A cautionary tale on things to avoid or at least be prepared to deal with.
PART I
I first saw the truck I would ultimately buy listed on Brindlee Mountain Fire Apparatus at FireTruckMall.com in June 2021. Besides being a class 6, medium duty truck, what initially caught my eye was the layout and the extended cab. It also had a full walk-through from cab to module, rather than just a window, which was more common in trucks that size. Other than mileage, engine hours and basic specifications, there wasn’t a lot of information included in the posting. Eventually, after revisiting the page again and again, I decided to ask for more information. At that point I wasn’t even sure if the company sold to the general public. I sent a message through the contact form and received a reply that they did not have this truck in their inventory and were only listing for a city in Florida, which they provided me contact info for. Based on the email address, I figured out that the city was Pembroke Pines, which is just inland from Fort Lauderdale. It turned out the fleet manager who had originally listed the truck no longer worked for the city and due to COVID restrictions, the department was only operating three days a week so it took the better part of two weeks to finally get in touch with his replacement. He was very helpful and answered my many technical questions and even went to the truck to take additional pictures for me.
I continued to search for trucks, but everything I was finding was either way more expensive, had some type of damage, high miles or lacked some key feature. A few would have been an equally good fit except that they had a red basecoat as opposed to white, which I felt would be easier to keep cool and slightly less conspicuous, at least for a 20,000 lb truck. I finally made an offer on my truck at the end of August, offering $2000 less than the $25,000 asking price. I thought the asking price was reasonable, but my dearly departed Dad would spin in his urn if I paid asking price for any vehicle. The purchasing department accepted my offer, but informed me that because the truck was a city asset valued over $20,000, it would have to go through a formal approval process by the city commission at a public meeting. It would almost certainly be approved, but had to go through this formality. In hindsight, I probably should have offered them $19,999 to avoid this decent into local governmental bureaucracy, but at the time I had no idea what a hassle this would prove to be. I was informed that the next city commission meeting wouldn’t be until October 6th, more than a month away. Due to COVID restrictions, the city commission was only meeting every other month, thus there was no September meeting.
As I mentioned, the guy I was dealing with at the city had only had the job for two weeks before I started talking to him. No one had apparently informed him that items must be added to official city commission agenda a minimum of 1 week prior to the meeting. The day before the meeting, I happened to visit the city’s website just because I was curious how the sale was worded on the agenda. Upon finding no mention of the sale approval, I followed up with my contact and that was when I was informed that he hadn’t been aware of the deadline. Although disappointing, I couldn’t really blame him, since no one had informed him of this and my truck happened to be his first asset sale since getting the job. Somewhat fortunately, there was a second meeting scheduled for October 20th.
Prior to the 20th I confirmed not only that my sale approval was on the agenda, but also asked about the procedure once the sale was approved. How would I be invoiced, how I could pay the invoice, how long it would take to get the title signed over. I wasn’t in any particular hurry, other than I wanted to schedule my flight to Florida far enough out that it wouldn’t cost me a fortune. The timeline was further complicated by the fact that the purchasing department was still not open on Friday’s. As expected, the sale was approved by the city commission, so I scheduled my flight for the following Tuesday, allowing time for all the paperwork, bank transfer, etc. The delays continued one after another at that point. First, the accounting department screwed up the invoice, which for some reason was sent by mail instead of email. Then I found out that no one had bothered to look for the truck’s title until after the sale was approved, when it was discovered to be missing. Then the person who had to sign the replacement title, once it was obtained from the Florida DMV, was out of the office. Over the next two weeks I had to change my flight reservation six times to accommodate all these delays.
In the meantime I had been preparing to drive the truck back to Michigan. I had purchased all the maintenance supplies I thought I might need to get the truck started and keep it running for 1600 miles. These included oil and fuel filters, drive belts, wiper blades, cleaning and maintenance supplies, wheel chocks, a fire extinguisher and even a reflective vest in case I was stuck on the side of the road somewhere. I also packed a 35 pound bag of tools to bring along and purchased a massive 4000 amp NOCO battery booster, which was the largest lithium battery the airlines allow you to fly with. This proved to be invaluable, not only to repeatedly jump start my truck, but also to double as a charger for all my devices.
I want to clarify that I bought this truck as-is, without looking at it in person or having it inspected by a qualified mechanic. Other than being told it started with a jump and didn’t have any check engine lights (which turned out not to be entirely accurate) I was betting on the fact that it looked clean and well maintained in the pictures and I had reviewed the last few years of maintenance records and knew it had received regular preventative maintenance up until it was decommissioned in 2019. Given the expense and time required to travel to Florida and the fact that I was paying less than half my original budget, I felt reasonably confident in my decision and despite all the subsequent delays I don’t regret it. I knew it wasn’t perfect and anticipated various leaks, etc. after sitting idle for a year in the hot Florida sun, but I would deal with those as they came up.
As hinted above, it turns out it did have a number of dash warning lights come on when I first started it. This was a little disappointing, since I had specifically asked about it, but I don’t think they intended to mislead me and again, I knew what I was getting into and could have had it checked out. At this point, I started repeating the affirmation “It’s all part of the adventure”.
I flew down on November 9th and spent the next four days going through my pre-trip inspection list and trying to figure out what I could do about the check engine lights and alarm. Fortunately, my guy at the city was extremely accommodating and not only met me every morning to unlock the gate to the yard and let me work there all day, but also gave me several rides to the DMV and my hotel. I also quickly learned how to use Lyft and DoorDash, both of which I had never used up to that point.
I had researched how to pull diagnostic engine codes through the dash LCD screen, but those did not work. Through trial and error I was able to finally figure out the secret handshake of button pushes to pull the codes and after a bit of online research determined there was only one I was concerned about: A stuck EGR valve. I’ve delve into excruciating detail of the EGR system in a later post, but the short version is, the EGR valve is part of the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) system, which is part of the emission control system. After combustion, some of the exhaust gases are used to power the low pressure and high pressure turbos before being sent through the aftertreatment system and out the exhaust pipe and some of it is cooled and sent back around to the intake side of the engine where it’s mixed with fresh air by, you guessed it, the EGR valve, before being pipped into the engine where the cycle starts again. When the truck starts, one of the engine computer’s initial checks is to verify it can adjust the EGR valve. If it can’t, it throws an error code and starts complaining about it.
At this point I was still getting familiar with the engine and had not yet read all 1000+ pages of service and diagnostic manuals. I had an inkling of general understanding, but I can tell you, looking at a diesel engine in person that stands roughly 5′ off the ground is a whole different prospect than reading about it in a manual. It’s greasy and dirty, with dozens of tubes, hoses and wiring harnesses running all over the place and when it’s running it’s intimidating as hell to be anywhere near it. I was guessing that the reason for all the dire dash warning lights was because of the EGR valve and while the computer wasn’t happy about it, I didn’t think it would actually damage the engine to drive it that way. It was also throwing codes for an ABS brake system failure, which while not unimportant, wasn’t terribly concerning since the brakes worked and I didn’t expect to be driving it on slippery roads. My biggest concern was that there was some other issue the EGR valve code was being caused by that could damage the engine. Again, this will be detailed in my post about the EGR system, but diesel trucks can de-rate, which basically means that if the engine computer decides that running the engine at normal RPMs could result in damage to the engine OR out of spec emissions, it’s going to put the truck into limp mode, which will limit your speed to 20 mph or 5 mph or even prevent it from moving altogether. The prospect of seriously damaging the engine or driving 1600 miles in limp mode caused me a wee bit of hesitation.
By Friday I felt I had exhausted my limited ability to troubleshoot the issue. I was actually able to locate the EGR valve on the engine, which was a bit of a proud moment for me. I found the sensor contacts were corroded, but cleaning them did not resolve the error code. I was able to unbolt the EGR valve, but could not remove it for further inspection or cleaning. At that point I didn’t know what the innards of the part looked like so I didn’t want to risk breaking it and making things worse by reefing on it excessively hard or smacking it with a hammer, which is generally my first instinct when something mechanical decides to be uncooperative. I decided my best course of action was to call in a professional so I started searching for a garage that had a mobile diesel technician.
In my extensive preparation for the return trip, I had researched diesel repair shops all along my route should I encounter a problem. The one place I didn’t do any research for was in Pembroke Pines, where I was picking up the truck. Several mobile diesel techs I contacted did not have the proper software to talk to my truck. I was finally referred to a shop near Miami that said they did have the correct software, but they didn’t do roadside service, only emergency towing service. They could however look at my truck first thing Monday if I brought it in.
On Saturday I decided to attempt the roughly 20 mile drive so I could leave the truck at the garage and at least get it out of the city’s surplus yard. The truck ran fine and the brakes worked perfectly, other than the incessant alarm beeping, and it did not de-rate. I left the truck and keys along with a few pages of my notes at the garage.
To be continued…