It’s a glorious time to run a diesel engine after the rebuild is completed. it’s bitter sweet because of the money spent and knowing that eventually there will be the same problems down the road that originally caused the engine to wear out in the first place. Thousands of dollars and numerous hours of labor were spent to get to this point. Looking at this situation and all the problems that have developed over the the years I’m thinking why bother rebuilding any more of the our DT MaxxForce and MaxxForce 7 diesel engines.
Parts are priced over the top and their longevity is short as we have found through our experiences. It’s hard to see one of our engines smoking, coughing and sputtering down the road but when the budget is considered wasting money over excessive exhaust pumping out of the tail pipe the latter is inevitable. Will the EPA come knocking at our door? I think not considering all of the non emission vehicles already grand fathered on our roads. It’s all about the money and I want to back off from throwing money away on poor engineering and technology.
This DT diesel running in the video cost us close to 15,000 dollars including our own labor. This is 15,000 dollars that should have been ear marked for other areas of our maintenance program. Normally a school bus running on a stop and go light load routine on a daily basis should last hundreds of thousands of miles before even thinking about a rebuild. The stigma will last for a long time with these engines even though they have gone out of production there will always be stories to tell.
There was comment on one of my previous videos showing high blow by on pthis engine before the rebuild. The gas coming out of the crankcase looked like the exhaust of a choo choo train. The viewer said he removed all of the emission control components from his International diesel which he states runs a heck of a lot better. Of course our shop can not do this due to the responsibility we have as a government body. We have a responsibility to the environment and I could not handle the embarrassment that could com about if we got caught bypassing the emission system.
We’re stuck fighting the good fight. This is a fight that we will struggle with until these buses are auctioned off.
