Time to give up on a 7.3 IDI?
 

Hey all, I've been lurking for a couple weeks and learning as I try to bring my 94 E350 with the 7.3 IDI back to life. I've learned a lot but I'm getting to the point where I may have to give up and would like a second, third...19th opinion? lol.

Ok, I got the van from a wrecker. It had been parked for a couple years but I was told it ran when it was parked. (likely story but it was free so...) Obviously, the first thing was to drain the oil pan and see how bad it was. A gallon of clear water later and the sludge started coming out. The dipstick showed way overfill because of the water. I drained it, flushed it, drained it again.

Next was pulling the glow plugs. It had the autolites...which I quickly confirmed from the many forum posts are total garbage. 7 of the 8 came out relatively easily...although whichever engineer ran the metal fuel lines over the top of two of them should be killed. One broke and only the element is still in there and frozen. It's getting shots of penetrating oil each day and some pressure. Hopefully it lets go in a day or three.

I've released the pressure on the serpentine belt so all that's left for resistance should be that last horrible glow plug. I've tried to turn the engine over by hand and it wont budge. This is where I'm stuck. I can put what I consider to be a fairly ridiculous amount of force on the crank with a breaker bar from underneath and it might as well be welded. The nut turns a bit but I'm afraid I'm going to break something soon so I'm looking for either a final verdict of give up or some hope on where to go from here.

Thanks for reading and sorry about being long winded but I didn't want to be one of those guys that join a forum and say "My diesel won't start..."