Never paid close attention to it until tearing this one down, but I found it interesting that the water pump has a passageway that deadheads coolant against the side of the fuel filter tower. I suppose this is meant to warm up the fuel a bit for those in the colder climates… or is there some other explanation? Colder fuel in theory is supposed to make more power 🤔. When we removed the casting that links them together several weeks ago, it was almost completely full of sediment.

Whats with the wires at the valve covers? Did you add glow plugs?

I did not realize glow plug rails were still available. Sweet! Can't tell who is more excited to have the D6 buttoned up, you or everyone salivating on the BB!
It is unimaginable how many dollars and time spent to do a proper overhaul on this unit. You might have been customer of the month at Piggy Smiths!
As a side note, a local tree nursery used to own a D2 tree digger; after being cast off in their bone pile, I am told it was exported to England or Australia. It would be nice to know if it had been restored or laid to rest.
Sitting back and biting our nails to see the action videos. JM

Juiceman, you got it right…..the time and money tied up in this rebuild is cringeworthy. But the goal is to do it right the first time and have a machine that will last me my lifetime. 

The correct glow plug wiring harness for a D318 is unobtainium. I ended up buying an aftermarket harness (CTP), however it’s actually meant for a D6C (part# 5S8479). This left two challenges: mounting the harness, and changing out the terminals that slip onto the glow plugs because the ones that come on the D6C harness are too small for the 3H2033 glow plugs, and the CAT terminals for the D318 harness are also discontinued. 

The mounting tabs on the D6C harness don’t line up with the studs that hold down the valve covers, and if they did, the holes in the tabs are too small to slip onto the studs. We egged out the hole on the tab on one end and got it directly onto a valve cover stud. The other two tabs on the harness required a bracket to be fabricated to hold them, as can be seen in the pics down below.  

To address the terminals on the harness, I took a trip to the local automotive hardware store in my small town. I found the best fit were terminals meant for a distributor/coil wire just like the ones pictured here:
brillman.com/product/straight-high-tensi...ibutorcoil-terminal/
The length of wires coming out of the D6C harness are just long enough to reach all of the glow plugs. If you cut the terminals off of the wires, the wires will likely be too short to reach the glow plugs. To preserve the wire length, we were able to decrimp the old terminals by applying crimping pressure to the old terminals 90 degrees opposite from where they were factory crimped.  I’m very happy with how it turned out. 

  
 

 

I ordered the two replacement pushrods from a vendor in Washington state because they were the closest option to me that had them. Only to discover when they arrived on Tuesday that I screwed up and ordered the wrong part number and the pushrods were 14-1/4” long instead of the proper 17-1/4”. I still don’t know where I got that part number from, but it was from a Cat parts book. When I looked up the part number once again, fortunately for me, Smith’s did have the correct ones, and I made the 3 hour round trip yesterday to go get them. We popped them in as soon as I got back, set the valves again to .012 and turned the engine by hand and checked the valve clearance about 3 more times, prelubed the engine and put the automatic charger on the batteries to let it go overnight and went home.

This morning was the big day:


I need to remember my youtube password so I can upload the video and then I have to remember how to embed it on here….  Bear with me and I’ll get the video of the first start on the stand posted up!

Congrats Nick! Now you need to make it stop raining, so your crew can get in and begin digging the bare root stock.
Do you have any attachments for your 8U tree digger? I have seen some neat set ups here; spray booms, toppers and single row chopper heads to trim them down.
Some old school machines using remote cameras too, instead of an old truck mirror...
Let's see some videos of it slogging away in the muck too please. JM

Video of D318 first fire

Nice work Nick, just need to see a bit of black smoke out of it while working to run in, coming along very nice.

Very nice, now to put it in the frame and back to work.
Those were the sweetest sounding engines at work.
CTS

Anybody know what the high idle spec is supposed to be? I know low idle is supposed to be 550. All it seems we can get out of this governor is around 1400 max. And low won’t go below 900…..

Per an old post via OM on another forum: 9U1-16536 is 550 rpm low idle, and 1535 high side.
Later serial 16,537 above is 1725 rpms if this helps. JM