To those of you that subscribe to the Official Load 1 Yard Grapevine, you know that I had an engine blow on one of my Sprinters a couple of weeks ago.
The finishing touches are being put on the replacement engine and it should be running tomorrow. Checks done on the replacement showed that there is no internal carbon deposits, and part numbers are still readable on the fuel rail and the injectors. We estimate it has between 25 and 30k on it rather than the 80k we first thought.
The interesting part of this whole thing is we did find what the cause of the original engine failure was. The crankshaft snapped in two at the fifth journal. The bolts on the main bearing cap of this journal can be removed with your fingers. It is apparent that the bolts were never torqued. Since these are torque to yield bolts, it can be proven that they weren't torqued. They are shorter than the bolts on the other main bearing caps.
Given that, I plan to contact Mercedes to file a complaint to see if they will come up with some bucks. I hold no expectation that they will, but it's worth a shot.
The finishing touches are being put on the replacement engine and it should be running tomorrow. Checks done on the replacement showed that there is no internal carbon deposits, and part numbers are still readable on the fuel rail and the injectors. We estimate it has between 25 and 30k on it rather than the 80k we first thought.
The interesting part of this whole thing is we did find what the cause of the original engine failure was. The crankshaft snapped in two at the fifth journal. The bolts on the main bearing cap of this journal can be removed with your fingers. It is apparent that the bolts were never torqued. Since these are torque to yield bolts, it can be proven that they weren't torqued. They are shorter than the bolts on the other main bearing caps.
Given that, I plan to contact Mercedes to file a complaint to see if they will come up with some bucks. I hold no expectation that they will, but it's worth a shot.
