More adventures in diesel engines...

[Greenbuggy]

So, 2 weeks ago I won another isuzu C201 diesel on ebay. From the sellers description:

The engine was removed from a 50' Reefer Trailer because the engine stopped working. The engine turns by hand part way then stops, then you can turn it backwards a way. Turning it over by hand it has the usual compression resistence but when it stops, it stops solid. From pictures on a Thermo King part supplier web-site, I believe this is a Isuzu C201 engine, but I do not know this for certain. I haven’t pulled the head or pan to see what is hanging the engine up.

I figured it had to have a rod let go or something, right? So I bid a max of $150 and ended up winning the thing for a whopping sum of $24. Figured if nothing else I'd have some extra bits & pieces for the C201 I just finished having all the machine work done to rebuild. Monday I drove down to Kansas City and picked up the thing, brought it back with the trusty Toyota, yesterday night I pulled it out of the pickup with a bobcat and pulled the pan to try and figure out what was wrong - and I couldn't find anything obvious

So, I put the pan back on and spun the engine backwards to the "stop" point, pulled the glow plugs and tried to spin it over with the starter...and it spun all the way over! Checked compression and it had descent compression all cyls over 250 PSI

Today at work I got some batteries together, primed the fuel system, heated up the glow plugs and promptly ran one of the batteries dead. Rethinking my approach pulled two glow plugs and got the engine to run on 2 cyls for a bit, then got it to start and stay running on all 4!

Suspect that it may have had a bit of glow plug hanging up a piston as the #3 glow plug was about 3/8" shorter than the rest of them. Thought I heard something when I cranked it over without any glow plugs in place but wasn't sure, maybe it spit the chunk out somewhere across the shop..?

Either way I got an engine that starts and runs for $24, which is way better luck than the last C201 I picked up off of ebay (Bought as "pulled from running equipment" found compression below 120 on all cyls, paid $400). All told with gas and all I've got about $65 into it.

Now my next steps are going to be to pick up a muffler & pyro gauge to keep tabs on how this thing is running, and start bolting it into the GD 185 compressor that I rebuilt the other one for, so that I can figure out how throttle linkage, cooling fan & electrical is all going to work out. Still putting the other C201 together but if I can get this 185 running, even with a tired engine I can sell my GD 85 gasser and put the money into finishing the other rebuilding projects I've got going on...

[midmosandblasting]

Well Price pictures the thing runs so YOU SUCK.

[cutter]

Absolutely! Good for you, Buggy.
Every now in then in life, something happens to show that you just can't lose them all.

[MAC702]

Not being a guy that wins many of those, is it customary to write the seller back and tell them how easily it started and say "THANKS!"?

Oh yeah, YOU SUCK!

[OLD MAN]

Make for a Charlie type log splitter. You suck.

[randydupree]

have some thankgiving suckage on me!