Well, driving down to the family X-mas party, rolling through the hills, the truck starts to sputter, and dies a few seconds later. Look at my gauges once she's off the highway, and the thing is overheated, bottoming out the needle... Never had that happen before. BTW, this is on the 98 12V 5-spd 3500. So I run to town with my mothers Jeep I managed to snag while she was at the party, ran to the parts store and grab a new thermostat. Put that in, let the engine cool, fire it up, and it runs like crap. Now, there's no oil leaking at this point, but its definitely missing (in the #5 cylinder apparently), and I still have oil pressure according to my gauge. So I have it towed to D&W diesel in Buffalo. Well, they finally got to looking at it today (I dropped it off last Monday), and told me there is NO coolant flow, that the #5 cylinder isn't firing (haven't pulled the injector yet) and there is a big oil leak under the passenger side (might have been the drivers side, can't recall I was too ticked off ).

So... What could have happened here? The #5 cylinder might just be an injector, they have 300K miles on them, but the oil leak scares me big time. I'm hoping its just the turbo (cause I have a spare one of those kicking around). The coolant flow also seems odd. I just put a new thermostat in the thing, what else could be blocking the flow?

How screwed am I? I mean, I do have the 99 to haul my **** around, but the 97 is for sale (cleaned up, I don't want to drive it at all), and the 98 is DOA...

Any thoughts anyone?

 

Sounds like the water pump died on it. As for the oil leak and the dead cylinder it could have gotten hot enough to cook the cylinder I suppose if you had the needle buried. Be nice to see the truck to see were the oil is coming from.

 

I'd be surprised if the piston cooked. The #6 cylinder generally gets hotter than the rest, but anythings possible.

 

I'm wondering why it is missing. There is always the posibility that it made the injector malfunction. Its hard to diagnose things without seeing them.

 

Possibly a blown head gasket?? It will cause lack of coolant flow.

 

I'm wondering why its missing too... And I doubt its a HG failure, although anything is possible. The truck see's a max of 35-40lbs of boost, and the head is studded and O-ringed. Hopefully I get another call from D&W Diesel today to enlighten me on the status... I'll keep ya'll posted.

 

Good Luck !

 

Well we figured out what it was, but in the process when I swapped the injectors into the 97, the #5 stuck open and burned a hole right in the piston... Trucks getting sold as a parts truck or I'm parting it out.

 

 

HI MotorOilMcCall, Why don't you buy another 12V and keep the truck for parts ??