Origin of power stroke engine
Heard a comment at work, today, that the powerstroke diesel, is a gas engine reworked as a diesel. Have not heard or read this before so I thought to ask here .
Forum Discussion
Trackrig wrote:That is urban legend. The 350 diesel was NOT a coverted gas motor. It did share the same bore and stroke for tooling, bit that is all.
No. Chevy / GM did convert the old Chevy 350 to a diesel which is what gave diesels such a bad name for so many years in US vehicles. The 6.0 was not a gas engine.
Bill
Webz wrote:
no, sorry, they werent that...learn more about them before just repeating/spewing off what everyone else on the internet says.
They are based on the oldsmobile 350 (not directly 'converted')....which....was NOT a chevy 350. The diesel blocks are different than the gas 350 blocks
There were two blocks, the D and DX block. The later DX blocks were better. The original problems initiated from only having 4 head bolts per cylinder. It was a stupid design flaw and resulted in lots of blown head gaskets. Compounding the issue was mechanics who didnt know jack diddly about working on diesels. They would all reuse the head bolts (because hey, thats what you do on most gassers, so a diesel is pretty much the same right???) which was NOT acceptable because they were torque to yield bolts. So then this resulted in the head gaskets blowing again soon after the original head gaskets were replaced. This just propogated the bad reputation/name that the old 350 diesels had. That, and they were underpowered and grumpy in the cold.
Another big problem was the lack of water separator and poor fuel filtration setup on the early 350's. All of this added together into an engine that the public despised and didnt want anything to do with because of its poor reputation. Diesels need special care and maintenance techniques, and the simple fact was no one knew that back then, not even mechanics.
