Nonsense!

Posted by jdemaris on August 27, 2006 at 06:38:43 from (66.218.24.20):

In Reply to: Re: Diesel vs Gas posted by Mike M on August 26, 2006 at 20:15:51:

That's nonsense. The bad engines were the exceptions, not the good ones. The 6.2s are excellent engines - and GM did not design them (Detroit Diesel did). The later 6.5 is the same engine as the 6.2, but has a slightly larger bore and - for civilian use - a cheapened block with a thinner casting. The US military stills uses the engines in the Hummers - but not the thin-casting blocks.
I've been a diesel mechanic/greasemonkey for 40 years and seen many of the problems from various perspectives. What I mean by that is this: As a mechanic, most equipment that came before me had a problem - i.e. I rarely got to see the stuff that had NO problems. People didn't call me on the phone to tell me how GOOD their stuff was.
I would, though hear stories from owners (or former owners) of tractors and vehicles that would related to "how good" or "how bad" their stuff had been. Very often, an owner's story about problems would reflect what some mechanic had convinced him of, and NOT reality.
On to the 6.2 diesels. When they came out - around 1982 - the popular story was - that they were just an upgraded 5.7 (350 cube) Oldsmobile diesel. And they DID look somewhat similar. But - the 5.7 was designed by Oldsmobile and used the same bore and stoke and basic block design as the 350 Oldsmobile gas engine (crank, heads, and block were beefed up, though). It was a miserable failure and I worked on many new ones for our local Chevy truck dealer in our John Deere shop. That - because the Chevy dealer had NO mechancics that knew anything about diesels. I had nothing but bad experiences with the 5.7s - repeated head gasket failures, oil pumps breaking, Roosamaster injection pump seal and governor failures, etc. But . . . it seems that the lasts ones that GM/Olds built - as Target replacement engines - were pretty good and most problems were ironed out.
Now, when the 6.2 came out - it automatically had a bad reputation. And, little had changed with finding mechanics who knew how to work on the diesel engine, or owners who knew how to use it or take care of it. I witnessed many vehicles get converted to gas because a mechanic could not figure out a simple problem - and I could give you many examples.
I presently have over a dozen vehicles with 6.2s - some on road, some off road, and some get switched back and forth from summer to winter included three plow trucks. Some over 300K miles, and none under 150K miles. I've been fooling around with them since 1982. I've NEVER had any sort of premature engine failure. In fact, I've never had ANY internal failures - excepting my 87 Suburban that crapped out with over 500,000 miles on it. And, even that was probably my fault. I suspect the crank broke, and if so - it probably happened because I should of replaced the harmonic balancer at 250,000 miles.
So now - I hear a familiar negative statement from you - indicating the 6.2 was a bad engine? So tell me just exactly why, i.e., what part of the engine have you found to be unreliable?

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