Thought I would stop in for a yearly update. I really don't have many positives to share with regards to my truck, life itself has been pretty good and I'm thankful for that.
As far as the truck I started running into trouble with it about a year ago, well it started right when I finished it, but at the time I didn't know the problems were related. I noticed antifreeze under it during storage, traced it down to a loose hose clamp, no big deal I thought as I checked and tightened all of them. A couple months later same thing, small puddle of antifreeze on the floor. I ended up finding some suspect areas on the radiator so I decided to swap it. I thought it was just a cheap one and had gone bad. In the process of changing the radiator I discovered my cooling system was in worse shape than any Ive ever seen. I was never really happy with how the coolant looked even after it was new. I really couldn't make sense of it, but it was full of scale and rust. So I decided while I had everything apart and had a mess I should flush the cooling system.
This is where stuff started to snow ball, no matter how much I flushed and what I used I would end up with a bunch of debris exiting the flush. I used 2 different kinds of flush, I also used evaporust in the block for a week, they seemed to help, but when I would flush with clean water I would end up with debris still. I lost count of how many times I tried flushing it, I took the block plugs out, I would leave the hose on it and just have it cycle through the block and rev it up and the debris would just poor out. Eventually I got tired of flushing it, my neighbors were probably sick of it too, my truck isn't exactly quiet at 3000 rpm in the garage,
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So by this point I was getting fed up, it was becoming apparent, even though I didn't want to admit it, that something was wrong with my engine block. I started to try and figure out what the hell was going on with it. It was new, and I believe that it was, however the catch is that it was a new surplus. My conclusion was that during it's surplus life the water jackets either rusted or were full of casting sand still, and that this is the cause of my problem. I thought maybe since Ive flushed it a bunch, I might have it good enough to drive and try and filter any more debris as I drive. This would potentially save an engine block change. So I did a little research on that and settled on a little canister made for screening antifreeze, I even found a cool billet one. I thought I had it whipped when I put everything back together and went for a spin. My drive quickly ended in disappointment as the temp gauge just keep creeping up. I ran back home and drained some coolant to inspect my screen to find it completely plugged. I had gone maybe a couple miles and completely plugged it. It was at this point I totally gave up and really lost all motivation for anything related to my truck.
I started to consider selling it, I really did think hard about getting rid of it. Selling it would have caused an absolute rift on both sides of my family, and with a junk engine it wasn't worth much, so I steered away from that. I thought maybe I should just buy a new short block, maybe tear mine apart and have it cleaned, tear it apart and swap the block with a new one. I ran over quite a few scenarios. I ended up finding what appears to be a nice used aluminum block for a pretty good price, which I bought I got kind of excited about that. I thought I could have an aluminum block, maybe buy a nice set of pistons and have the heads worked over. My excitement was short lived. I started adding up the cost of this project, in addition to amount of work it was going to be to pull the engine with out destroying something in the process, and I quickly lost what little interest I still had with my truck.
That was about 6 months ago now, I think about trying to tackle it every now and then but quickly run out of motivation. It sucks because I have had a good time with my truck, but it has really been an absolute joke. Maybe I should take up one of those spam callers on their extended warranties.