A little background on the Million Dollar Baby

A little background on the Million Dollar Baby.
The truck is a 1992 Kenworth B Model W-900. It has a 425 h.p. 3406 B-Model Caterpillar engine, a 15 speed deep-reduction transmission with 3:55 Eaton 402 rear ends. It has the V.I.T. Kenworth interior and the Aerodyne I style 60" walk in sleeper with double bunks. It had a 270 inch wheelbase before I cut it down, and I haven't measured it since.
It has approximately 1.5 million miles on it, and I drove it about 900,000 of those miles. I had an inframe rebuild done to the engine in 1999, and it's been running untouched ever since. (Same turbocharger since then too! Today's lesson is change the oil regularly!)
It's on the third clutch since new, and I put an Eaton reconditioned transmission in it at about 1.3 million miles. (It didn't need a clutch then, but I put one in it anyway since the transmission was out already.)

Sunday, August 28, 2011

One of the top causes of diesel engine failure!

This is one of the top causes of heavy truck diesel engine failure; a cracked charge air cooler. This crack was different, and very hard to find. Due to vibration and heat, most charge air coolers crack on the hot side where the intake hooks up to the header pipe of the cooler itself; but this one split right in the middle. Not only in the middle, but on the back side where it faced the radiator. I have never seen one do this. It was a difficult, kind of old school diagnosis, since none of this showed up both times this unit was hooked to a code reader. This got past three different professional diesel mechanics, and it was only found when I showed them how to pressure test a charge air cooler with pipe fittings.

This charge air cooler took the turbocharger and the center section of the exhaust manifold with it when it split; approximately 4K in repairs.



OLD SCHOOL: The firmly held belief, demonstrated by action, that NEW does not always mean BETTER.

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