The backhoe sat outside over the winter since I still don’t have a structure (patience, grasshopper) and it started up come spring, but it wasn’t happy. It wasn’t happy at all. Lots of smoke, a little steam, and no power. None. It would not budge from its spot.
Full disclosure: I long had a sneaking suspicion it might have an issue that would need seeing to eventually. I believe I mentioned that I picked it up on the cheap. If I didn’t, then I have now. Anyway, as the more gearhead inclined among you have already guessed, I had a head gasket problem. Bear in mind that there’s no towing this 16,000 lb. monster out of here since the roads aren’t big enough to bring in a truck and trailer to do it, not to mention that getting it to the nearest tractor shop would cost me the better part of a thousand bucks each way. I looked for a mobile diesel mechanic who would come up, to no avail. I was doing it myself, in the woods.
Teardown took a weekend with Saturday a rainstorm and Sunday, snow. It went surprisingly smoothly, apart from half a day spent fighting the radiator out of the machine. This is my first diesel, not to mention my first piece of heavy equipment with all of its attendant hydraulic lines and huge, overbuilt stuff. I had to buy some very large wrenches, a new torque wrench capable of silly torque specs, and a bunch of buckets to drain, save, and and reuse 17 gallons of hydraulic fluid I had to drain to pull the hydraulic pump just so I could change the fan belt. I count myself lucky. The whole reservoir holds 28. Thing is massive.
Workshop in a snowstorm 
Workshop in a snowstorm 
I had the head serviced by American Cylinder Head in Oakland. Beautiful work. New valves, guides, and springs, milled surface (is that a deck on the bottom of a head just like the top of a block? I have never been sure.) And it’s all bead blasted clean and repainted. Repainted! I ordered head, water pump, intake and exhaust manifold gaskets, and a handful of replacement studs from the Case dealer. Then I hauled it all back up the mountain to put it back together up in the sticks.
Thankfully I had help, having roped my brother into this. The head weighs about 80 lbs. Somehow I managed to pull it by myself, as my chiropractor will attest, but there is no way I could have positioned it back over the studs and put it back on alone. We spent a couple of days trying to clean up the expected funky stuff in a machine that’s lived outside for much, if not all, of its 40+ year existence and one that had a head gasket problem, at that. We replaced broken studs, scraped at old gaskets that had welded themselves to various surfaces, and did our best to prep the block for a new gasket. Once we got the head back on and torqued the 19 bolts up to 115 lb/ft, we cleaned and installed the injectors and put the fuel rail back together, then we ran out of time.
The following weekend I went back up and did the easy stuff, rocker assembly, manifolds, water pump, radiator, which went back in much easier than it came out, air cleaner, all the fiddley buttoning up stuff…. And it fired up! Not perfect, but it ran. So I did the valve adjustment that I should have done before I even tried, then when I started it again it was super clean, no smoke, sounding strong. And it fired so quickly. That was surprising.
Rocker assembly 
Exhaust manifold 
Had to cut my own gaskets for water pump housing… 
and water pump.. 
I’ve still got a couple of minor issues to fix, fuel leak due to rotten o-rings in the fuel rail and a coolant leak because the radiator hoses are shot, but motor seems solid. I’m very excited. And not a little gratified that I didn’t fail utterly. I’ll keep trying weird stuff until I do, then I’ll try some more.
