Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Oily drips, thingamijiggies and low risk of engine fire

My beloved Mack, with his 452,000 miles, has sprung some leaks. (Can I get a collective, sympathetic "Awwww!" from my 8 blog followers?)

I hope it isn't serious. One is caused by a loose bolt (not an original bolt, but one that was wrenched on at some point in my Mack's long life) at one of the 6 ports where the exhaust manifold bolts to the black square thingamijiggy that I think of as an engine block, but the mechanics called something else.

Have I mentioned that being trained as a driver is very very different from being trained in diesel tractor mechanics ... need I say we're not trained in thorough parts' identification?

My bad.

We're trained to look for connections, leaks, erosion, breaks, mysterious wetness, etc. Which led me to notice wet bolts and drips on the asphalt.

So the other leak, apparently, is a fuel leak. What I took for an oily drip was really a fuel drip that melted oily build up and made 2 black 1 inch puddles on the asphalt under my truck. Sooooo eeeeeasy to overlook. But, um, sort of important.

I mean, like the Soop said, the mechanics are going to look at my Mack on Friday. They'll blast off the gunk and drive it to try to find where the fuel leak is. In the meantime (as the mechanic told me) it's not really a red-tagging kind of problem. And (as the Soop told me) the risk of an engine fire is small, based on its general location.

Yay.

Did I mention I'm off Wednesday and Thursday? Meaning the other class A driver gets to drive my Mack? No worries, gentle readers. He should read the DVIR. (That's the official log where we pass notes to one another.) Should.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.