Went out to pick up the truck this weekend. My son started cleaning the mouse crap out of the cab while my dad and I started changing fuel filters and draining the fuel out of the truck. The fuel fiters were completely plugged and useless, new ones went in without issue. We drained the fuel in the tanks, there was no water in it, however, I don't think it would have ran on that old Diesel. Due to the fact the box was down My son and I had to fill 15 gallons of fuel into the tank by filling a 1 gallon antifreeze jug, there was not enough room to use the 5 gallon cans to fill the tanks. That took a while.
We hooked up the battery to the cables (this truck is 12 volt positive ground) and tried to turn it over to see what happened, it just clicked. Thinking the worst that the motor was seized we started looking at the bottom of the motor. We found that the solenoid was there to click when we hit the starter, however, the starter itself was nowhere to be found
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At this point we took to pulling it. Hooked up the 3/4 ton Dodge Diesel to the truck and pulled it out of the farmers yard (all the tires were still full at this point, good sign we hoped). Once we got it on the gravel my dad put it in gear and tried to pull start it. It turned over!!. However, it smoked really good but would not fire. We stoped and looked and there was fuel dripping in a puddle under the engine (keep in mind we checked the oil pan and there was no water in the pan and the radiator was still full of antifreeze after 20 years). We looked for the leak and ended up discovering the gasket for the fuel filter bowl had folder over and it was not sealed. Fixed that and tried again.
After about 100 feet of pulling it at this point it fired up. Ran pretty bad but once we drove it about 2 miles it started coming out of it. It smoked really good the whole 20 mile drive home, and no there were no brakes. All country gravel roads, no highway.
On the drive home the only gears I could shift it into were 1st, 2nd and 4th. The detente spring was broken on the transmission and it would not shift in the other gears properly. That and the engine was not reeving up and slowing down fast enough. However, as I drove with the truck I was able to get the rear end to properly shift in high gear so I was able to get the truck up to about 40mph, though it would not stay there up any incline
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We got the truck home and drove it around the section line for a while and had some fun driving it. We pressure washed the Racoon feces off the engine and pressure washed out the cab. Amazingly enough missing both door windows, a bullet hole in the passenger side windsheild and no rear window there was no rot in the interior metal, only surface rust. The floor is strong and good.
Once we decided we had played enough (the truck had been running for almost 2 hours at this point) we pulled the valve cover off and noticed that one of the valve springs was broken. That explained the lack of power at the bottom end (This is a 3-71 so it did not matter in higher RPM ranges). We also could tell the injectors were plugged, hence more of the smoke and the slow revving. On a side note anyone know if 080 injectors are correct for this application?
Long story short the truck is in the shop at the moment, one fender has some slight crinkleing in it, but with a bit of sand blasting and some paint this truck will look good. My dad is not sure if he wants to keep it or sell it at this point. We really can't find any more of them to even guess what they are worth. He can rip the engine out and easily sell that for more than he paid for the entire truck, but everything works, including the box hoist. He does not want to separate it. If he keeps it we have talked about what he will do to it and make it into a nice farm dump truck.
In any case. Check out the Photobucket album, several videos of it running and more pictures. Have a look.
Chris.
http://s1284.photobucket.com/user/ComputerGeekFarmBoy/library/GMC%20D473-37
