So I have a 2000 Chevy 2500 with the 6.0 and 4L80E. The truck does well but the engine is showing some wear after nearly 270k miles. It still tows my Jeep and does any around town chores I need it to do but it is not my daily driver by any means. My only real complaints with the truck are that it gets pretty poor fuel economy at a max of 13mpg when driving normal and maybe 9-10 when towing my Jeep. Not the worst given what it's doing and it's size but it does make me second guess whether I want to take it across town for something vs trying to fit something large in my car.

So I've been debating two options going forward and curious what other people think.

Option 1: Rebuild the engine in the coming months. The engine is decent but better to rebuild before I get stranded. The plan would be to re-ring and replace all the bearings. Anything else that gets done would be because a thorough inspection shows that it needs it. I've toyed with stroker kits or cam and springs but this seems like it may be more work than it's worth. I would be doing all of the work except any machine work that may need to be done but we aren't talking a $5k shop engine rebuild here.

Option 2: Sell this truck with high miles and buy something 5-10 years newer. I figure the extra creature comforts and technological advancements could be beneficial but I know some of the cylinder deactivation stuff has proven to be unreliable so I'm a little worried about that. More gears in the transmissions might really help with towing as well.

Thoughts?

 

Do a compression check to get an idea of the shape of the engine. If the body is in good shape and you are happy with the truck, then it is worth doing a rebuild. Doing the work yourself will save a lot of money.

 

Yeah leakdown passes but all cylinders are in the yellow. Compression test shows 1 cylinder a little low. If memory serves me, it was 20% down on the average with the others around 5-10% of each other. The more alarming thing was all the bearing material I found in the pan recently. Everything is still good and I'm betting it's cam bearing material which most people say "don't look at and you'll be fine" since I couldn't find any major wear when pulling some of the main and rod caps off. Either way, I know the engine won't last forever and would be nice to get ahead of it.