Smoking. Cracked ring...??? What to do

[thejumpsuitman]

I am glad to hear you are getting some resolution to the problem. Reading your experience helped me and I think others as well. As with all things, what any engine can do is unpredictable. Unless you know all the variables, which we never do, you can't really predict when/where you will have problems.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

With all the folks on here considering a bus and still shopping, they can look at me as the guy out front running wildly through the minefield taking all the hits.

Some lessons so far.  

***Have a minimum $5,000 emergency fund for repairs and rebuild the fund after you use  money out of it.

***Have Coach-Net and KNOW HOW IT WORKS

***Never drive away from a shop until you are 100% satisfied or are compensated.

***If your bus needs major repair on the road, make them to tell you how long it will take so you can go home if you need to and come back later.

***Have a lot of friends all over the country where you can squat in a pinch.

I'm sure I can add more to this and maybe some of you can add more, but this is a saying I came up with and unfortunately in my experience, it always holds true...

"Things will always cost more,  take longer, and be more difficult than you think."

[thejumpsuitman]

  Do you have any history on the engine? Not the old "it was rebuilt 10K ago but no paperwork" garbage, but real paperwork that documents everything. Curious how long since an overhaul, miles, .....

 

Nobody made any claims about the engine.  It just ran great with no smoke at all.  It does have some kind of tag on it and it is pretty clean.  The bus is a professional conversion and they installed a digital odometer that reads 30K.  What that means, who knows.

[artvonne]

  So again, and not having any living experience with a Detroit. And equally and obviously we'll never know what caused the piston to break....

  How common is it to have an injector come unglued and drop parts into a cylinder?

  While ether sounds plausible, running sweet for 500 miles and suddenly going Kaboom makes a guy think something more catastrophic happened.

 
 

 

[thejumpsuitman]

  So again, and not having any living experience with a Detroit. And equally and obviously we'll never know what caused the piston to break....

  How common is it to have an injector come unglued and drop parts into a cylinder?

  While ether sounds plausible, running sweet for 500 miles and suddenly going Kaboom makes a guy think something more catastrophic happened.

 

It's scarier than that...  The injector did NOT come apart, they showed it to me.  And I drove it 800 miles without even a hint of trouble.  It all happened at once and completely without warning.

[James77MCI8]

I am glad that it worked out for you. It is amazing how tough these old 2 strokes are!. Regardless of the busted piston the old girl was still trying to get you home!

[chart1]

There is no doubt she would have made it home. If you can get an 8v71 started it will go.

[luvrbus]

Naw he would be on a hook shortly with his engine pumping raw fuel with no compression would not have been long before it seized they are tough engines but not that tough lol

[rampeyboy]

so back to the no fuel in the oil bit...how is that possible with a busted piston? I'm no diesel mechanic but I would think if that cylinder is not burning the fuel/no compression some fuel must be getting in the oil or is it 100% going out the exhaust? Just wonderin'

Boyce

[thejumpsuitman]

There was definitely fuel in the oil.  I don't care what they try to say.  I watched it go from 2 quarts down to 2 quarts over in an hour.  It blotted the rag like water and smelled like diesel.

[DMoedave]

Way to hang J-elvis. cooler heads prevail. You may have felt you should have been compensated for the lost time and all but i think thats where they started to balk. They did offer a way to fix it and it seems like it is working out. I do know that alot of places wont even let a old bus in the drivway because of these kinda things.  Ever try to dock a wooden boat anywhere?

We had a bad experience at a well respected bus repair shop. Went in for brakes and they mentioned that the bus popped out of second when deaccelerating. It did but i just held it in second slowing down. Well "while they were at it" ( laughing about the last centerforld article again) they fixed the trans. never popped out 2nd any more! Just out of 4th and not while slowing down but at anytime. We paid dearly for that! But the brakes worked great!

[Zeroclearance]

Marc, there hasn't been any recommendations from anyone about what to do next that will gauge your engine wear>  so I will make the recommendations that you ASKand pay to remove one of the main bearing caps and inspect the bearings.   You are already paying monies to remove the oil pan.   Ask them how much they will charge you to roll new main bearings in.  Look at the rod bearing from the rod/piston that is removed.

[TedsBUSted]

There was definitely fuel in the oil.  I don't care what they try to say.  I watched it go from 2 quarts down to 2 quarts over in an hour.  It blotted the rag like water and smelled like diesel.

So Jumpsuit suspects roughly one gallon of fuel dilution in an hour?

Presuming the fuel passed through the dead cylinder's injector, rather than a line leak, let's apply math to one injector's maximum potential fuel volume, in one hour, in this application.

I'll start with the easy round numbers:
60mph @10mpg = 6 gallons per hour
6 gallons ÷ 8 cylinders = .75 gallon per injector

Sounds close doesn't it?

Someone else can figure out how much went out the tailpipe.  

[chart1]

Someone else can figure out how much went out the tailpipe.

After doing all the calculations .25 gallons of fuel an hour was the smoke that was coming out the exhuast.

[thejumpsuitman]

Someone else can figure out how much went out the tailpipe.

After doing all the calculations .25 gallons of fuel an hour was the smoke that was coming out the exhuast.

That's brilliant!!!   

[chart1]

Tedsbusted and I have figured out more in 5 minutes than Williams did in 20 days. We will send you the bill!!...LOL