My roomate has a 91 K or C 3500 1 ton Duallie with a tbi 454 that has major problems. He says that the engine just died along with all the electricals. He said this happend after he went down a short grade going about 20 mph, and got back on the highway accellerating to 50 mph when it happened, and it would not re-start. So he had it towed to the Chevy dealership for repairs. They finally got it started, but said it ran real rough. So the next day we went and checked it out, they said that the engine barley had oil on the end of the dipstick. Next we had them start it, it cranked fine without any unsual noices, and ran really rough sounding like a diesel and blowing a little blue smoke. They also said they did'nt know what was wrong and that they would run a compression test that would take 2.2 hours and $130. Next the chevy manager said that if it was him he would just get a new engine. What do you guys think could be wrong? What caused the problem? Is he getting screwed? I really didn't like the parts manager at all he looked like a snake. I would take a look myself but its not here and i don't know much about cpu engines, even though this one doesn't look bad to work on. Thanks guys, hope i didn't leave out any important details.

 

The oil pump probably starved when your friend was on the 20% grade. Oil pumps need to be constantly in oil, and if the engine was WAYYY too low on oil as it is, it may have starved for oil a few times before that.
The rings were probably damaged, and now you're getting blue smoke (oil burning, as we all know).
My guess is, that the guy was real bad at getting regular oil changes done. I feel like being a parent, and saying "I told you so," but I won't. To fix this, you basically need a rebuild, or at the very least, replacing the rings.
Try the compression test, just to be sure.

 

He also said that he got it really hot twice in the last 5 weeks, which i forgot to mention.