A friend just told me he has a van just like mine that was sitting in the cold for months, especially cold lately, and he started it up without a block heater and one of the heads cracked.
Although i always use a block heater in cold weather, this still concerns me as i had no idea it could happen. I actually cold started once last winter during a power outage, it was down in the teens at night but it started right up. I guess i was lucky...
Does anyone else know of such a thing happening? Or could it have already been cracked and he just noticed now?
thanks,
Paul

Sounds like an urban legend to me. How does he know he has a cracked head? How does he know if the head is cracked that it is leaking? Did he pressure test it? He probably has a blown head gasket. Cold temps don't make heads crack and head gaskets blow, just the opposite, over heating does the damage.;)

thanks, that confirms what i thought all along - he does have cracked head, but not the engine head.
Paul

I wonder if maybe he had a hard time getting it to start in the cold, and used starting aids....

Ether shouldn't crack a head, but it could a piston or bend a rod or crank.

Ditto, ether can also be hard on head gaskets if too much is used.

D.C.: Have you ever read or heard what the pressures are in the 6.2L engine with normal diesel fuel versus using ether? I know it is high with diesel and the 21:1 compression, but ether is similar to putting some TNT in the engine since ether is so explosive.

We had BMEP (Basic Mean Effective Pressure) curves for aircraft engines that showed the pressure at different manifold pressures on the engines. It was a measure of how much pressure was being put on the top of the piston.

I used to drive All Terrain Harlo forklifts at my old job. It was before I was interested in diesels, but I believe they both had Detroits in them. Any way they were stored out in the cold, no heaters. Always used starter spray/ether to get them going in the mornings. Sounded like we were hitting the engines with mallets when they would start up. They always ran like champs, hard telling how much damage was done to them.