6.5 diesel Detroit Controversy

svrh89 said:

I think most of the early small trucks were but i don't remember exactly

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The Ford Courier was Mazda, IIRC. It had the infamous glass float bowl on the carburetor. The Dodge D50 was Mitsubishi.

The LUV diesel, and the Chevette Diesel used the same engine.

It allowed some savings on both vehicles, because there was no need for a horn. You could hear them knocking two blocks away.

Trivia: LUV was short for Light Utility Vehicle. The name has been recently recycled for use on a Military vehicle.

This may not be too popular around here, but if you really want a diesel, dont get a GM. Im a life long, hardcore GM fan, and I have a 7.3 Powerstroke.

GM rules the gasser world, but not diesels unfortunately.

@skylark you can't fool me, I know deep down you love that bag of hammers rattle.
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My personal experience with a 6.5 so far has been decent. Bought my truck out of a junkyard and it sat for an additional two years before I finally got around to it, about 2K in little odds and ends stuff that it needed right off the bat and it's a fairly decent run around truck. I'm going to be working it over to where it'll be a tow rig. I've got a 454 truck that I love, and if I hadn't gotten this truck for such a deal I probably wouldn't have bought it. I'm anxious to see how it tows but since it's a CCLB K3500 with 4.10s the biggest caveat is going to be the engine.
6.5s are extremely temperamental mills, not the best and not necessarily the worst. Tons of folks out there know them inside, outside, upside down, right side up, every ugly little detail and it's to the point where there's enough information out there now that if you know what to look for you can weed out a "good" 6.5 truck. I use "good" as a relative term of course. There's tons of work that can be done to them to make them "okay" engines, if you're pulling light and you're absolutely fiending for an early GM diesel try to get one for a hell of a deal so you won't be hurting too bad when something breaks; otherwise I'd say try to find a Vortec truck if you absolutely want a GMT400 to drive.

BNielsen said:

@skylark you can't fool me, I know deep down you love that bag of hammers rattle.
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Your hilarious! I'd much rather have to constantly tighten every bolt on a Cummins instead of praying every time that I twist the key.

BNielsen said:

Tons of folks out there know them inside, outside, upside down, right side up, every ugly little detail

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That is because they had to learn because sane people won't work on them.

skylark said:

Your hilarious! I'd much rather have to constantly tighten every bolt on a Cummins instead of praying every time that I twist the key.

That is because they had to learn because sane people won't work on them.

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So much strong feelings!
I actually believe the 6.5 has its place. When mechanical injection is used, and the system set up properly, the 6.5 is a great alternative fuel burner. I ran mine on any liquid petroleum I could get my hands on. I even experimented with melting chocolate bars. Yes, melted chocolate bars make the 6.5 run. I concur, owning a 6.5 and sanity aren't something that goes together!
But I do agree, I'd rather have a cummins. However, they're not indestructible. I'm building what will be the 3rd one for my dodge.
My brother and I still play with the 6.5, and with very serious modification, they can be made to run reliably at decent power levels. I'd never try towing with the 6.5, it's injection design isn't friendly to towing.

CumminsFever said:

I even experimented with melting chocolate bars. Yes, melted chocolate bars make the 6.5 run.

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Can you explain that a little?

CumminsFever said:

So much strong feelings!

But I do agree, I'd rather have a cummins.

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CumminsFever said:

I'd never try towing with the 6.5, it's injection design isn't friendly to towing.

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Strong feelings indeed. If you had a girlfriend let you down time after time and she liked to randomly kick you in the balls, you'd have strong feelings too! If that girlfriend was a smoking hot , nymphomaniac ex prom queen and you were into pain then it might be worth it. The rest of us just cut our losses and get the heck out.

I read into your comments above that you don't really trust the 6.5 either. If you can't do all of the truck stuff then you might as well get ab El Camino.

454cid said:

Can you explain that a little?

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I'm going to give a jaded response here. It must be the driver that he is talking about because you get the Hershey squirts after being butt r@ped repeatedly by Silverback gorillas.

454cid said:

Can you explain that a little?

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I'll give the longish story.
My old boss got a 53' flatbed load of waste chocolate from hershey every week. This was far in excess of what he could feed to cattle, and storing it wasn't an option at the time. So, some of it would fall into a fire. I noticed how, once it got hot, it burnt very clean. So, I took a 5 gallon bucket of chocolate home. Strait chocolate, like your standard hershey bar. In a cooking pot I melted a hunk of it, then put a 6.5 marine injector in our pop tester, and proceeded to spray melted chocolate. Torch in hand, i sprayed the chocolate and held the torch up to it. WOOF! A clean burn! Quickly cleaned out the stuff, and set up a spare engine on the stand. (don't all 6.5 owners keep spare engines?) In a larger cooking pot I put a hunk of chocolate and plumbed lines to the injector pump of the engine. Propane torch made short work of melting the chocolate, and a few revolutions later the old 6.5 came alive!
Ever smelled burnt chocolate? Horrible. Like burnt vegetable oil and burnt hair mixed. However, it did run. It ran clean.
To be fair, there was NO filtering involved, and I would not recommend this. However, with heat and filtering, motoring down the road is possible on chocolate bars.