Paying a repair bill for a junk part is a hard pill to swallow.
About 13 years ago, I was in my senior year at
Pitt and I lived just off campus in South Oakland. I had my 99 F350 for about a
year and I got better mileage out of my 7.3 then I did out of my old 4.0. Other
than the effort it took to maneuver the 22-foot-long dually in the inner city I
felt it was superior to my old two door 01 Explorer sport. The best part though
was the novelty of driving that pickup around campus. Some of my fellow
students had never seen a DRW pickup before. “How’d you put four wheels on the
back axle? Is that some kind of kit or did you build it yourself? Can it run on
vegetable oil?” Parking wasn’t bad, there was a large Whole Foods just off campus
with parking spots reserved for electric, hybrid, and alternative fuel
vehicles. The parking spots were right in front of the store and I’d squeeze
eight thousand pounds of pickup between a Prius and an old TDI Jetta before
buying groceries for the week. I told them I had just started working part time
for a company that wanted me to experiment with hydrogen and biodiesel on my
7.3. The hippies and the go green people treated me like a rock star. I also bought
a handheld ECM tuner for the 7.3 and was amazed with the what that tool could
do. Months later after making some smoke and playing around a bit I heard a
loud ticking sound echoing off the buildings near my apartment. I disengaged
the clutch and revved the engine. My
engine was the source of the sound. The company I was working for was very
supportive. They let me borrow their 1995 RAM 2500 and one of the techs helped
me pull the engine. I’d cracked the #4 piston and the bore needed cleaned up. I
took the block to a local machine shop and showed them the damaged bore. A tech
came out, measured the bore and said he could take it to 0.040 over and it wouldn’t
be a problem.
About two weeks later the machine shop called and
said the block was ready and the bill was $490. The machine shop’s office
closed at three, so I paid the bill over the phone and went over to pick up the
block after work. There was only one tech left and he was closing up. He told me the block was sitting on a pallet
out back. I looked the block over and the notes said #4-cylinder bore was worn
0.040 to one side and couldn’t be repaired. The cam bearings had also been
pulled and the block decked and line bored. Why would they continue to put
additional machine work into the block after they determined it was junk? The
tech was gone before I could ask him.
The 99-block got scrapped and I bought a 2002 7.3
out of a rolled F250 for $1200. I never did business with that machine shop
again.
Written by Fernando DeMoura, Diesel Control
Service. Phone 412-327-9400 Website: www.dieselcontrolservice.com