DT466E and the Old Fashioned Service Manuals

This week not much progress was made on our DD13, instead I helped work on the DT466E we have torn apart right next to it. The cylinder head and block deck were polished, and we used a straight edge on the block deck.

Block deck ready to be straight-edged for warpage.

Cylinder head being polished and cleaned. Brake cleaner helps get the grime off after polishing.

My reflection:

With the advancement of technology the vehicles we work on today are much more complex than they were decades ago. However, the tools at our disposal are also much more complex and can make things a lot simpler.

For our DT466E we have no electronic service information like we do for our Detroit Diesel and Cummins engines, so to find specifications for warpage on the block deck and cylinder head, we had to go hunting in the book, and we were actually unable to find these specifications.

Finding information this way tends to be more time-consuming than using the search function on electronic service information to quickly find exactly what we're looking for. That is not to say that electronic service information is perfect, but it usually saves us a great deal of time looking up what we need to know.