2001 B3000 DS - crank/no start

[deanosaurus]

Definitely forward progress this morning. Cranked on a fresh battery and nothing at first, eventually I got a couple very hesitant very weak fires and heard a strong trickle of liquid. Bunch of water draining out the muffler drain hole.

Figured there was maybe a bunch of water pooled in the headers and Y pipe due to all the cranking over the last few days, causing a blockage in the exhaust system.

Kept cranking and started getting (relatively) stronger and more frequent firing, more water out of the muffler drain any time I got a good WHUMP from one or more cylinders. Hooked up a shop vac to the muffler between starting attempts to help move the water, which worked - nothing out the end of the tailpipe but after a few seconds of suction, it would come out of the muffler drain.

Ran the battery down again just as I was starting to get consecutive weak firing once in a while. Battery's back on the charger now for another round later.

This seems to match up to some extent with something I read from someone else who had water dumped in their tank, so we'll see.

 

[Curious Hound]

What a mess! Sounds like you almost have it whipped.

 

[deanosaurus]

Got the last of the water out of the exhaust system. Lots of rumbles and grumbles, and some backfires.

Found coolant dripping out the muffler drain hole after a lot of cranking/no starting.

So, that's head gaskets at least, possibly warped heads, and given the two catastrophic cooling failures this thing as seen lately, I'm not shocked.

So head gaskets, possibly bad heads, on top of the timing cover gasket and oil pan gasket it also needs... This one is going on the winter project pile for a low miles used engine swap. I think I can get a matching engine assembly from a yard just across the border for what it would cost just to get reman heads. That will also make it a hell of a lot easier to deal with e.g. the manifold bolts snapping and everything else that I'm quite sure will happen in attempting the HG job on this truck.

 

[valuecom]

Did you ever figure this out?