MCI 7 with water in oil, how hard to change head gasket?

[napamikey]

Hey guys. Looking at an MCI-7 and it has water in oil.  How hard is it to pull the engine?  I have access to fork lift, etc.  Maybe I could buy a rebuilt and toss in.  Or do you recommend fixing this with the engine in the bus?  It has a 8v71 turbo.

Thanks!

Mike

[blue_goose]

Did you mean water in the OIL?  If so you may have a cracked head.

JACK

[napamikey]

Yep. water in oil.  Sorry.  How hard is it to pull engine out to rebuild or fix?

[luvrbus]

Engines are easy to pull on MCI's pull the air covers and take a look it may not need overhauling and heads are not that bad to remove with the engine in the bus fwiw

good luck

[napamikey]

By easy do you mean 5 hours or 15 hours?  I have a 5a but have only done maintenance thus far, just want to make sure I'm not biting off more than I can chew   The thing is I have a shop I can do the work but I cannot store bus in the shop.  Was thinking it would be a lot easier to keep bus in the yard and do the engine work in the shop rather than towing bus back and forth 

Thanks again!

[luvrbus]

4 hrs max with one person, while I dearly love the old 2 stroke engine I would not spend a lot of money on a 8v71 you can buy the Gillig transit with a series 50 and B400 Allison for 2000 to 5000 and have all the parts for a modern power train and better fuel mileage then sell the rest for scrap.LOL and I don't even like a 50 series but common sense with a T drive it is the way to go, you can spend big bucks nowadays overhauling a 8v71 and still have a 8v71, don't laugh Jack Campbell 

[bevans6]

Getting the power train out if you have a fork lift is probably decent days work for one guy who's never done it before, if you find your tools first, get some big buckets for the oil and the coolant and stuff like that (I use the big rubbermaid totes), and make the cradle to lift the engine on the forks.  The hardest part for me was actually undoing the drive shaft.  Taking the head off is pretty easy, it's putting it back on that's hard.  There isn't actually a head gasket, there are fire rings to seal the top of the cylinders and rubber o-rings for everything else.  The hard part of replacing the head is it's bloody heavy and you need to set it down right on the block, and you need to run the rack to set up all the injectors and valves.  Easy if you can follow the instructions in the book.

The MC-7 has a lot more room in the engine bay than your MC-5, so it would be fairly easy to pull the heads without pulling the engine.  Use an engine hoist to lift them.

Edit, Clifford works harder than I do, obviously!     Speaking which, did you ever put my aftercooler (my wife calls it the afterburner) kit together?  Can I send you something for shipping/

Brian

[napamikey]

And pandora's box opens!
I like the MCI-7 due do it's structural integrity and re-powering to a different drive train seems to be a too big job. That said I only want to do this once.  How big is the job putting something else into it? How would the cooling system handle it?

I have access to a diesel shop. My buddy is the foreman but we prob only put in one day a month to these projects which is why I think pulling the engine even to inspect the head may be a good way to go.  My 5 has been sitting in the yard for almost 2 years and all we have done is replace a radiator and some panels!

[bevans6]

I met some guys at the non-rally in South Carolina that were cooling a Series 50 in an MC-9 with just one of the two stock radiators...  There were at least three of them there, maybe four, and they all bragged on the conversion.  It's too tall to fit in the MC-5 by about a half inch, but I came close to trying.

Brian

[Zeroclearance]

It took a lot for Clifford to even mention the Series 50 swap..   He must of been cursing his keyboard as he typed the reply.   (I was laughing when I read it)..   The reality is the 71 series engine is getting very expensive to fix, and maintain.   Buying a complete bus with all the components makes sense.  Getting the B500 or 4000 is a bonus.

[napamikey]

Maybe I should just pull the engine, put it on a trailer and buy a truck to pull it around with!  Put a 50 HP electric motor to drivetrain and air compressor so I can move it on and offer the trailer into it's parking spot!

[luvrbus]

Just a alternative for you the 7 has plenty of room for a swap, do what ever you choose but one can stick 10,000 in parts in the 71 with today's prices a little less if you go with the offshore $#!%

good luck

[TomC]

Even an engine as small as the Cummins ISB 6.7 liter (like the one in a Dodge Pickup) has an RV power rating of 320hp and 800lb/ft torque-which is the same as a naturally aspirated 8V-71. Even better would be the Cummins ISL 8.9 liter that is available up to 450hp and 1250lb/ft torque. And to think a natually aspirated 12V-71 put out 456hp and 1200lb/ft torque-unbelivable. Good Luck,TomC

[Boomer]

Don't exactly know the ins and outs of the 7 engine bay but I have owned lots of MC8's & MC9's.  The beauty of swapping in a S50 into a 9 is all the parts are available right out of the MC12 parts manual as Greyhound ran many of the MC12 powered S50's.  Up here in the NW there were a couple of fleets that did lots of those 2 stroke to S50 conversions and it is not a big deal.  A little vibration, but great fuel milage and no heating problems; CAC on one side and radiator on the other using the stock fan drive.

[luvrbus]

Plus the 50 and the B400 are so cheap now to buy