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Old 04-29-2015, 10:04 PM   #1
LTC_R
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Join Date: May 2014
Posts: 66
Default Engine Replacement

Well, not such a good time pulling out of storage this spring. Did a short weekend trip to Meremac Caverns, a three hour drive, and my SN 6400 left me stranded. Ran fine there but in the end, it would not start and left me stranded. We drove down on Thursday night, got set up on our site, had a great family day on friday, did some light work on the jacks on Saturday mornning (had a bad wire splice) went to start it to test the work, and the SN wouldn't start. I did some basic checks, oil, fuel, power, and still nothing, it would turn over, sounded like it wanted to start, but nothing. Gave it a shot of ether, and it turned over for a few cycles, but then nothing. I called for roadside assistance, they came out, bottom line, no oil pressure, therefore, no start. Had it towed home, thank goodness for Progressive insurance roadside assistance for the reimbursement on the tow; then had a local mechanic well versed in the VT365/powerstroke 6.0 engine dive in. The first test was compression, and found very low compression on 1 cylinder. He drained some coolant from the system and found oil in the coolant. Definitely a breech between the coolant system and the lubrication system most likely from the head gasket. Now the dilemma, spend the $1000 to have the heads checked, find out they are bad, then spend another $3500 for new heads; or just go ahead and spend the $5000 for a remanufactured long block and move on.

I opted for the remanufactured long block, hope it was the right decision. I so had wanted to be doing other things with my Supernova 6400 these past few weeks, like soundproofing the cab (see another post), and definitely didn't want to spend the nearly $7000 for an engine replacement. The remanufactured engine has an 18 month, unlimited milage warranty, so hopefully this chapter is over. I will be exploring repair insurance and extended warranties, for the next few months, as I don't think I can afford to go through this again.
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Brian Redmon
LTC, USA, Retired
2008 GS6400, new to me 2014
2008 JK Unlimited toad
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