[biodiesel]

In short, if you have a proper built engine with proper spec parts, then you'll be in the high mileage club! (85) 100,000 - 500,000 Mile Club | RAM 1500 Diesel Forum

 

[Augiedoggy]

Your guess could be a good one, but if it's a design flaw why do over 90% of the engines not fail?

I cant take credit for the explanation, its more or less the explanation offered by many, I believe I even seen GDE offer a variation of this.

And where are your getting your data that over 90% dont fail?
Everything im seeing on the internet and with talking with the guys at my nephews work party which is a vehicle recovery flat bed company is telling me the failure rate is much higher. They mostly own diesels and are into the scene pretty heavy. We have multiple members here that have had to have thier engines replaced multiple times for the same mains failure... Thats not something you would see much of with less than 10% failure rates. How many thrown rods vs main bearings have we seen here? Ive been told by one person who works at a dealership that they wont even sell them used anymore, if they take them on trade they send them to auction so they dont have to deal with the possible headaches down the road from buyers.

 

[Augiedoggy]

In short, if you have a proper built engine with proper spec parts, then you'll be in the high mileage club! (85) 100,000 - 500,000 Mile Club | RAM 1500 Diesel Forum

Now this is an optimistic statement... an easy one to make until you lose the dice roll.

 

[Augiedoggy]

“Keep in mind, most engine failures on this platform failed below 60,000 miles, although there have been a good number above that. The low hour failures would point to assembly plant issues with the line bore operation, crank straightness, bearing sorting and block distortion compensation. I have been to Cento, IT assembly plant many times and there is room for improvement.” - GDE

You keep saying that yet if you count all the reports of failures here in the last 6 months alone thats just not true. Recently theres more failure reports here with higher mileage than under 60k. Theres been many members here past that 60k mark that sold their trucks out of fear the engine was a ticking time bomb.

 

[97hmcs]

GDE usually knows their stuff. Here's some GDE thoughts:

I am not sure where folks came up with harmonics being an issue, GDE certainly never mentioned that. When someone mentions harmonics pertaining to engines, I think of natural frequency and powertrain bending moments. This is not the issue with the ecodiesel to my knowledge, if measured it should be 5000 rpm or more.

The vast majority of engine failures on this platform tend to be low hour failures. This would point to something in manufacturing/assembly. Keep in mind, VM Motori is not a high volume engine manufacturer by most regards and they had to ramp up the line to build enough engines for demand. This could have led to issues. One area of concern would be that VM did not use torque plates (to simulate installed heads) when line boring the engine and not sure the torque on the bedplate for this process as well. Most engine manufacturers use torque plates to ensure the block distortion is accounted for when line boring. Not doing this could lead to extra forces on crank/bearings after assembly.

The firing order could also have an impact on the torsional loading exerted to crank. 1-4-2-5-3-6 One really needs to instrument a crankshaft with strain gauges and run the engine at various rpm/load points to precisely determine what is going on with the bottom end. If someone wants to crowd fund a $100,000 instrumented engine, we will certainly be willing to test it for you.

 

[Jerome11]

I'm in BC Canada, was told it's a 2-6 month wait, probably closer to 6. Thanks though!



Much appreciated, I'll take a look through there. Do you think it's worth going with a used engine? Don't want to be running into problems shortly after, much less having another one fail on me

If you can wait buy a new engine, if anything happens you will have a warranty .