wlhequipment
Senior Member
Well, it happened a little sooner than I thought, but here we are. I have my first tier 4 engine in the shop. A Perkins 854 in a Terex PT110 track steer. The customer has been calling me for probably a month or more telling me his Terex is acting funny and can I help him over the phone. Each time, the conversation ended with "ok, I'll bring it in". So just last week, while I was on a trip to visit family in Chicago, he calls, on the jobsite, putting in soil nails, and he's got the drill buried 10' in, and the engine's deader than 4:00. Dude is in a complete panic. What happened is, his turbo crapped out, and all his induction tubing was "sucked in" like a kid trying to drink a thick milkshake though a thin straw. I told him his engine is tryin' to breathe, but something is blocking the way. I told him to disconnect the hose between the engine and the intercooler to get that thing running just enough to back out the drill, and get it on a trailer. Don't mess around, just take the hose off, and get it on the trailer pronto, and shut it down. Which he did, and now it's here.
So yeah, turbo is toast. I mean just ground to bits, no rebuild is going to do it, he needs new. No biggie there, a couple grand and he'll be back and running. Except. The DOC / DPF is FULL of oil. I mean black sooty oil just dripping out of it. Nasty. I knew right away he has been running this for months with a failed / failing turbo that had just been sending oil through the engine, and the DPF. The bad news doesn't stop there. An oil soaked DPF might not be able to be cleaned. I've already been turned away by 2 local shops, and am now sending it to a place in Iowa, who says they can clean it. For about a grand anyway. Fortunately they will be able to tell me one way or the other before they charge me, so there's that at least.
The worst part is Perkins wants like $5K for a new one. FUG. Total suckage there pal. If this shop can't clean it, he's gotta buy new. Does anyone know of any other options I missed? So instead of being a $3500 turbo replacement, this could end up costing him close to 10 grand. Unreal. Is this tier 4 stuff worth it? Geez.
So yeah, turbo is toast. I mean just ground to bits, no rebuild is going to do it, he needs new. No biggie there, a couple grand and he'll be back and running. Except. The DOC / DPF is FULL of oil. I mean black sooty oil just dripping out of it. Nasty. I knew right away he has been running this for months with a failed / failing turbo that had just been sending oil through the engine, and the DPF. The bad news doesn't stop there. An oil soaked DPF might not be able to be cleaned. I've already been turned away by 2 local shops, and am now sending it to a place in Iowa, who says they can clean it. For about a grand anyway. Fortunately they will be able to tell me one way or the other before they charge me, so there's that at least.
The worst part is Perkins wants like $5K for a new one. FUG. Total suckage there pal. If this shop can't clean it, he's gotta buy new. Does anyone know of any other options I missed? So instead of being a $3500 turbo replacement, this could end up costing him close to 10 grand. Unreal. Is this tier 4 stuff worth it? Geez.