Engine/Transmission (1998.5 - 2002) Plastic piston cooling nozzles

[ROADWARRIOR]

How big of a problem are these in terms of breaking from fatigue? I read of one instance on here recently and a few in older posts. I've also read of a few guys who found them laying in the bottom of their pan when they were repairing something else. Any comments from people who work on these motors a lot?



Dan

 

[Turbo Tim 1]

I remember seeing a thread on the DTR about a guy making his own from aluminum after having a failure of the plastic ones.

 

[GDMRTN]

I had one of mine jammed. (new engine) It roasted a piston. I also had bought a '96 truck with 638,000 miles and all the nozzles were fine on it. Go figure. I don't think it was a major problem.

 

[GeneA]

I'm the guy that just had the problem, and believe me it is major when you fry the engine because of it happening. I am rethinking my former love of a cummins diesel becuase of them designing a piece of cheap junk like plastic oil nozzles. I don't know where to go from here unless it is to cat or detroit and then I'm not talking about pickups.

 

[obert]

I caught a little of that thread too. Maybe there was a bad batch of nozzles made, but would really look more into the failure. The temp those things see should never be high enough to "fatigue" the plastic. Furthermore, they're not a moving or wearing part, and the lubrricant they pass shouldn't be erroding the nozzle. When molecules pass each other, there is friction, so maybe they would errode or wear after tens of thousands of hours of use, but a mid-range diesel usualy doesn't hit 10000 hrs(around 300k miles, depending on application), almost never 20k hrs.



Yes, loosing oil nozzles is a very bad situation, It has happend to me. It wasn't the nozzles fault in my case.



With millions of happy engines on and off the road with plastic cooling nozzles, there could be hundreds of failures evry year that may be the nozzles fault, but the percent failure rate is still not enough for me to condemn an engine based on material of cooling nozzle.



Case in point: Hundreds if not thousands of turbochargers are trashed every year because the pyro probe broke off and hit the impeller. Compare that to the uncoprehensible number of turbo diesel engines sitting in the country right now that have not had that problem, most dont even consider the problem. Poll the TDR alone and see nearly evry one here puts the probe in the manifold.

If there is a reason not to buy an ISB Cummins, its the VP44 and/or Carter lift pump. THAT'S a failure rate to be upset about!

 

[GeneA]

Athoughtful and insightful comment, Obert. However, those items you cite as failures do not result in engine failure as does the failure of these plastic piston cooling nozzles. I just dropped 11k on a remanned long block (installed complete). The vp44 is at most 1. 5k. The people that did the work told me the earlier (12 valve) engines did not have this problem and it is only with the later engines (24 valve) that this started to show up. Go figure.

 

[obert]

Yeah, a bit apples to oranges... ...



Did anyone sugguest a cause for failure? Has it happend enough to give mfg. date range thats most prone? Most importantly, has the problem been addressed and fixed? It would be worthwile to be proactive about the problem if I knew I had bad product in the crankcase. My long block job was in '01, they told me if I had to pay the bill it would have been 10k-12k. Ive not tried, but I hear if you hold your mouth right, you can get the oilpan out without pulling the engine. I'd gladly spend some small $$ and a days work to put this one behind me.



The ol' red truck dont get too many miles these days, but I cant stop the lapse of time. Old is old.

 

[DCreed]

I hope you changed those nozzles in your new motor! and tabbed the KDP! As for the VP44 well... but that should set you for a while!