This is a grader that a friend had at one of his mills and when it broke down, they tore it down, bought a bunch of parts and never put it back together. At some point it was pulled outside and left in the weather for several years.

The #6 piston came apart and the rod beat around in the cylinder and broke the block and sleeve all to bits in that area. The rod bearing feels good when you move the rod around.

What're the odds of the crank being cracked? I haven't had much luck with crankshafts lately, last two were both cracked Maybe this one will be OK. That would be a bitter pill to have to come up with a crank.

How often does a piston come apart in a NA, relatively low hp, CAT 6 cylinder? Bad injector washing down the cylinder? or is there some other likely explanation? Sure don't want to do this again.

I've got the pistons soaking with ZEP penetrating spray in each cylinder and sprayed the lifters and cam as well as possible also. I am going to fabricate a "spud" and bolt it onto the crankshaft pulley in place of the damper to use a long cheater pipe to free the engine before we remove it from the grader so it will be easier to tear it down to get the pistons and rods out.

There's a new block, some 19 bearings , a new rod, a piston with rings ,head gasket set, pan gaskets and a new muffler????. The head is complete and reworked, but no injectors or glowplugs. So far I know I also need some pushrods, the intake runner cover (top to the manifold), the sleeve or a set of sleeves, cam bearings, one head bolt that was laying in some water in the floor of the cab (they were scattered all over the machine), and about a hundred gaskets and o-rings.

On the bearings, There are 6 each of 8N-8220, 232-3233, and 4M5738 and one 7S-9439. The 7S-9439 (thrust bearing???) is the only one listed in the parts book I have for the D333 industrial 58B1-58B2417. Does anyone else know what the others are?

Today...........Not much luck turning it after 1 day soaking with ZEP. I made the "wrench" for the long bar, and I can shake the crank, but no piston movement yet. ZEP burns like charcoal lighter fluid:D I put out the fire and refilled each cylinder with ZEP and covered with cardboard again to slow evaporation. Piston tops look better than they did yesterday and I think a little of the ZEP is going somewhere, so maybe that's progress.

I had a very bad experience with a piston seperating on my D47U. THe top half of the piston was made of aluminum and screwed on to the cast base and secured with brass pins. The upper half came loose one day and I was showered with little bits but the engine never even quit. The damage was considerable and I had to replace all the pistons and few odds and ends. Maybe your engine has had something similar happen. I have experience with high hour CAT 12 70D and 71D machines and they have been very realiable. My old 70D had over 16,000 hours on it when I sold it. Hope you can get her running. I don't think you will regret it.

Doug, many of the older Cat pistons were the two piece with the top screwed to the lower half & indeed they had a problem of either getting loose or coming completely apart, seen many of them do it years ago.It was a mistake of engineering.

My D333 87B1-up industrial engine manual shows:
1-7S9439 (main thrust)
6-3S9730 (mains)
Rods:
7M7821 - std
2S502 - .010
2S503 - .020
7M7826 - .030

The rod bearings are listed with the piston/rod assemblies in the parts manual.

Be better to check with parts manual for actual unit or the D6B 37A1 & 44A1 which I have service manual for but not the parts manual.

It's loose!

Tried it again this afternoon with the long cheater pipe, just for grins and it moved a little:D I did notice a sledge hammer sitting nearby and found out that my uncle had done some bumping on the "spud wrench" I had bolted to the crankshaft pulley. He didn't think he had done any good, but apparently he had jarred something loose 'cause one of the cylinders had drained some of the ZEP and it was a little lower in the combustion chamber in the piston.

Once I was sure it was going to really move, I stopped and honed what cylinder wall I could get to with a flat stone type hone. Then turned the crank to get each piston to the exact bottom so the hone could reach the whole bore. When I got through with that, I went to a long pull handle on the crankshaft pulley bolt and turned it through a couple of revolutions to push all the lifters up. I expect they are going to be a little hard to remove to get the cam out. I'll keep spraying with the ZEP and maybe they'll be ok. The ZEP seems to be pretty good stuff.

I has wondered how the crankshaft pulley, it's key and the "weak" end of the crankshaft would stand up to this treatment, and so far it seems to have survived with flying colors. Found there's no crankshaft pulley key, it's a taper fit with a special doweled washer.

I had to fab a better puller than what I had, and when I finally got enough pressure on it and it dropped off the taper, I thought I had broken something. I was expecting a long pull off a straight keyed shaft.

Next is to pull engine and finish tearing it down so we can have the crankshaft and rods checked. Then we'll know if we need a parts engine or just some parts;) Keeping my fingers crossed! I'll get with the local CAT dealer and find out what the bearings all are. They sold them, so they should know what they fit:cool:

We're a long way from worrying about fuel injection yet, but does anyone have information about what part number the injector "valves" are in the service kit of 6 for this engine. I have some for the D330C, in fact I have 8 new ones and 4 used that were good, but the part number for the service kit is obviously different for a 4 cylinder vs a 6 cylinder engine, so I wonder if the valves are different or it's just how many there are that is different?

CC,

Pulling the engine on your blade should be interesting. I pulled the engine on my 70D and it had a shaft within a shaft to run the mechanical controls. They are a bit heavy. We picked it up with a backhoe and it was all the hoe could lift. I thought it would be difficult to stab it back in but we got it the first attempt. Too bad we forgot to put the gasket between the engine and bell housing. We pulled it out and it went back the second time just as good. We made a lifting rig out of a heavy piece of angle iron and drilled holes to match the studs coming out of the valve cover. The friendly folks at the local CAT dealer got a guy out of the oil lab who had been a mechanic in the old days and he told us how to do everything. Sounds like you are making progress.

I am pleased to see that somebody else is using ZEP and knows how good it is.ZEP has saved my hide many times over the years since I started using it.
I have had a problem finding it so I buy it from the local ZEP distributor and he ships it right to my house.I always carry a 24oz can of ZEP45 wherever I expect to be doing any mechanical repair work.Ron G

Ron, I have to agree that it's good stuff. I didn't take any "before" pictures, but this grader had been sitting out in Alabama weather (50 some-odd inches of rainfall/year) for several years with no head and no cover. Every cylinder was full of rainwater and severely rusted. I used the ZEP 'cause I needed to go ahead and get it torn down. Lucky that there were 2 pistons almost at the top of the stroke, 1 missing, so that left 3 with a lot of the bore exposed to rust.I don't know if I will attempt to reuse the sleeves, probably not.

I would have liked to try some of the wilder concoctions and household remedies and see what really works. Well, I know 1 thing that works! 3 days soaking to get this thing loose is pretty good.

I have to say that ZEP has done impossible things for me in the past and if I were faced with the same situation that you found yourself in that the first thing that would come to my mind would be my black can of Zep45.
It sounds like you are well on the way to positive results there and once again,it is nice to know that someone else shares my sentiments and I have tried them all.I use the other stuff for loaners if I happen to have anything else on hand.Ron G:p

Many times a piston failure can be traced down to a bad spray nozzle I found over the many years I did engine rebuilding.It,s also a good thing to check the lifter setting in the injection housing that lifts the pump plungers so they are to specs.All engine parts (units)has to be in tune with each other so they work together properly.