Actually, the leaking oil came from a bad oil sending unit. That was fixed and you are right, it does not smoke. Since basically the components are similar between the gasser (ptooie) and the CRD, cept the tractor motor, I am looking forward to similar reliability.

I stayed home with the flu today and tried to drink plenty of fluids. I filled a big plastic cup, like you get at football games, with water and commenced with drinking. The flu made that water taste like diesel. The more I drank, the more it tasted like diesel. That's when I jumped up and ran to the garage. Yup, my wife took the cup that I used to drain my fuel filter in and thinking it was my drinking cup brought it back in and put it with are other cups.

True story

I have nothing funny to add to that ^ post.......................

Hope ya get to feelin' better, soon.

jd

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'05 CRD Limited
Pricol EGT, Boost
GDE Hot '11; EDGE Trail switched
SEGR; Provent; Magnaflow;
Suncoast T\C, Transgo Tow'n'Go switch;
Cummins LP module, Fleetguard filter, Filterminder
2.5" Daystar f, OME r; Ranchos; K80767's, Al's lifted uppers
Rubicons, 2.55 Goodyears
Four in a row really makes it go

That reminds me of when my dad drank my wife's contacts. We were away from home and she had to put them in a drinking glass in the bathroom. I thought that water tasted salty he said.

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Manure green 2005 CRD sport4x4, GDE Hot tune, Cat Gut, OE skids, Draw tight hitch, Duramax lift pump, 160K on multiple varieties of fuel, XM radio, Escort live with Redline, fog light mod, GPS, Icom IC7000 all band radio call sign KC9QPF, Grabber AT2s on Soft 8s, FIA grill blanket.

One item that adds life to the aluminum cylinder head is the torque to yield or stretch bolts use to hold the cylinder head on, I checked the SM and we have them. The old VW 1.5L and early 1.6L Diesel engines were lucky to get 100K before the cylinder head had to be pulled and the head gasket replaced. If the driver had the common sense and had the head gasket replaced when it started showing symptoms like the need to top off the coolant more often or pressure in the reservoir tank after a few blocks of driving, or high operating temp, the engine would live until the rings wore out. Others that ignored the symptoms would drive until the engine failed. When VW upgraded to the torque to yield head bolts, the life of the cylinder head gasket increased. I would retorque the non stretch bolt engines every 15,000 miles to extend the life of the head gasket.

Another item that will increase the life span of our CRDs is the wet cylinder sleeves that in theory have better heat distribution to the coolant than parent bore engines meaning, no hot spots to cause scoring that takes out pistons and rings. But in reality Cummins 5.9L engines have well designed parent bore blocks and last for a long time. Perkins used parent bore or dry sleeves and older IHC engines used dry sleeves that would last 10,000 hours plus, they had well designed blocks as well. Good engineering defies theory.

With out sounding like one of our elected officials running for office, my only concern with a wet sleeved engine, is failure of the wet sleeve seals in the bottom where the meet the block. Since my old Farmall BN that is 64 years old has the original wet sleeve seals, is OK and Detroit Diesel used them for many years with no problems, I suspect VM followed Detroit Diesel's wisdom instead of committing the mistake John Deere did on their old 4010, 3010, 4020, and 3020 diesel tractor engines. John Deere should have put vending machines at their dealers until they fixed this one with better seals, back then 2,000 hours was all they got per overhaul, I did a quite few overhauls the summer I was an intern at a John Deere dealer years ago.

I will not be surprised to see our CRDs go 500,000 miles on the lower end, but the head gasket may only go 250,000 miles. When the head gasket looks tired, pull it check it with the straight edge, and take a good look at the cylinder walls, no dark spots indicating over heating with hone marks in the cylinder walls, clean it up and put the head back on with a new set of head bolts.
All bets are of if you try to defy the laws of physics and drive it with a major loss of coolant and over heat it.
as long as you don't over heat the engine, piston ring life any more is a function of how much dirt the engine eats, change the filter when it needs it and dirt is not a problem.

Steve

Steve

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2006 Pearl Green CRD
Magnaflow 2 1/2" Cat Back
KJ Extra Leg Room Brackets, Carter Lift Pump, V6 Airbox, ORM
Fuel cooler, Oil Separator, Progard 7
Gauges EGT Boost Trans Temp Oil Pres, Michelin LXT AT2 245 70 R16
7,000# Draw Tight hitch, PML EX Deep Trans Pan
Centrifuge, SunCoast, Transgo, RAM TCM, InMotion Stage 2
Wife's 99 TDI VW Beetle