THE HEAD STUDS WERE ACTUALLY LOOSE!

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:08]What's up, guys? So, if you've been following the channel for the past couple of years, you know that I typically like to buy my trucks as grandpa stock as humanly possible and then do everything that I want done to them myself. And for the most part, that has served me really well. But then the third gen came along and we basically threw that logic completely out the window because I fell in love with it.

[00:00:23]It's the exact spec that I've always wanted. Mega cab, short bed, DVD player, sunroof, Larie, white. It's just freaking perfect. But then it turned out to be heavily modified as well. So we got a built trans, upgraded valve train, ARP2000s, injectors, fire ring, compound turbos, twin fuelers. Just a bunch of freaking crap that you don't typically, or at least me, like to buy in a truck that someone else is potentially either just tired of, which is best case scenario, or they're ping it off to you because there is issues. Well, thankfully on the test drive, we did find out that this truck potentially has a head gasket failure. We pushed some coolant into five, had some pressure built up, and so we did end up buying the truck, but of course, we negotiated the price down to where I felt comfortable getting the truck and then basically immediately taking it to a diesel shop for them to do a full once over to see what all is actually done to the truck cuz the guy that I bought it from really didn't know. The guy before him is who did all the work. And that was like 5 to 7 years ago based off the paperwork. So, we were going to immediately just take it to the shop and get some 625s put in it, new head gasket, probably get the head resurfaced or replaced, and we were going to be awesome. But then I got to thinking, well, before we go hand over $5,000 plus dollars to a diesel shop, which we'll probably end up doing anyways, let's go ahead just dive into this thing and see over the last 5 to seven years, could these head studs have potentially loosened up?

[00:01:43]Enough rambling. Tomorrow morning, we're getting on our belly. We're tearing into the 67 and we're gonna fix our freaking head gasket issue. Started by disconnecting our batteries. Now we're gonna go ahead and remove this crankcase hose.

[00:01:56]Get it out of the way. Now we got a bunch of 14 ms. I've got a little additional bracket right here that holds our dipstick, which is pretty cool.

[00:02:07]Well, that is definitely not a good start cuz that bolt feels broken off in there.

[00:02:13]Splendid. Let's hope that is not a sign of what's ahead.

[00:02:24]Well, in addition to retoring our head studs, it appears that we are also going to be doing a valve cover on this truck because we've got one almost two, three, four, almost five, almost six nuts stripped out of this thing. So, last thing that I know got done to this truck was this dual catch can breather system for the crankcase ventilation, which is this hose right here. And you saw we pulled the filter out. It does look brand new. So assuming they threw this on, they did a new filter, and then they either overtorked this and stripped those nuts out or it's just been taken apart so many times that it was due for a new one, and this one's just worn out.

[00:03:00]Either way, obviously, we cannot reuse this. So, I guess I'm going to hop on Google, order us a new valve cover, and then in a couple of days when that comes in, we're going to go ahead and continue the disassembly.

[00:03:12]Catching back up with y'all about a week later because our valve cover is in.

[00:03:14]Now, I went with the Whirly Customs in bright white, which I think is going to tie in perfectly with our other powder coated pieces. My goal is everything white and then the turbo some kind of crazy color. Now, truthfully, I did want one of the crazy billet engraved powder coated ones which look literally insane, but they have like a 4 to 12 week weight and I don't want this truck to sit here for the next 12 weeks. So, uh this is as well like half the price as those and it looks freaking sick and I think it's going to work perfectly. Now, it comes with the hose, which I'm guessing they just wanted to tie into a catch can.

[00:03:44]We're going to tie ours in. Obviously, this has the baffling system as you see there. So, you're eliminating that top piece. There's not going to be a filter anymore. Um, comes with a cap hardware.

[00:03:54]And I'm guessing these plugs because on the factory one, you got that black guy going in and that one, too. And then you also have that electrical plug, which I'm assuming is a crankase pressure sensor. I'm guessing we're just going to leave that unplugged. I'm going to do a little research, but I'm assuming that's what this guy's for is to plug those off cuz obviously there ain't no place for them to go. But with that said, let's go ahead and continue tearing this thing down and get to that top end. 3/4.

[00:04:34]Now we got six 10 ms. Mwah.

[00:05:04]Mwah.

[00:05:12]That whole group was pretty freaking strong.

[00:05:30]Should be able to lift this harness up out of the way.

[00:05:34]Bring her on out.

[00:05:36]Nice and carefully.

[00:05:41]Just like that. Now, we're going to go ahead and remove our rocker box. We've got 10 mil bolts.

[00:06:08]Let's see if we can lift this thing up and off of here with the bolt still in.

[00:06:15]Maybe.

[00:06:17]Hopefully.

[00:06:27]There we go. Now, we got to remove our rockers. So, we're going to be using a 10 mil.

[00:06:52]M m.

[00:07:09]M Well, your boy is being Mr. Impatient because we have made it to stud number one in the sequence of retorqueing. It's one, two, three, fourth stud back and then it goes over and then all the way around and everything. Um, I'm very curious and excited because I'm hoping and praying that these things have backed off and we don't actually have a blown head gasket. Even though that's probably what we got, but I'm still staying hopeful. Let's put the torque wrench to this thing since we finally have access to it and see what it's at.

[00:07:47]Should be 125 ft-lbs.

[00:07:52]Dude, are you kidding me?

[00:07:55]That thing just 100% moved.

[00:08:08]I'm going to go ahead and get these rockers off and then I'll catch up with y'all to check the rest of the studs.

[00:09:25]So, as y'all were hoping able to see every single stud did torque down a little bit more. Now, it wasn't a whole lot, but it was definitely not fully fully torqued down. So, now we have all of those done. I guess I'll show youall how I laid everything out over here. I guess you don't have to technically take the tray out, but I guess it made it I mean, it's easy to take out. Either way, um everything is in order in the way that I took it out.

[00:09:57]Now, these guys we're not using a torque wrench on. You just want to snug them up and apparently be extremely careful cuz if you do too much, you'll snap off that prong on the injector and then you're going to be buying a new injector. And we don't want to wrap this job up by doing that. That is for sure.

[00:10:19]So just thread them down with your finger and then just very gently snug them up. Make sure they stay in that channel.

[00:10:36]Valve cover going in. Let's do our best not to scratch this thing up all the way back.

[00:10:48]That's going to be in the way.

[00:10:52]All right, there we go.

[00:11:05]Boom.

[00:11:08]Got our washers on our bolts.

[00:11:14]Well, let me go ahead and catch y'all up to speed because we are pretty much ready for our first startup. So, as you can tell, looks absolutely incredible in there. I've always really wanted one of those engraved billet ones, but this definitely going to tide us over for possibly forever cuz I love all the white in here. And then once we get a nice big colored turbo, it's going to be just disgusting. But, um, we got everything torqued down. I had to go to the part store and get a new hose because the one that came with the kit was too short and I wanted to keep our catch cans over here. And so, I've got it looped way to the back. That way, we don't have any kinks. And then just ran it the same way up into the catch can.

[00:11:59]I've got our dipstick temporarily held in with a zip tie because we can no longer use that mount. Um, I put the caps, which there's two different sizes.

[00:12:08]I'm not sure why cuz they're the same thing, but you can use the big one on there and then you can take the big piece off of that line and then put the small cap on there. Didn't do anything with the plug cuz I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that. Hopefully that doesn't make the truck not happy. I'm sure they have like a little cap or something put on there to keep it from getting corrosion or whatnot. Let me know what we should do with that thing if you do know in the comments. And who knows, maybe we actually did fix our pressure issue and we don't have a bad head gasket because no, we didn't have these things like 80 lbs or something like that. But they did all turn. But uh you know, worst case scenario, we got a cool valve cover now. And we'll deal with the head gasket later next video.

[00:12:49]Hopefully not. Hopefully we fixed it.

[00:12:51]Let's crank this thing up.

[00:13:36]Well, of course my GoPro that I charged for like 2 hours this morning is completely dead for some reason. So, I guess I'm just going to hold the iPhone up. But, we've been cruising around. All seems good to go. But, we're going to do our first pull in here and just, you know, verify everything is feeling like it should.

[00:14:03]Oh, she sounds good.

[00:14:17]Oh, little tune three. Fourth gear lock up. Telling y'all right now though, if this thing is like dialed and not showing any signs of issue, 2G swap is coming soon because I will take glorious glorious Cumins noises over compound turbo instant torque any day. Call me crazy. I know some people prefer just raw power.

[00:14:40]Don't care that much about the sound.

[00:14:42]I'm ready for the 2G, which is what the big thing for this truck will be. Big colorful turbo, just all the glorious noises.

[00:14:50]That's what I'm looking forward to the most.

[00:14:59]We got to chill. We got to chill the crap out. I'll catch up with y'all once we get back to the farm.

[00:15:15]All right, let's go ahead and shut her down, pop our hood, and hopefully nothing's different.

[00:15:27]Oh, I also took our hood panel off cuz it was absolutely clapped laid over there in a pile. It was disgusting. So, I figured we might as well go ahead and take it off. I need to clean that.

[00:15:40]It's warm. It's hot in general today, but fluid level is good.

[00:15:48]Hose is hard, but you know, squishy enough.

[00:15:53]Do we have any coolant?

[00:15:56]No coolant. That's not wet, is it? No, cuz that's where my finger drove by.

[00:16:01]So, no coolant pushed through from here. I'm going to go ahead and joking joking. That would be an absolute bath.

[00:16:11]Sick. Well, everything looks good. So, there she is, boys. As far as first drive, you know, not beating on her too bad. Just tune three. I don't even think I floored it, but it's, you know, when you hop out of freaking chomper or something and you get into this thing, it don't take much to be like, "Dang, we're moving." But, um, yeah, I'm tickled with that. So, pretty, uh, pretty easy install. Obviously, if you're just doing a valve cover, it is a super super easy install. But thankfully, now we have verified our torque specs on the old studs, which they were all loose. I think there's like two of them that immediately clicked, but then the rest of them turned some. So, I mean, it's kind of a hope and a prayer that that actually would resolve any issue. But it is possible because those studs were put in, you know, five to seven years ago.

[00:16:58]They could lose their torque over time and just the, you know, compounds, they have a they have a lot of drive pressure. Uh, that could potentially have fixed our issue. I doubt it. Those being loose could definitely have caused a head gasket issue because they weren't fully torqued or they backed off over time and that could have allowed it in the hot tune to uh you know damage the head gasket. It could be very minor. It could be intermittent. You know there's no telling. But as far as initial right now we're okay. Um it's not drinking coolant. It's not smoking. It's not doing anything like that would be real scary to where coolant or something could get into somewhere where it would, you know, hydrolock or whatever the case with the engine. But probably still going to do a head gasket job on this truck at some point. Maybe we'll do a race head or something. I don't know.

[00:17:53]But I am really wanting the old compounds off and a 2G swap on, which I've got to do some research on how many extra lines had to be added for the compounds. If you know, going from well, it's got the stock charger on it and then it's just got this I I can't remember. I'll throw it on screen. Yeah, let me know if there is like a boatload of crap that was added for the compounds that I'm going to have to remove to go back to a single turbo, specifically a 2G swap. So, that's going to be about it for this one, guys. Drop a comment, leave a like, subscribe if you're new, ring that bell notification, leave me some feedback, some information down below. Let's get a little discussion going, and I will see y'all boys in the next video.

[00:18:33]That's