Something I have been seeing more and more of lately.
I have a good friend who owns a wrecker service.
One of the few truly honest ones around here.
Recently a good friend of ours closed his repair shop and went to work for a private company full time. He did all my repairs that I did not do myself, and worked on everything my friend drove.
We knew a couple of top notch mechanics who were either out of work due to another closing, or wanting to work closer to home, so my friend opened a repair shop.
Of course, just as he got it going, the hurricane came along and totally destroyed it.
He is in a rented building now, while working on a new shop. When I get bored, I go down and hang. Of course, I also keep the computer system and other electronic stuff going.
I don't know if this is a nation wide problem or more local. But we are starting to see some major problems with diesels. So far, I have not heard of a Cummings, but a couple of Duramax have bit the dust. Plus one of his wreckers.
The engines are not damaged, but it takes about $4K to get them back on the road.
If you do it right.
If you try to fix them on the cheap, it might cost as much as 7 or 8.
From what we can find out, its the Bosch injector pumps. The pumps themselves are fine, but the fuel sold these days does not meet Bosch standards for lubricity, and maybe other additives.
The pumps do fine anywhere from about 80 to 120K, some much more. But sooner or later they start to eat themselves. They don't stop working, you just start getting loss of power, misfires, hard starting.
But, by that time the damage is done.
One fast and quick check is usually to pull the fuel regulator apart. If you see fine metal particles or shavings, start checking your warranty. If you are lucky, you are still under the 100K warranty.
My friend's Ford wrecker had had a different failure of the injector pump, and Ford put in a new one which extended the warranty.
The new pump started shedding at about 110K. But he was able to get them to cover the damage.
The only true fix, is a new injector pump complete, new lines from the pump to the injectors, along with new injectors. If the truck has a lift pump in the tank, some do and some don't, it has to be replaced, and the tank removed from the truck and steam cleaned.
The lines between the engine and tank can usually be flushed clean. Of course any and all fuel filters have to be replaced and the mounts flushed.
As soon as he realized what was going on, my friend started putting additives in his fuel whenever he fueled up any of his wreckers.
He keeps a bottle of additive in the trucks, and the driver always adds some when he fuels up.
That seems to be the ticket.
He has one wrecker with 450K on the clock.
I'm not a diesel guy, everything I run is gas except for my Mahindra tractor, and when it was running, my big genset.
When I filled the 250 gallon tank for the genset, I would always pour in a quart of RPM Delo400 just before the new fuel went in.
An old diesel guy told me that, and I never had any injector or pump problems.
In my Mahindra, I add an ounce or so of water-cooled 2 Cycle oil when I filled the 5 gallon can. If I was out of the oil, I would add the recommended amount of Standyne lubricity improver.
Not sure what brand of injector pump it has. The motor is made by Mitsubishi, so you would expect it to be a Japanese maker, but Germany and Japan were allies during the war, so..........
One of the local county trucks just had that happen, and the head of the local county yard discussed with my friend and myself about putting some kind of additives in the tank at the county fuel depot.
There are many diesels that fuel up there, including school buses, ambulances, dump trucks, etc.
I suggested looking into some kind of injector system that adds the additive into the line as it flows into the truck.
I know they make them, I have seen them. Adding it into the tank would be fine if you emptied the tank each time. But you don't, and you need to know how much fuel is about to be added in order to determine how much additive to put in when topping the tank off.
An injection system would not care, it would add the correct amount per amount of fuel dispensed.
