Rod bearing question

The washer covers the top of the sleeve, holding it in place.

Yes, there is a counterbore that holds the sleeve from going down. The washers are to keep the sleeves from falling out when the block is inverted to work on the bottom end or from moving the sleeves when you are turning the engine over to bolt in the rods.

Hunt, here is a link to Marvs page about rebuilding a motor.. He has plenty of photos and step by step.. You should read the entire post and examine the photos.. Its a excellent reference.

If you install a new sleeve/Orings and do not bolt it down, when you install the new piston with new rings on it in that particular sleeve, the chances are very good when you rotate the crankshaft to install other pistons and rods the friction/drag of the new rings on that new piston in the unrestrained sleeve will push the new un-bolted down sleeve right out of the block, upside down or not.

no hone... power wire brush, sand paper, etc.

So I finally got the head off this evening, the radiator is shot. And odd thing here I drained the radiator out of the petcock and went to drain the block and nothing came out so I figured it must be empty after pulling the head and looking into the block ports they're still antifreeze in them almost up to the top of the block so I'm really perplexed how I'm getting antifreeze into the oil pan now more than ever. When I look at the head gasket it looks pretty much brand new. One thing I did find is the top of the piston on one of the cylinders looks like it was not firing because it's very clean compared to the other three. All four injectors looked very dirty so they will be going to get checked out. I will post some pictures here soon.
Do all cylinder heads have freeze plugs even diesels? Reason I ask is cuz I don't see any in the top of this head...

Edited by Hunt4Allis - 15 Apr 2022 at 8:03pm

My workshop and believe I found the freeze plugs which there are three of. After wiping the top of it down and comparing it to another identical cylinder head online with the same stamp number it looks like this cylinder head has already been ground down and I believe it has multiple cracks going through the center of it. More to come...

Now, that the head has been removed, it will be difficult to pinpoint the coolant leak into the oil pan.

Like the doctor said, it's hard to tell where the problem was. I've seen severely cracked heads that weren't leaking coolant. You could have (and I suspect) a pin hole in a sleeve or some other problem. It's best to find the problem before taking things apart.

Okay I'm replacing the sleeves pistons bearings and everything else anyway

Rotate the engine so #1 and #4 pistons are at TDC and then keep rotating the same direction until they go down 1 inch. Take a hammer handle and push down on each #1 and #4 piston. They should not move at all !!! . Do the same thing for #2 and #3. Any piston that moves downward has a bad rod bearing or piston pin bushing.

I pulled all four pistons out today.
Piston that was in line with the cylinder head being cracked that I previously said looked really clean was where the knocking sound was coming from because the wrist pin had a ton of play in it back and forth and side to side (I'm betting that someone had this head already machined down after looking at it more closely compared to others that are new just because of what was ground off of this was a lot so maybe multiple times) at some point the head cracked and started leaking coolant into the cylinder which stopped the assembly from being lubed like it should be and or out the piston and wrist pin. One out of the four were tight. One was really bad and the other closest to this crack in the head was slightly worn with a lot of play in both of them compared to the tolerances that I see in my manual (I don't even need a micrometer because I would guess that there's a 16th of an inch play in the one wrist pin and a little bit less than the other one. I still need to mic all of the journals to make sure they're within spec but in general they looked okay and none of the bearings were spun at all. The crankshaft actually looks still polished on the journals. I need to check the main bearings with some plastic gauge, more to come. Thanks fellas for all your info! Now I'm shopping for a new head and rebuilt kit...

I have used strips of old blue jeans or even a multi folded paper towel wrapped and taped around journals. Duct tape lives longer than masking tape.

I plan on checking all of the main bearings with plastic gauge and depending on what I see I may spend new main bearings into it also while I'm in there. I do believe between the badly cracked head which was right above the worst wrist pin that I found both issues. One being how the coolant was getting into the oil and with the coolant going down on top of that head it probably prematurely worn out the wrist pin but I'm not positive as I'm no expert I'm guessing with the lack of lubrication and temperature differences that it wore that piston out quicker.

Pretty difficult to check main bearings in-chassis with plastigauge with oil on everything and the weight of the crankshaft hanging on the plastigauge. You can visually look at them if you like but cannot really measure them.