For the past two weeks, my friends in Texas have had nothing but problems with their CRD.
Last week, he heard a buzzing sound like an alarm clock coming from under the hood. Yep, turned out to be the dreaded EGR valve. They replaced it, and the EGR cooler. Turns out the cooler had been leaking into the exhaust system, and that was why his low coolant light would keep coming on every 3 or 4000 miles.
Had to take it back in 2 days later. On the first go round, they had found that the air mixing valve in the intake piping was bad also, and had to wait until they got one of those in, then replace it.
Called them tonight, and it turns out it'll have to go back in for another problem. This time the boost controller has gone bad, to the point that their fuel mileage has dropped down to 23 mpg interstate, on the same fuel I saw give this vehicle 32 mpg interstate.
His CRD hasn't had any mods, entirely stock, 20,000 miles. They bought it in March last year, so it had to be an early build. He was still using 0W40 up until my visit, and had also reported the tranny shudder.
I'd bought him a Provent as a Christmas present, and while I was down there we rigged up the hoses and fittings for installation, he was going to install it after taking it to the dealer for a service check, before all these problems raised their heads. We also changed his oil out to Rotella 5W40 while I was there.
Just out of curiosity, we popped off the intercooler hoses to see how much oil was inside them. Actually, there was so much oil inside the hoses, when we loosened the clamps, they slid off by themselves!
When the hoses slid off, there was actually liquid oil left standing on the outside of the intercooler stub pipes. I'm not talking a film, I'm talking enough liquid oil to run down the outside of the pipes and drip off the bottom onto the ground. This was on the inlet AND outlet stub pipes! Both the inlet and outlet hoses were completely black on the inside, dripping wet with oil. Looking down inside the outlet hose with a flashlight, you could see oil puddled in the bottom elbow before it turned up and went to the intake mixing valve.
After looking at this, there must have been quite a few DC engineers and designers who had a strange burning sensation in their ears that day, as both my and my friend's language turned color to match his CRD - dark blue! You're talking about two old retired navy enlisted knuckledragger mechanics, giving vent to their frustration with civilian engineers that have done a poor job designing the machinery they have to operate and maintain. Thankfully there were no young children around.
He'd last had the oil changed around the 18 K mark. When we changed over to Rotella at 20 K, filter and all we drained out slightly less than 6 quarts. He doesn't have skid plates, and we checked underneath pretty thoroughly. No oil leaks. We had a pretty good idea where that other 1/2 quart of oil went, into the intake system.
Even though my friend is a diesel fanatic, loves his Dodge Cummins to death, after what we found during my visit and the problems he's now having, he's just about had it. He's in the process of trying to line up a decent job, and has had to spend two weeks running back and forth to the dealer. He's sworn that if he has to take it back for one more problem, that beast is history.
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