Coming home from a family outing our 2007 5.9 cummins diesel started shaking whenever gas pedal pressed and we were blowing blue smoke. truck only has 90,000 miles. We were out of cell range with 4 children in the snow and decided to drive 30 miles to where we could get help. Unfortunately that is what probably did us in! Shop said a valve seat dropped. The shop quoted us $20-25,000 to rebuild. I don't have a lot of experience with diesels but I paid $3000 3 years ago to rebuild a 454 gas motor. I realize that diesels are more expensive but this is break the bank expensive. I still owe 3 years on my loan. This truck is my bread and butter as we used it to make a living. As a family we are devastated. We live in Portland Oregon. We have looked at rebuilts (asking $8300 plus $3700 core charge) as well as used (engines with 50,000-150,000 still want $5000-$6000 not including installation as well as injectors and turbo if needed). Is there anyway around this? My husband is pretty mechanically incline but has never rebuilt a diesel. I wish we could find someone in the Portland Oregon area that would work along side my husband...giving him directions but my husband would do the work. We need this truck asap but cannot afford to pay a big shop that kind of money. Maybe I'm comparing the wrong trucks but after reading on here about Cummis diesels being repaired for $3000-$6000, I have hope. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Run from the shop that gave you that quote there is one to many zeros in their figure . Seriously there are different avenues you could look at I see 2004.5 - 2007 5.9 Trucks that are wrecked and you can pick up a whole truck for 2-3K use what you need and scrap the rest. Or just pull yours and get an rebuilt engine from a good machine shop with a warranty for less than Cummins. If you need assistance we are all here to help! I live down in Georgia and there are Bombers all over the states that can point you in the right direction.

 

I truly appreciate your response. I have been looking for local shops. The only other one that would give me a quote said we were looking at $12,000-$15,000 which still seems ridiculous. Keep in mind these quotes do not include injector rebuild (we know one is bad) and turbo if it needs to be rebuilt as well. I have quotes for injectors at $250 each and turbo for under $1200. One shop that gave me a quote said one reason a valve seat would fail could be from a faulty injector. Can this be proven? I only ask because our actual injectors were still under warranty when this hapened. We spent over $4,000 having these done. Unfortunately we ended up with a shop that does really good work, but they are used to building trucks for racing and they are very expensive. If you have access to anyone in Oregon to refer me to, please let me know.

 

Diesel Bombers - Oregon Bombers Is the social group up in Oregon I think 97Cummins is up in Puyallup Washington you may want to PM him he works at Peterbuilt and probably knows someone up that way.

This is the super secret website where I get some parts from .

Online Auto Auction | Repairable Salvage Cars Sale - AutoBidMaster

 

Look on ebay, you can buy a rebuilt long block all new parts
for $4,000. Take you head to a shop replace what is shot
and have a valve job done.

 

Didn't you want to go to San Diego on vacation? Sea world, Disney the kids would love it!
I do these truck all the time 6500 OTD! Stock build you can upgrade whatever you want but that's extra! I recommend studs to all my customers! You can have the truck shipped for 800 or less on UShip.com Then fly down to pick up and take the kids on vacation on the money you saved! Then you would be my farthest customer! Breaking my San Francisco record! Yes I'm serious could work!
Andy