Glad to See that your going to to take it home.

when i got my oil cooler out of the truck i put it in water and applied air pressure to the oil side, with a regulater at 20 psi. she bubble quiet a bit!


Flash.

 

truck is actually on the mainland, so I don't need to worry about the ferry. I just walked on last night so I could get out to my friend's place that is warm and free and had food and alcohol!

I have paid that ferry trailer surcharge a couple of times, once when I bought a boat in poulsbo as a matter of fact and another time with a boat from bremerton.

Yeah, I5 from here to Oly, then back up to get the truck tomorrow and then home. And THEN back to Oly to return my parents' truck and the rented trailer. The gas alone is going to be painful enough! Their truck is a 454... Ouch!

 

Glad you are on the right path, and have things ironed out.

In defense of the shop owner, and not knowing exactly what words were exchanged, he could have been quoting a worst case scenario. But, from what you say, he didnt have too much diagnostic time in it..... My girlfriend is a service advisor, and they always give a worst case scenario IF they havent dug deep enough to find the exact problem.

The Cummins B-series has "proprietary design characteristics" (to paraphrase a TDR magazine article) that prevent cavitation, and the use of additives in coolant is strongly recommended AGAINST. It is patented, and the folks at Cummins are tight-lipped about it, and rightly so.

I'd still put my money on the oil cooler or head gasket. Is there a gasket between the cooler and block? I've heard conflicting reports on that. Would a later cooler work? I know I run the LF3894 filter, which is "for the 24v" engines. ALmost started a brawl at Cummins when I told them I run it in my 92.

Daniel

 

I would like to find out what other years of cooler I can use, since there were a couple of clean ones on ebay, and the price differential was "substantial"..

 

1989 - 2001 at least.

 

His "best case" scenario was pulling and rebuilding the engine for about $5000. This was assuming that the problem was from cavitation. His worst case estimate was about $7000, which was rebuilding the engine with a new head.

 

I just called the guy and told him that I was coming tomorrow to pick it up. I told him that for the money that was "needed" to fix it I was going to buy another truck.

"what are you planning to do with this one then?" he asks...

yeah right dude...

 

im 60 minutes from you call me if you need help we can tow her home if needed 425 231 1693 bob

 

Thanks for the offer, I have it covered I think.

I went to get some stuff out of the truck on the way home tonight. I went to the address in the phone book and it was a different shop there. The guy looked really worried when I told him who I was looking for and said that the guys who had my truck had been kicked out of that space and implied that I should get my truck away from them right away. He gave me directions to the shop, which had a different name than the phone book, too.

There wasn't a diesel anywhere to be seen except mine, and this guy was the one who said "oh yeah, we all drive diesel trucks like that.."

Lots of bling and pimped out wheels and big knobby tires stacked in the show room, a sullen young gangster looking kid working in the shop, covered in gangster tattoos and listening to the worst strain of wannabe hip hop. I asked for the service manager and he wordlessly walks over to another door and kicks it open and says "he's in there". The guy who came out was rude, wouldn't shake my hand and wasn't the service manager. "yeah, it's unlocked" he says about my truck. *** is it sitting in your un fenced lot, unlocked?! It's locked now!

Yikes! That gangster kid is about the LAST person on earth I want want with his hands in my engine!

Don't go to this shop!
http://www.stillbuiltmotorsports.com/

I can't wait to get my truck out of there!

triple thanks to all the advice and offers of help I've gotten here. I never would have had these creeps rebuild my engine anyway, but I could tell that they really weren't able to even deal with a head gasket honestly if that's what it turns out to be. If I had wanted some really ugly rims and oversized knobby tires, they probably could have set me up, but boy oh boy, him telling me he was an experienced cummins mechanic and owner was pure BS.

 

just scored an oil cooler on ebay for $20 plus shipping, just in case..

 

MAN, look at all those diesels! that's right, putting big rims and tires on in your shop IS just like rebuilding a motor!

 

Sorry to hear about your engine. There is a good article at this web site http://thepowershop.com/index.php?pr=Relief on your problem. Toward the end of the article there is good info on how they finally got the oil sludge removed from the engine with Simple Green. Hope it helps. Did you find out if there was water in the oil pan. Oil pressure from either the head gasket or cooler should have prevented it from contaminating the oil system.

 

i couln't get your link to work all i got was this.

Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

I wouldn't mind reading that artice my self.

Thanks!

Flash.

 

That link worked for me, and I'm sure will turn out to be invaluable. And I am on IE right now, although on my own computer I use firefox.

I did not pull the dipstick to look for water. They told me that there was water in the oil but I haven't looked yet.

 

I don't know this 'shop' of course, and glad I don't, but the water in the oil and oil in the water is possibly one of the oldest scams in the auto repair book. Why?

Because invariabley they drain the water and the oil out of the systems and the evidence is destroyed. Oh, they may have a couple of buckets of the remains, supposedly from your vehicle, but rarely is it left in place. Without oil in the engine you can't take a compression test to verify a blown head gasket, cracked head or whatever. On a gasser engine you can't fire it up to vacuum test which can pinpoint an exact problem. Matter of fact you can't do anything at all but take the shop's word for it that there was indeed water in oil or oil in water!

Quite often the supposedly best fix offered by the shop is to just swap in another engine. Yea, it's a sure thing that will fix whatever the real problem was....