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Tell me you have not already bought this. If you can get it cheap enough and DIY the repair, assuming it's head gaskets, it might be worth doing, although, unless you want to go into the towing business, not sure why you would want it.
Although, if you keep on buying all sorts of clunkers, having your own tow truck to retrieve them yourself when they break down might make some sense. Buy a Honda 50, carry that in the trunk, so when you break down, you can ride that pit bike back home and get your wrecker...
Tell me you have not already bought this. If you can get it cheap enough and DIY the repair, assuming it's head gaskets, it might be worth doing, although, unless you want to go into the towing business, not sure why you would want it.
Although, if you keep on buying all sorts of clunkers, having your own tow truck to retrieve them yourself when they break down might make some sense. Buy a Honda 50, carry that in the trunk, so when you break down, you can ride that pit bike back home and get your wrecker...
Its actually for my buddy who is a tow truck driver. He is the one having problems with his tow truck. His shop also does paint and body collison
Well, first thing I would suggest is to check carefully for water (and glycol) in the engine oil. If you can see a "milkshake" on the dipstick - quit driving it, right then.
Don't tell anybody you got this from me, OK, but, at least on old construction equipment - Cats, ditchers, backhoes - a "dodge" would be to drain the coolant entirely and replace it with kerosene. Then change the engine oil as well.
On a modern Diesel, I am not certain you can get away with this. But the idea is, while some kerosene will get into the engine oil just the same as the water was - the kerosene is not as harmful.
I don't really have to say that this is not a permanent repair, right? Kerosene does not have the thermal capacity of water, so you may need to put in a lower temp thermostat, and to keep your foot out of it in hot weather. And probably forget using the A/C.
Odds are, that what your buddy needs to do, is pull the head(s), and replace the head gasket(s). Of course the heads to to a machine shop for checking flatness, and installing new valve guide seals. And of course a pressure check first. But I am not aware of any Cummins engine that is bad to crack heads. That said, there is always a first time.
Usually, you can see where the head gasket failed.
Of course there is a remote chance that the block is cracked. Unless someone has driven the truck into water, or otherwise really abused it, cracked blocks are rare anymore.
There are a couple of things that could have happened to cause this. A head gasket is likely not one of them. You would see coolant in the oil, not usually oil in the coolant.
1.) The oil cooler is leaking... Have it pressure tested. (Note... it is not part of the radiator. It's part of the oil filter housing)
2.) The block is cracked between an oil galley and water galley, allowing them to mix under pressure.
The third option that would apply on some engines (and most unlikely) is that someone ran straight water in the cooling system for a long time, which corroded the piston liners and eventually allowed fluid transfer. But... you would more than likely see some coolant in the oil as well. But.... the ISB series engines (any "B" series Cummins) like the 6.7 Cummins are parent blocks and do not have liners, so scratch that one out.
There's about a 75% chance it's a bad oil cooler and 25% chance that he has a cracked block. They're not that common. But if he does have a cracked block, someone rode that pony really hard.
Last edited by Nlambert; 02-08-2018 at 07:44 AM..
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