It's the little things...

DamageINC · May 22, 2008

...that cause huge-dollar repairs sometimes.

I have a big ol' village truck in the shop now with a laundry list of smoking, lack of power, and coolant loss concerns. Driving it around and the ECT/EOT spread is over 20 segrees F and the turbo is obviously sticking.

Basically, the turbo's out and I inspected it to find a small crack in the inside of the unison ring. But the more interesting part is that the little crank-pin in the center section that actually moves the unison ring around, has literally ground itself INTO the unison ring. It widened the unison ring groove by a good 1/8". Haven't come across that one before.

Anyway... yeah, this tiny little piece of metal now is resulting in a monster repair job and an eager-to-get-their-truck-back customer.

I kinda wish we had cooler things to tell customers when they learn that they'll be without a truck for a week. but nah, instead we get to be like "well this little guy here is cracked and as a result, we need to down this truck for a while."

Anyway, back to work..

Dave

LARRY BRUDZYNSKI · May 22, 2008

Dave, funny you should see that happen. I just had one of these come thru the shop on Monday, but from the Nav. side. Exactly as you have described it. The pin was ground oblong and the slot was widened, looks like a good place to use bushings.

Shlep · May 23, 2008

Looks like another pattern forming here, I've had 2 of them in the last 6 months that did that. And like your's Dave, they usually want the truck back yesterday and are ticked to no end when they are informed that it'll be at least a week before they can even hope to have it back depending what we've got torn down prior to them limping the truck to the shop.

DamageINC · May 25, 2008

Haha - a little update.

I peeled the heads off yesterday to discover some VERY heavy cylinder wall scoring in 5 of the cylinders. Not sure exactly what the hell happened but either way, hotline's telling me to Short Block it.

On the other hand, I've never seen such a visually obvious "path" of combustion gas into the cooling system as I have from the head gaskets (and cylinder heads and deck surface) on this vehicle. There's a good 1.5 inch span of the sealing surface between cylinders 1 and 3 where you can clearly see it's just charred black and totally blown through, right into the water jackets. Pretty cool.

But either way - a short block now.

How's that for a kick in the nuts!!!!

Dave

DamageINC · June 2, 2008

Just a little side here, I just had another truck with the turbo in the same shape. P0404 and P1335, turbo comes out and apart and sure enough, the pin had widened out the slot another 1/8" or so and there was a good amount of material missing from the actuator pin.

Dave