to use it when he swapped a 2.6L into his truck, but he ended up keeping the 2.0L and building it.
So now I get to build the flashy engine, and I'm going to stab it into a dirty, rusty, faded paint, beat to hell old truck.
Very interesting! I dont like alot of chrome but I do like a good looking set of valve covers and a chrome intake manifold!
I'm not huge on the chrome either, but a little bit here and there goes a long way to making an engine look good...
I'm just going to clean the rust off of the rest of the pulleys and brackets, and paint them with a fresh coat of rattle can black. No need for everything to be chrome...
I am interested in the chrome headlight rings - they are for an aftermarket stull grille - I have one on Geronimo. PM me about them please.
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