Thinking of buying a 6.2 L diesel.

[solid_snake2786]

Hey guys, I am new to this forum and new to the diesel world. My friend has a 1988 GMC long wheel base truck that he is wanting to sell. I am considering buying it if everything checks out. It has a very low geared four speed tranny in it and a 6.2 L diesel engine. It only has around 100,000 original miles. I was wondering what the reliability of these were and what kind of fuel mileage I can expect. Would this be a good truck to use around town and not make huge trips in? I need something to keep the miles down on my car... Oh, its a 4x4 and i think its a one ton.

[84 Convert]

I have an '84 CC dually 4x4... see sig... at its best I was getting around 17 mpg consistently.(Same tranny as yours W/ 4.10 gears). Mine had been my daily driver work truck until it suddenly developed massive blowby. I have yet to investigate the cause. These trucks are generally fairly reliable, though I think one must be a little more on top of preventative maintenance than some other rigs in order to keep them running well. One plus is that parts are really inexpensive compared to later diesels.

I think my problem has stemmed from one of two things... either not cleaning the ring grooves well enough when re-ringing or running a turbo pump (had to watch the pyrometer and back out if necessary) with iffy injectors and no turbo. (may have had an injector spraying a straight stream on the piston and burned a hole through it). That said, I still got 30K mi on the re-ring pulling a GCVW of around 14-15,000 lbs most of the time. My trucks work hard so you should get even more trouble-free miles from yours is you go easy on it.

Read up around here there is a lot of great info here.

Good luck

Gregg