I certainly didn't! But hey, that's old news. And as they say, I gotta' be grateful that we're all finally home, safe, and in good health.

I want to send out a special thanks to HowieE, gmctd and Turbine Doc. There assistance was invaluable. Beyond the everyday sharing of information that goes on in the Forums, it's a situation like what I have just experienced that illustrates a true diesel brotherhood...and I'm grateful. In addition, my thanks also go out to others who responded with ideas and a willingness to offer assistance.

BTW, my wife was driving the truck from the Orlando airport to Fort Wilderness when the engine took the dump. Of course, I said to her, "What the heck did you do!" For some reason, she didn't see the humor.

And now the fun begins...except for having to use a crow bar to open my wallet.

Is your truck still in Atlanta (that is where you went to replace the engine, right?)? Or did you stay with it and bring it all home?

The truck currently resides outside of Atlanta awaiting the contribution of the Avant folks. I'll be doing what I can from the sidelines...maybe a quick trip down to get in their way and add my $.02.

The truck currently resides outside of Atlanta awaiting the contribution of the Avant folks. I'll be doing what I can from the sidelines...maybe a quick trip down to get in their way and add my $.02.
You will be adding more than .02.
Cha Ching $$$$$.

Tom,
Glad to hear things are moving forward, other than they ole' crowbar in the wallet thing LOL. Let me know how things work out.
Marty

Glad to hear everybody made it home ok SD.

To bad about your truck though.

Stickin' with the 6.5.

Good choice and good luck...

SpinDrift;
I too am happy all are health and safe. Keep ups posted on the Engine from Avant.

Tom,

I am sorry to hear about your engine failure and the issues it caused. We were down at Animal Kingdom lodge during the same week, but I didn't know about the problem since I had stopped checking my computer. Disney charges crazy rates for 56K access and I wanted to have a vacation.

Anyways, I may not be entirely up to speed on the failure. Did you determine what caused the failure, as GMCTD described it on the diesel page? I am shaking my head in disbelief now because I made the decision to drive our allroad instead of the sub from Ohio. It appears we have similar vehicles (less mods) with close to the same mileage.

Glad everyone is back safe.

ST,
I would love to do some failure analysis...assuming I had enough boxes to get all the pieces home. The amount of schrapnel in the pan was impressive. Wish I had a better answer for you. Absolutely no evidence of oil starvation. Cylinders all looked tip top. The majority of the destruction occurred in the area of nos. 7 and 8. I'm not sure we do enough to address the peculiar design of the coolant flow path. A while back, I commented on what the Hummer boys were doing to address their cooling problems. Initially, I thought their dilemma was more the result of the crappy location of a Hummer's radiator. Now, I'm inclined to think it goes beyond that.

We know this engine won't stand up to heat. Unfortunately, I would have never known the rear end was overheating because the coolant sensor is located up in the bow. Did my use of methanol contribute to the dump? I only ran a 10/90 mix on the way to Orlando, but I was running a higher concentration last year. I've only experienced pre detonation once, and that was last year, and I dumped the load in my water tank pronto.

I'm inclined to think that the catastrophic failure was a cascading event. That may be the easiest question to answer. Rods went first, crank imbalance next, cap next, somewhere in between the oil pump is torn loose? What was the first event? I'm still diggin'.