Think before you buy
This is a post I made to a thread called "Magnetic drain plug- why risk it" Interesting reading
Loss of oil at speed pulling a trailer! :--)
I was one of the ones that bought a super plug from Geno's. 3700 miles later I look down and oil pressure reads 0 psig and the oil can is lit up! Talk about heart failure. Boost was about 8 psig speed was 62 mph pulling my travel trailer just outside of Bozerman MT.
I shut the truck off the tach immediately dropped to 0, couldn't figure out why the motor was still turning, then pushed in the clutch (you laugh, but the time was passing by very quickly). Coasted up the road until this nice gravel parking lot appeared and decided this would have to be the place. Went to pull in and discovered why every CTD has power steering! Stopped, jumped out of the truck to find that there was a nice big hole in the oil pan where the oil plug was supposed to be. At about this point my heart started beating again. Oil was all over everything under the truck. I was lucky. Had a change of oil and a new filter along with me for the trip. Truth be told I was intending to stop early that day and change the oil as this was the first oil change in my truck that had ever exceeded 3000 miles by this much. SO when faced with the alternatives its not looking to good for me today. Well what did I have to lose. I found the plug attached to the back of the pan by that big magnet, Cleaned off the pan and plug area put in the new oil and replaced the filter and decided that it either wouldn't crank if the engine was set up or else it would belch out a whole lot of smoke! Crossed my fingers, hit the starter and she started right up. Oil pressure came up slowly as it always does after an oil change but came up to normal pressure. No smoke, no unusual noises, nothing unusual from the crankcase breather tube. Everything sounds good. Let her run for 10 minutes. Shut her down and check the oil. Right up there at the full mark. Ah God is just toying with me and as soon as I put a load on it, its gonna blow up. So what are my choices? I decide that I will try to get closer to a Cummins dealer or at least a large Dodge dealer. Billings MT must have a good size Dodge dealer. So I put her in gear and pull in to the Flying J down the street and fuel up. In the process **** off a ford diesel driver by making him wait while I'm at the pump. He calls me some not very nice things before driving off without getting fuel. Clearly he doesn't know what kind of day I'm having! Decide to try to head for Billings and will watch things very closely hoping for the best. They say this engine is over engineered so we will see. Well I had a nice tail wind for the first 150 miles. Stopped 3 times and each time checked the oil and checked that plug tight! Them the wind swung around and I was driving into a 40-50 mph head wind. Passed Billings. EGTs were running 1150 boost was running about 26-28 psig. The wind was blowing so hard that there were times when the Cummins was straining just to maintain 60 mph. There were long stretches of wide open throttle trying to maintain decent headway. I finally reach the ND border and fill up again at the Flying J. The wind was blowing so hard I couldn't get the drivers side door open. Told the wife that if the truck can run wide open for nearly 4 straight hours, I don't think we could have damaged anything too bad. A couple of days later, stopped in Columbus IN and discussed my recent near tragedy with Mark Chapple at TST products. He said that most likely I hadn't damaged anything. He said the the Turbo Charger was usually the first casualty on a loss of oil pressure. So I continued on home. The next week I was back in Columbus for the TDR nationals and replayed this story for the Holset service engineer. They went out to my truck with me and gave my turbo a once over and said that here wasn't anything wrong with that turbo!
The long and short of it is there appears to be insufficient clamping force between the seal washer and the oil pan to keep the plug tight. I'm sure that the diesel vibration doens't help either. I tried a replacement Cummins plug gasket instead of the cork like gasket that the plug came with but it just didn't feel right and I wasn't willing to take the chance!
Geno's took care of me. I had an oil analysis done on the oil that I put in on the side of the road when I got back home. All wear metals were normal. I have so far not been able to tell that anything was damaged. The truck continues to perform just as it always has. Oil consumption is the same. I usually see about 1/2 a quart in 3000 miles pulling the trailer. For the recored I use Preimuim Blue and Stratapore filters. Sometmes it is hard to tell what an aftermarket product will do prior to using it but it is important to look at what could go wrong and how would that affect the entire product. Ken Irwin
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03 SLT QC dually, HO, NV5600, 4X4, B-D brake, Mag-Hytec cover, Deluxe Brite Box, TST PMCR, Transfer-Flow, fuel tank vent bomb, too quiet.
'97 2500 ext cab, 4X4, 6 spd, 3. 54 LS, B-D brake, Mag-Hytec, Prime-Loc, KDP Tabbed (hadn't moved) SB Con O 13" clutch, NV 5600 transmission.
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