MLVW M36 Crane Trucks

[Paul Singleton]

I haven’t thought of those engines in quite a while. Where I worked we had those engines in Ford F800 trucks. The biggest problem was blown head gaskets. When we had them in garbage trucks one blew a head gasket when fairly new and the dealer that sold us the truck wasn’t licensed to do the engine warranty repairs. We pulled it apart and replaced the head gaskets but no shop in our area at the time had the kit to set the injector height. I adjusted the valves with the injector rocker arms backed off. When it came time to set the injectors without the set up tools I put a dial indicator on the push rod and cranked the engine by hand until the push rod was on the high point on the camshaft lobe. I then put the dial indicator on the injector and tightened up the adjustment gently until the injector was bottomed out. At that point I back off the adjustment 0.035” so the injector tip wouldn’t be damaged. The truck ran well but with a bit of black smoke when accelerating. It was a couple of years until it got a proper adjustment because of the need to pass the new emissions test.