My Son's roommate called the other day and said his 05 Dodge truck was making a noise and missing when he started it up to come home from work. So he limped it back home. That, he should not have done, but it was only about a mile away from my Son's house. I started it and heard the noise. After talking to several repair shops and my machine shop, we have come to the conclusion that a powdered metal valve seat has fallen out of the head. The fix was going to be cost prohibited to the family for an 05 truck so they asked me to call some wrecking yards to get a value on the truck as is. The short story is I bought the truck for $650.
My machines shop is not only an AERA shop is but is a high dollar race engine builder so he is very capable of replacing all the seats. I can get it done cheap and I can do the work. I plan on replacing all the seats and surfacing the heads if they need it. I just had a friends truck with a 4.3 that had the water pump impeller spin on the shaft, got hot and blew the head gaskets. So I know to replace the water pump as well. My question is there any other problems with this motor I should look at? I'm not real happy with Mopar right now and this family of motors. Should I just fix it on the cheap and flip it to avoid future problems? My Son has an 07 just like this truck with 50K on it and my daughter just traded her 07 with 105K on it and they had no problems from them. This truck is real clean with 80K on it. It would make a good driver for my wife.
How hard is it to get the timing chain lined up and what else should I replace while I'm in there? Thanks