Injectors, Glows, and Retainers

[DieselCash]

I figured I would start this new thread early. Once my new injectors get here I will be heading to my bothers house to get all this done. I plan on taking a ton of pictures and documenting all this. I do not believe I have seen any one post all of this. If I am wrong share a link.

I have already ordered;
Felpro valve cover, upper intake, and lower intake gaskets from O'Reilly's
Glow plugs from rockauto
Retainers from rockauto
Injectors from badgerdiesel
Injector return lines from badgerdiesel

This process will be over the long weekend. :thumbsup:

 

[ak diesel driver]

gonna want to use "the right stuff" to seal the valve covers. they don't come with a gasket from the factory

 

[DieselCash]

gonna want to use "the right stuff" to seal the valve covers. they don't come with a gasket from the factory

My brother has some special way of doing this. He did his over a year ago and it still does not leak. I will post it up when I get too it.

 

[DieselCash]

Everything came out great. I got to my brothers at around 1730 on Friday. By 2000 we had the passenger side inner fender off. The turbo, upper intake, lower intake, injector lines, and valve covers off. We also cleaned the valve covers and silicon-ed the gasket down to the valve cover. We then went out to dinner. After dinner we installed the injectors and replaced the retainers on the rockers. This is the part that everything went down hill and started taking for ever.

I will start with only purchase GM original rocker arm retainers. There is a difference between what you get at rock auto and GM. We would have been done Saturday night late instead of Sunday evening if it was not for the fact that we broke one of the new retainers from rock auto. Luckily I was smart enough to purchase more than one when we drove over an hour across town to pick up the GM retainers. Because we broke another rock auto retainer after our drive to the dealer. This was only the beginning of our problems. I will get into details on the other issues later.

I did not get a lot of pictures. I was working on my brothers truck while he was working on mine. He is good at the mechanics part and I am good at the wiring and interior part.

Here is a picture with the inner fender, turbo, both intakes, and some injector lines yanked off.

Here it is at another angle.

Too get the lower injector lines off you need a crows foot on a extension.

Here it is with the crows foot on the line.

This is what it looks like farther out.

Continue on next post.......

 

[DieselCash]

This support bracket for the turbo heat shield must come off to get the valve covers off.

I will now show you my brothers way of installing the valve covers with no oil leaks. Yes, there is more different ways to do this than you could shake a stick at. This is how my brother does it and too date has had no issues with leaks.

The first step is to get the gasket surface clean and oil free. I cleaned this using engine degreaser, brake cleaner, and a lot of scrubbing with rags. After I got it clean enough I sprayed it down with engine degreaser and then water. Once it was clean enough and I got all the old gasket and silicone off the surface I sprayed brake cleaner on a rag and rubbed down the valve cover. Once it is clean and prepped you get the gaskets and rub a nice layer of the grey silicone onto the gasket. Here is the start.

Once you get the entire gasket covered in the silicone you flip it over onto the valve cover. Then clean out the bolt holes with a old bolt and a clean rag. Then use the actual bolts to help hold down the gasket in the correct place. Here is a picture.


Then clean the heads for were the valve cover gasket mounts too. They must be clean of all gasket, silicone, and oil. I have no picture of this step.

Then after a overnight drying of silicone repeat the step of a nice coat of grey silicone on the other side of the gasket. Then lay the valve covers onto the head. Hold them in place with the bolts but do not tighten them down till after a good overnight curing. Then the next day tighten them down.

Continued on next post.........

 

[DieselCash]

This is were we ran into trouble. The drivers side retainers all came out and installed with zero issues. We then went to the passenger side. We broke a top of a rock auto retainer in two. It shows up in the picture below.

My brother did this too his truck. His truck was over heated by the PO. He had about six of these retainers broken and one was missing on his truck. All of mine was in perfect shape except one. The one that was bad probably could have continued its job for another 100,000 miles. I feel we damaged it when we were removing the other ones. I might be wrong on that but, I doubt it. Here is how to replace these retainers.

The rocker arm bar is held in place with two bolts. Remove the two bolts and it comes right out.

Remove the old retainers using a chisel and hammer.

Install a new GM brand rocker arm retainer using a brass drift and a hammer. You must align up the hole in the rocker arm bar and rocker arm and partially push in the retainer before hitting it with the brass drift and hammer. Like this,

And this,

Then re-install the rocker arms. Do not forget to torque down the two bolts.

To be continued on the next post...........

 

[DieselCash]

I have very few if any pictures. I then removed the fuel filter manger and cleaned it up and changed out the filter. It had been a little over 10,000 miles since my last change. I then replaced the worthless blue filter hose and put a 3/8 L fitting in. The kit I purchased a few years ago for feed the beast had wrong parts in it. It is know fixed.

Then problems started. I purchased a thermostat housing cover at the wrecking yard that had an air vent in it. When we attempted to take mine off the one bolt broke in half. Instead of drilling it out we were just going to put my brothers cross over on my truck. We broke it! :mad2:

We then started to drill out the broken bolt. After two broken bits we got it all drilled out and new thermostat housing, thermostat, and gasket installed. We then pressure tested it. It spewed coolant out of the same area as my brothers. Mine was broke also.

Here is both broken.

Thankfully three hours away one was sitting in my garage. My wife saved the day and brought it up to me. We managed to get it installed with out breaking it.
To be continued on the next post...........

 

[DieselCash]

We then pressure tested it again and noticed that we had another leak, here at the ever famous fitting.

I replaced it with a nipple fitting from auto zone. Once we got it all back together we pressure tested it again. It held 15 PSI. We then pressure tested the cap. It would not even hold 1 PSI. We replaced it and were back on track.

We left the glows out and saved them for last. Once I got both batteries connected I jumped off the lift pump and filled up the fuel filter manager and bled all the air out of it.

We then cracked the number 1 cylinder injector line and cranked it over till fuel sprayed out. We did this too all cylinders except the two hiding behind the turbo.

I then installed the glow plugs and we fired her up. She spun to life on the third try of tapping the starter. It would have been the first start if I would have held on to the starter a little longer.

I then finished putting her back together by installing the inner fender, firewall fuse cover, and filter housing.

She ran all the way home with zero issues!

 

[JayTheCPA]

Nice!

Love those steel-toed flip-flops :hihi: