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I have been working a lot lately. The hot weather creates underground wire problems for my company. It only get really hot in this part of Oregon for a few weeks each year. We have had two weeks in the high 90s with very high humidity. We have been very busy 24 hours a day chasing problems in our service area. I worked all weekend this last weekend and came in this morning to a truck I had towed in about 11 PM last night.
I am the only mechanic around on the weekends with this covid crap going around. One of my guys put gasoline in one of our Diesel trucks and it went into limp mode on the freeway. He was able to get it off the freeway and stopped before it quit running. So I had him jump in with another lineman and come back and get another truck. They had a car hit pole with 1000 customers out of power they were responding to. I sent the wrecker service we use for all our vehicle recovery.
I inquired with our transport department in Utah to find out how much gasoline was put in this truck last night. The answer was fairly good news so I had hope that there was no serious damage done. There was 28 gallons of gasoline purchased last night on this truck’s fuel card. So that meant that there was 12 gallons of Diesel in the tank. 75/25 is much better than 90/10. I really was not looking forward to several thousands of dollars worth of fuel pumps and injectors. 75/25 was worth a flush, filters and test. So I drained 40 gallons of 75% gas 25% Diesel and started blowing out fuel lines. Changed the bottom filter and used the pump to purge the rest of the fuel lines up to the engine. The 6.7L Ford Diesel recirculates a lot of fuel so After installing the engine filter I cycled the pump 6 times to push the rest of the gas back into the tank.
The engine fired up and after a couple hiccups smoothed out and purred. It was a very good day! I cleared all the fuel pressure codes and took the truck to the fuel stop and filled it. I then drove it up to Salem our State Capitol on the freeway and back to our shop. A nice 40 mile road trip with a nice South Salem hill on I-5. This is a good long road test that proves our repairs quite well. Back up on the hoist for a look and back in service.
He owned it and was very upset that he had hurt one of our trucks. We have 22 of what I call little buckets. They are the Ford F500 and Dodge 5500 chassis 37-40 ft single man bucket trucks. The way we use our trucks and the EPA emission controls really don’t get along for proper operation. The modern Diesel trucks have just as much smog controls as the gasoline engines. The first thing the EPA wanted to get rid of was visible exhaust smoke. Then that caused more NOx so they got egr valves to lower temps. This caused more soot, Do you see a pattern here? They tried several different combinations over several years each step with tighter restrictions. To the point that now Caterpillar and International no longer make Diesel engines for highway use. My company has spent thousands of extra dollars dealing with emission related engine problems as has everyone.
Half of our little buckets are Gasoline powered and the other half are Diesels. Some of the little buckets are unassigned so they are available for whoever needs them that day. After hours emergency repairs crews are by made up with whoever is willing to come to work. Some of my guys had worked 20 hours extra that weekend already so the crew makeup varies from call to call. My guys are really tired after two long hard weeks of push push push. This was just a mistake and we got lucky. Now I get to go see what I get to do today. Oh happy day. Reminds me of a song.
Truck sat in the yard Tuesday, went out Wednesday. I asked the driver how his day went and if he had any issues with the truck. Different driver so he asked why I had asked and I told him about the Sunday night problem and he said the truck ran fine all day. I think we are safe on this one, another bullet dodged! The fleet lives for another day! Now I can enjoy a 5 day weekend!
As a mechanic I am a terrible judge of what things cost to repair. I work for a large utility and what it costs is what it costs, and it costs a lot to run a utility! It is difficult to maintain a fleet of 100+ trucks when they are considered as disposable tools to do your job. If it breaks just call the mechanic and I make it well again. I am very tired, I have been driving a 2700 gallon potable water truck for my water delivery man because he is off delivering water for the fire fighters in Eastern Oregon wildfires. It has been a very long day. Maybe tomorrow I can continue disassembly on the turbo Saab. Good night all.....
Finally got to the Saab today. It looks like I can make this work in an L body. I need to buy a pair of Ion Redline axles that fit the big spline transaxle to the little Saturn hubs. I didn’t want to make custom axles and these are a factory combo. I should be able to use the LSJ High boost turbo engine and the F40 6 speed transmission in an L series body. I have an extra clutch pedal assembly for an L so I will probably make the swap on a 2000LS that I own and is in my name. It is a dark green sunroof/ power seat car with a broken timing chain.
L
Been working on the greenhouse this weekend. My daughter is starting an organic vegetable starts business. She will be starting from seeds and wholesaling them through a couple local organic produce outlets. We will be heating only half of the greenhouse for the starts. This is a small wood burning stove for some extra heat. She also has a couple 1000 watt grow lights plus a couple 200 watt smaller grow lights for the starts. Should be nice and toasty inside. The grandsons will screw lath over the gaps on all the roll up sides until springtime. Back to the LS1 next weekend.
Finally got to the Saab today. It looks like I can make this work in an L body. I need to buy a pair of Ion Redline axles that fit the big spline transaxle to the little Saturn hubs. I didn’t want to make custom axles and these are a factory combo. I should be able to use the LSJ High boost turbo engine and the F40 6 speed transmission in an L series body. I have an extra clutch pedal assembly for an L so I will probably make the swap on a 2000LS that I own and is in my name. It is a dark green sunroof/ power seat car with a broken timing chain.
L
Don't buy cheap axles. They're to short for the redlines.
Zzperformance sells some that will work. And just an fyi zzps "stage 2" axle is just Napa gold rebranded. They're thicker than stock.
Pretty good day.
