Engine replacement in a T1N Interstate

[85MH325]

Originally Posted by Tincampers

Good grief.

Good grief... II

[GCinSC2]

Armchair tech here.

Used dipstick as fill ref instead of known fill qty of oil and then check dipstick?

Fingers crossed for you guys.

Unrelated but also about an engine R&R on a dodge Cummins. New engine bought and installed by truck owner not engine builder. At start up watching oil psi gage and no psi. Shut down immediately. Several well educated guesses by others and a few more trials finally installs a manual gage on engine block.

Start and shows good psi everyone relaxes.

The shop hot tanked the engine block (boiled for cleaning) but forgot to remove oil psi sending unit in block and hot tank ruined it is the owners theory.

I’ll go back to recommending oil analysis at first oil change.

Also does the interstate dash have a boost gage? If yes, good monitor boost for your normals if not might want to look at a Scan Gage and see if it works on your chassis. It is connected to OBD port and can monitor 4 values of your choice.

Good luck

Gary

[rowiebowie]

Originally Posted by GCinSC2

Armchair tech here.

Used dipstick as fill ref instead of known fill qty of oil and then check dipstick?

Fingers crossed for you guys.

Good luck

Gary

I have to agree with GC.

But it might be kind of neat if they installed the old oil dipstick. Something from the old engine to remember it by.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by rowiebowie

...it might be kind of neat if they installed the old oil dipstick. Something from the old engine to remember it by.

THEY DID!!



As for the rest of my commentary, here's a screengrab from Instagram because I'm too lazy to type right now. Except the grab did not reproduce the puking emoji, which is one of my personal favorites. Oh well. Use your imaginations, and visualize it following the "Blech!"

[rowiebowie]

For someone who strives to go the extra mile for maintenance and even preventive maintenance, here's to a million trouble-free miles with the new motor so you can joint that elite club.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by rowiebowie

For someone who strives to go the extra mile for maintenance and even preventive maintenance, here's to a million trouble-free miles with the new motor so you can joint that elite club.

Thanks. We may never know what happened to our engine. But what is done is done, and now we move forward.

Yesterday my husband was musing, "If we were going to split a piston, why didn't it happen [in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park]?"

He was referring to North Mountain, which is infamous for its vehicle-killing ability. Getting up that thing basically involves creeping along at 21 p.s.i. on the turbo (i.e., the max load the engine can bear) for a long time and distance. The roads in the Highlands were built decades ago, and some of them are not to today's standards.

In fact, it was on North Mountain where we blew a turbo hose right off the engine last year. It did not split - it was brand new, and it simply came off.

ALL THAT in the way of abuse, and the piston was absolutely fine. Then just a few thousand miles later, sudden catastrophe.

I don't think we will ever know what really happened. I cannot identify a way to learn the truth of it, and I've tried very hard.

[85MH325]

Originally Posted by rowiebowie

For someone who strives to go the extra mile for maintenance and even preventive maintenance, here's to a million trouble-free miles with the new motor so you can joint that elite club.

Here, here! Well said!

[85MH325]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

ALL THAT in the way of abuse, and the piston was absolutely fine. Then just a few thousand miles later, sudden catastrophe.

I don't think we will ever know what really happened. I cannot identify a way to learn the truth of it, and I've tried very hard.

You're right... you'll never know for sure what happened or when. Don't beat yourself up over it at this point.

Metal fatigue is an insidious killer, especially in the lubricated parts of an engine. They work in the dark under unbelievable heat and friction... and they do their job without notice right up until something fails, and there's really no way to tell when the problem began, how it began, or how long it went while it was in service before it failed. In automotive applications it usually means an expensive tow truck ride. In aviation applications it can be even more serious.

That IS, of course, THE main concern when buying used... unknowingly buying someone else's "failures that are waiting to happen." If you're lucky, you get a good one. And now, with the new engine, you know that YOUR van is "a good one!"

[Tincampers]

This whole episode along with our experience last summer going to Alaska and back has me worried about our upcoming trip to the Maritimes.

For sale: 2007 Interstate, great condition. Engine guaranteed to the end of our driveway. $49,999.00.��

[GCinSC2]

That’s a driveway warranty, very common for many situations.

I’ve read about it on the web it must be for real.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Tincampers

This whole episode along with our experience last summer going to Alaska and back has me worried about our upcoming trip to the Maritimes.

For sale: 2007 Interstate, great condition. Engine guaranteed to the end of our driveway. $49,999.00.��

Do you have anticipated dates yet? Have I missed any threads? I was wondering if this was still on your to-do list. Remember, I told you August or bust.

BTW, guess what?? Whoever's engine blows next? If you go through non-junkyard channels, there's a good chance that you are going to get mine - refurb'd and re-warrantied by MB. Because there just aren't that many of them out there to be had.

[InterBlog]

Semi-political comment, but in the context of our Interstate:

Our rig spent 1 month and 1 day at Freightliner in Austin. Right before departing on the trip which put me there, I had washed down the inside from ceiling to floor, because I was having to carry some of my best dress clothes (and 9 pairs of shoes). I had no room in my hectic schedule for dirt smudges.

But US Hwy 183 has been under re-construction for years, and Freightliner fronts on it. Furthermore, Freightliner is downwind. Gulp...

Now, to fully understand this whole situation, you'd have to know something of Austin politics, which are among the most passive aggressive in America. For years, the city adopted an attitude of "if we don't build it, they won't come". By "it" I mean roads, and by "they" I mean newcomers, some foreign but mostly domestic (read: California).

But straight-up obstructionism failed, and so what they do now is build and widen roads very, VERY slowly to accommodate the burgeoning population. Like US 183.

Which most people might interpret as just a roaring inconvenience, but think about all the people who are breathing all that dirt for all those unnecessary years. Every time they plow up a roadway, they expose soil and minerals that are not oxidized because they have been buried, cut off from oxygen. That stuff is not only irritating, it's reactive.

A month of exposure to the torn-up US 183 ruined my reflective roof coating. Not Freightliner's fault - they don't control the right-of-way.

And the entire van interior was coated in a layer of grime, after I HAD JUST WASHED IT. Also not Freightliner's fault. There's no way anybody can avoid the likes of it in that area.

Think of what this does to peoples' lungs. Here's a sample of today's wash water from the INSIDE of our van, after I had just washed it before leaving for Austin. Sheesh!



Incidentally, if you ever want to see a superb documentary, I recommend "The Unforeseen". It's a mesmerizingly well-balanced exploration of the competition between conservation and population growth (Rotten Tomatoes calls it "a calm documentary that doesn't resort to shrill polemics"), and it is centered on the Austin developmental conflicts.

[WillieJ]

Around here, Western Washington State, I have heard the term “road diet” used by transportation planners.

[Tincampers]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

Do you have anticipated dates yet? Have I missed any threads? I was wondering if this was still on your to-do list. Remember, I told you August or bust.

Nothing set in stone but right after Labor Day I’d guess. I haven’t posted anything yet. The SO is doing all the research and then we will map out a route.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Tincampers

Nothing set in stone but right after Labor Day I’d guess. I haven’t posted anything yet. The SO is doing all the research and then we will map out a route.

Hopefully you will have good weather. That's when a lot of Gulf moisture starts barfing northward, up the eastern seaboard in the jet stream, and it can be a real pain.

[Tincampers]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

Hopefully you will have good weather. That's when a lot of Gulf moisture starts barfing northward, up the eastern seaboard in the jet stream, and it can be a real pain.

Black flies or bad weather...choices.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Tincampers

Black flies or bad weather...choices.

August.

[InterBlog]

Cross-posting a thread on Class B Forum where an owner of a 2006 had to do a complete engine replacement at 39,000 miles.

Sheesh, I was under the impression that there's not much that anyone could possibly do to a T1N, short of drowning it in the ocean, that could kill an engine with so few miles.

Anyway, it's a sales listing, so the mods may remove the thread as soon as they see it, but I'm hoping it persists long enough for the seller to reply to this question:



Edit: My bad, it was correctly placed in that forum's Classified section.

[InterBlog]

I have not written about this yet because I am not sure how the larger story is going to turn out. Best to keep silent until more is known.

However, I will say that several idiosyncrasies have manifested with the new engine we had installed last year. *SEVERAL* idiosyncrasies with the extremely expensive new engine that we hoped would give us at least a short period of flawless and stress-free performance.

Here's one of them, which is a ghost in the machine that is impacting our turbo performance. With the sound on in this video, you can hear the engine revving normally. You can hear the transmission responding normally. But there's no turbo action - the pressure never gets above about 1.5. With that kind of revving, it should be hitting 10 psi or above.

This issue has never become chronic - I have always been able to work around it. But these types of conditions rarely get better - they tend to degenerate over time.

To date, it's purely been a start-up issue. You can tell that because the OBD is only reading 160 to 176 degrees during this minute and a half. The engine stabilizes at around 200 degrees once it is fully warmed up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j6d...ature=youtu.be

[Titus]

When you say that it is only at start up, do you mean that you reach full boost when doing this same test on a fully warmed up engine. You only see maximum boost (whatever pressure that is) when the engine is at high speeds under high load. That maximum boost level may be intentionally limited (to avoid turbocharger overspeed or engine over-boost) by a wastegate or a variable geometry turbocharger (VGT). If you have electronic control of the wastegate or VGT I suppose MB may have limited boost under cold engine conditions too. But that does seem odd.