10-4 Magazine November 2023

56 10-4 Magazine / November 2023 to, Google it now, before you actually need to do it. And then, when you get the opportunity to do the work yourself, do it and save the money. The more you know about how your vehicle operates, the easier it will be to fix. I usually have spare parts on the shelf for these emergencies. I don’t always have an extra turbo, since they are a bit expensive, and there is an outlet here in town that can get one to me the same day. However, I have all the part numbers and size requirements for this engine. I got lucky when I called because they had one in stock with a wear mark from shipping. I’m not opposed to scratches when it saves me $500! Finding a charge air cooler was much more difficult. The type I use comes from Louisville, Kentucky, and has a lead time of three or four days to get it shipped. Thanks to Old Dominion (the trucking company), they had to send five separate packages because of damage caused during shipping. It’s a good thing there was a factory takeoff in my shop, because it ended up being two weeks before I received one I could use (I didn’t want to reuse the old cooler since some small pieces of the turbo were missing when I inspected the compressor wheel). Most likely those small pieces are loose inside the tubing and there is a possibility those chips could pass through the intake and find their way into the head or the combustion chamber. I’m not willing to gamble a $50K engine on a thousand dollar charge air cooler. At a later date I will clean the old cooler and try to locate any chips before I place it back on the shelf for future use. All things considered, I finished the day feeling confident I had served the company well. I broke down at 4:00 AM, 70 miles from my yard and 100 miles from our customer, loaded with tubing for a specific job. They needed the product I was bringing to satisfy their customer. And even with all the setbacks I encountered, I still rolled into their place of business by 4:00 PM the same day to complete the dispatch. In the words of a famous actor who played Grandpa McCoy on a television show when I was a kid, “No brag, just fact!” And that’s not a big winded story. If I had to use a wrecker service and then wait for a service shop to fix me up, I might still be waiting for them to call me. As it was, I found all the right parts, collected them up, and then drove back to the little roadside rest where I had parked the truck. Aunt Barb and I mounted the new turbo and swapped out the charge air cooler with a used, but serviceable, one. No one said trucking was easy, but it’s amazing what can be done – all in a day’s work. Just think, if I didn’t have my window down and had not been listening to my truck, I might not have heard the early signs of trouble. This could have been much worse and a more expensive repair than it was. Once again, I couldn’t do it by myself, but with a little help from my friends, I am invincible, 10-4! n