6.0 project truck. Need advice!!

This is kinda long, sorry!!!
Okay so i picked up a 02 2500hd 6.0 4x4 from a guy who said it sucked in water needed a new motor. When i popped the hood it looked like it had been soaking in mud for a week, EVERYTHING is covered. turns out this guy was mudding and the truck has NO INNER FENDERS. Also the intake tube is missing and we had to tape mass air to the throttle boddy to start.

Anyways we started the truck and it fired right up but ran like poop, when he revved it it popped a little out the exhaust. it didnt smoke till he decided to hold the pedal to the floor to try nd load it on the trailer. it blew some blue/white smoke for a few min but only does it when gas pedal is held down. i never heard a knock or any bad internal sounds. it actually sounded stong and would idle.

my guess is the bottom end is fine and there might be some valve damage but slight since these no sound comming from motor. Im also thinking a lot of the reason it runs like crap is a bunch of sensors are messed up from the mud bath ( the oil pressure sending unit is sending bad signals) and would prolly run better if the mas air was actually hooked up right.
Also he said he changed oil and there was "only a little water in it"
it does not blow any kinda smoke at idle or when i ease on the gas.

so what do you guys think?? What should i do first?

Thanks

give it a bath? haha clean it up some to start with. So you can know what you are really dealing with.

well ya lol. im going to have to post pics of this thing its a mess. is there anything to be careful of when washing the motor?

if the pistons or piston rings were screwed up it would smoke all the time right??

sounds like you can't do any more damage but for obvious reasons cover up the intake and avoid soaking the electrical stuff too much besides that I'm not sure but shouldn't be too bad.

Thats what i told my wife, but if i had told her that and then been wrong ida been grounded.

hmmmmm true story wifies are fun like that.....

JW what did you pay for this project?

I paid $2500. its an 02 2500hd ext cab, 4x4, 4in lift, 17in rims(really nice), good tires(33") nice interior once i get all the mud out. only dent/ scratch on the truck in on tailgate. Ill try to post pic




I dont know anything about these trucks, did i get a decent deal or not?

Holy S***! That's a dang good deal if you ask me. Its a little less than I expected. You would make good money parting it out. Depending on how much money you have to dump into it should turn out to be dang near a steal. Could turn out to be a real nice rig. I want to see more pix.

After cleaning it up,
get a new intake tube on there (CAI can be found on ebay for less than 100$),
change your fluids again even though he said he already did it (oil, coolant, etc)
Start it up and let it run see if it runs the remaining water out.
If its not making much noise prolly not hurt too bad bc these trucks make a fair bit of noise in stock form.
Do a compression test.
That should get you a good idea of where you are at.

Yea damn good deal, just clean it change every fluid the plugs, get some electrical cleaner and do all the plug ins, pull the injectors and clean em, basically clean everything to the T, then fire it up, prolly wouldn't hurt to check under the valve covers, jus do some regular maintenance on it cus take my word for it, its very hard to tear these motors up.

haha yeah not easy thing to do this guy^^^ beat the shiz outta his almost daily :lol:

ok

i was going to start with cleaning everything up, cleaning the connectors up, doing plugs and wires, fluids, compression test and starting it. one thing im worried about is oil pressure. the sensor is messed up but usually LOW, but if i hit gas it jumps around like its on crack.

If it came down to pulling heads off id prolly just replace because for cost of a shop going through them i can buy better stock heads on ebay from a power seller. if i tear it down i want to add some hp. prolly do cam too.

what kind of lifters do these truck have?

Damn! They went pretty hard wheeling that thing! Still seems like you got a good deal. Good luck getting it all fixed up.

Oh and BTW these trucks do not fit on a U-Haul trailer.

yes they do, pull the truck on the trailer, jack the rear of the truck up off the ramps, slide the ramps almost all the way into the storage pockets leaving about 12" hanging out and then lower the truck on the ramps. Been there done that.

how could someone torture a beautiful truck like that :( ???? I wish i had money to just trash a truck for the hell of it lol Sweet deal you got tho! and they have hydraulic roller lifters

I tried but the guy didn't have any tools. That was my first thought. And its a 300 mi ride through mountains.

He couldt afford to trash it either. He ended up using my money to buy a 98 Dodge ram. He was trying to help a friend.

wow where was it? and where are you located?

Its in lander. I'm in Buffalo.

That in Wyoming?

LOL yea Buffalo is between Sheridan and Gillette. Lander is directly west of casper and north of rawlins.

oh okay legit one of the closer ones to me then I am in utah at the moment. When you start making progress you need to post more pix

Ya first I got to get it to my house tho. I was in Utah a cpl weeks ago.

So Shud I replace my mass air or can I just clean it up good?
Is it worth the HP gain buying a aftermarket intake tube?

You can replace it bc there is a decent chance its bad common issue on abused vehicles but you can try cleaning it up first. The hp gains wont be huge maybe 5-10 rwhp but they are only like 60 or 70 bucks shipped on ebay. So you couldn't get it moved then? That blows long ways to go to leave it there.

Yea it kinda sucks.l but when I went there I wasn't planning on bringing it back that day. Renting the u haul was last minute idea. The Guy I got it from is pretty cool so it should be safe there, unless he's reading this and decided to part it out on me.

So I finally got around to getting the truck and looking at it... bad news. Someone has already tried messing with coil packs as some are loose. Also the is oil coming out of throttle body.... bad rings?

pretty sure a little bit of oil always comes out, get a catch can might solve the problem.

Its more like a pool of oil in the throttle body. Ill post pics tomorrow.

I also noticed a plug hanging from the bottom of motor near oil plug and the plug on the same wire harness as mass air is disconnected, which I think is air temp? Could that cause issues?

I'm going to do plugs and wires in next few days and would like to check coils but can't remember how to do so with my volt meter.

Wow sounds like lots of fun issues..... I am guessing you got her cleaned up by now? :pics:

Ya got it cleaned up. The plugs were so fouled with oil it looked like they had warts. Put new plugs in and it runs great but blows a ton of white smoke now. Before plugs it was just blowing a little bit of blue smoke when I hit the gas pedal but it was only firing on 4 cylinders then. I though the rings were out but now its white smoke. What should I try?

Also I'm in a very small town so motors are hard to come by. So I was looking into 8.1l and ls1 but had two shops tell me I'd have to replace the whole wiring harness.

Try to find another 6.0 they are pretty easy to come by and shipping them isn't unheard of and you have people here who can voucher for the right people. Also check out lkq.

Well I decided to take heads off and look around.so far only have the pass Sid head off but gasket looks fried but cylinder walls look good. I was thinking about having the heads tested and maybe ported depending on what you guys say.

After breaking off a egr bolt in the manifold I was thinking about a set of headers and high flow cats. The part store has a set of long tubes for 250. I was also thinking about cold air intake and bigger throttle body.

Port heads... okay idea, wouldn't gain much unless you went with an aftermarket cam. Milling the heads to bump the compression up would be a good idea imo.

Longtubes... great idea.

Bigger throttle body... bad idea.

Cold air intake... you already have one, just do some minor mods to make it better.