#45f My poor little truck engine

Going backwards a little bit I noticed we have a lot of blow by coming out of the engine. This means the rings are going and it won't be too long before were looking at an engine rebuild or buy a new one. When I was at the carwash, I was spraying the engine and about the time I finished washing the engine started spitting the sputtering like it was going to die.

The engine was giving a symptom like it's a 6 cylinder that sounded like it was running on 2 cylinders. Black smoke was pouring out of it along with bright white smoke along with every kind of smoke and it's extremely loud and it would barely run at all. It sounded like it was going to blow up. The girls noticed one of our indicators on the dash said we had water in the fuel. The owner’s manual showed a drain valve and how to bleed it off. I tried that and then I just thought driving in a little bit might help work it out. I tried that and I went about a mile and didn't did not make any difference. I finally just kind of get out on the big road and somebody waved me down going on the road and said if you don't stop driving that truck, you're going to blow it up. He said it sounds like gas in your diesel or something. I thought that doesn’t seem possible. I took his advice and took the next exit and saw a Safeway grocery store and pulled into the parking lot and cut it off. I called Good Sam and it seemed like it they were being weird. Their policy would only tow you to the nearest garage which might not be a good choice. I decided to just get us a cab and figure it out the next day. The cab company gave us a ride home which was about 30 miles away charged us just under $100. It sucked but these are things you have to do is so there you go. We then went to bed.

The next day I gathered my thoughts and found a company that would tow it to a RV repair place that was referred by the SKPs. The guy suggested Eric's RV might be a good place to go. Good Sam gave me a good discount for the tow. I found a rental car place that was located in Sequim. I walked from the RV down to the bus stop a mile or so away. I got on the bus and started the process of getting a rental car. Now with new wheels I went to meet the tow truck driver in Port Angeles. Then we both went to the Eric's RV and I left the truck there. I gave an explanation to the owner and he said he would work on it as soon as he could. We didn't hear much for a day or two.

Repairs

I just wanted to mention something about the repairs that we have had so far on the trip because we are presently experiencing another one yesterday. To go back about a week, we were at Sol Duc and I just kind of noticed the truck was smoking way more than it should. It was a little low on oil, so I added some. Since that time, I've noticed that it's been blowing a lot of blue smoke. Quite a lot at startup but when it fully warms up it gets a little better. I noticed a little oil leaking out the valve cover. I took the oil filler cap off while it was running, and it nearly blew it out of my hand. This is what's called blow by. Blow by is usually an indicator that your rings are shot or is certainly not happy. I called my favorite diesel mechanic, Tom sessions and he said that not to fret but when you got bad rings, you're looking at approximately an engine rebuild.

The blow by that was coming out of the engine is pretty smelly. Its crankcase gases and kind of really exhaust that instead of going out the back to the muffler, just coming back up towards the ventilation cap.

Of course, this is where you add the oil but it also is the area of the engine where ventilation of the crankcase occurs. There should be almost zero exhaust gases waffling out and of course like I said it was almost like the exhaust gas was pouring out of the oil filler cap.

It's bad that it's happening but it's also bad to breathe.

She was coming out so much it’s kind of like having a muffler in front of your windshield where it kind pours into the front seat area if you have the windows down. You can even smell it with the windows up.

I felt like I had to have some kind of a solution.

I needed to make something to make all these smelly gases tolerable until I can get to Dallas for the engine re build.

I found some sort of a gasket thing at Lowe's that would fit into the ventilator cap and adapted something like a shop vacuum cleaner hose to it.

Then I did some plumbing with a one and a half quarter inch piece of PVC and I did a 45 down and then back towards the rear of the truck. The flex hose was connected to the plc.

I was pretty sure that not just gases but oil would be spraying into this and dripping out on the road. I sort of forced the exit of the plc. pipe it into a gallon jug that would trap the oil. I would be a pretty good citizen going down the road. This was quite a contraption to look at and when I got to Dallas the guy looked at it and just couldn't believe his eyes. He wanted to take pictures of it and keep it for laughs.

It would send the fumes out of the engine down and towards the back of the truck instead of in my face. It did solve the problem but it was quite a contraption to look at it. I just wanted to throw this in as to my many mixes of my little inventions.

Repair fatigue

Ever since our first repair I went ahead and purchased a defibrillator machine that I keep in my backpack because of the repair bills we pay.

First, we had the suspension rebuilt and I certainly would have used it then. Since then, I went ahead and bought the portable one and it really came in handy when I needed to get the fuel injectors replaced. They were 500 each totaling 3,000. Next 800 for the work at Eric’s RV. Now it’s entirely possible that we're looking at an engine rebuild which I ‘m sure is many thousands of dollars.

I've looked around and if I bought what’s called a long block that would run about 6,000. There is labor to add to that. A long block is the bare engine and cylinder head all rebuilt and good for about 300,000 miles. You remove and replace but you reuse all the peripheral parts that are part of your engine. Alternator, water pump ac unit etc. I shopped quite a bit online and there's some engine rebuilder guys in Texas that are showing a great deal. They are in Kaufman Texas about an hour east of Dallas. The guy said he can remove mine install the long block all turnkey for under 5,000.

We would have gone back towards NC in a casual way returning in about one year. The engine was on borrowed time so my goal is to go towards Dallas and let them take care of it as soon as I can get there.