Why'd my brother's truck die at 100,000 miles?

[rrrrrroger]

My brother's gasoline-powered truck blewup at 100,000 miles. He was towing a camper and driving from PA to North Dakota, doing about 65 he said, when the engine made a loud bang and died. He then spent $5000 buying a new engine.



I keep asking him if he did anything "wrong" and he says not. The only possibility I can think of is: He was using the overdrive gear. Could that blow the engine?



Now he has a new truck: diesel.
He changes oil every 6 month (approximately 2000 miles).
I told him that's overkill but now he's scared.

 

[cody]

No, that would cause transmission damage not engine damage, tell him thats overkill i do mine about 3,000. use a good conventional oil like shell rotella t, i dont use synthetics because when it gets dirty is when i change it i dont care how long they are supposed to be good for.

which brand of truck?

 

[JHZR2]

likely he did something wrong... hate to say it but it is likely the truth.

An engine thatis going to die, generally has warning signs. You can ignore them, you can take them to pep boys for marginal service, or you can really figure out what is wrong and take care of it.

what was the nature of the "loud bang" and destroyed engine? Some background would help. Something could have just "given in", but if it was at or very near to 100k, the timing is too close to a major milestone for it to be immediately correlated as a standard "death date".

More info, please.

Best,

JMH

 

[JHZR2]

Originally Posted By: cody
No, that would cause transmission damage not engine damage, tell him thats overkill i do mine about 3,000. use a good conventional oil like shell rotella t, i dont use synthetics because when it gets dirty is when i change it i dont care how long they are supposed to be good for.

which brand of truck?


There are a lot of diesel drivers who would say otherwise, and with hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of miles under their belts.

Some of the syn oils have higer capability to load and disperse soot, so the "dirtiness" starts to become irrelevant until some critical point.

JMH

 

[Kestas]

We can speculate all we want, but you won't know the answer until the entire engine is broken down and forensically examined. This is what I do for a living. I've seen all kinds of defects that can result in an engine "blowing up". Oil neglect is only one reason. There are many other things that can go wrong to an otherwise healthy engine. When I visit the Chrysler warranty center I see lots of engines (and transmissions) lined up waiting for analysis.

 

[johnd]

I've run into a couple of "bang" engine failures towing. Usually it involved a timing chain and might-or might not represent a complete engine failure. I don't know what the mechanism is that causes a timing chain to break doing this but is fairly common.

 

[Pablo]

Originally Posted By: rrrrrroger
My brother's gasoline-powered truck blewup at 100,000 miles. He was towing a camper and driving from PA to North Dakota, doing about 65 he said, when the engine made a loud bang and died. ..... Could that blow the engine?......He changes oil every 6 month (approximately 2000 miles).


What kind of truck? Which engine?
What kind of mods? How was it serviced?

Loud bang? Followed by? He got a new engine and a new truck? Surely he must know enough that it blew a rod or somehow blew the bottom end.

I can say this with some decent amount of wild arse speculation: I probably wasn't the oil! (And what the heck does bringing synthetic oil up in this thread have to do with the smell of flatulance?)

 

[mcrn]

Was an oil change just performed before the trip? Does he do the changes himself? I am just wondering if possibly something was wrong there. Stripped bolt? Bad gasket on the filter? Filter not on properly? Leaked all the oil out? Just throwing out what I would think is possible. The timing like mentioned above is a likely problem as well.

 

[03cvpi]

I would guess it was headgasket related. I had a company truck 'bang' on me about 15 years agao. It was an 87 Ford 1 ton conversion van. Van cab with a box on the back. I was driving along at 65 and there was a really loud bang from under the doghouse and the engine just stopped. After inspection, it was determined that the motor suffered what is called in the aviation industry as a catastrophic uncontained engine failure. The head gasket failed on the 351 and one cylinder sucked in a load of anti-freeze and tried to compress it. The connecting rod failed and punched a 3 inch hole in the side of the block. The truck was 800 miles out of warranty, but Ford decided to replace it. Total cost to us 300.00. There was no indication of any problems. Anyone using company trucks are required to pretrip and sign off. For years I had a bag of parts in a plastic bag in my desk. The remains of the rod and a few cast pieces that I used as a training aide to scare new drivers. Do timing chains make a loud bang on failure. The only one I had fail on a SBC 350 made no noise at all, the truck just lost power and it bulged the timing cast cover.

 

[oilyriser]

piston broke - that's what you get after you lose your job, and start drinking

 

[1sttruck]

I've seen and heard about a number of hard used gas engined pickups that don't make it to 100k miles.

 

[XPR]

Originally Posted By: rrrrrroger
My brother's gasoline-powered truck blewup at 100,000 miles. He was towing a camper and driving from PA to North Dakota, doing about 65 he said, when the engine made a loud bang and died. He then spent $5000 buying a new engine.



I keep asking him if he did anything "wrong" and he says not. The only possibility I can think of is: He was using the overdrive gear. Could that blow the engine?



Now he has a new truck: diesel.
He changes oil every 6 month (approximately 2000 miles).
I told him that's overkill but now he's scared.




Was the weight of the trailer too much for the towing capacity of the truck?

If he has a diesel truck now, he should run a synthetic and invest in oil by-pass filter setup.

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Significant sized head gasket failure probably got the coolant ball rolling in this "Big Bang Theory". I once had a sudden head gasket leak that allowed me to drive the vehicle another 100 miles or so. So the leak started smaller - but the bang I heard inside the minivan was quite audible. I suspect your brother's bang was like a firecracker under the hood.

 

[Quest]

I would refuse to make any guess based on the rather generalised descriptions from the original poster.

I would take on Kesta's stance and wait for more info to trickle in or detailed mechanical analysis/forensics back from the original poster.

Q.

(* I tend to see more and more amusing postings from 1-time posters on various posting boards I frequent on the internet these days, some of them have genuine interests in knowing the truth/facts, others are what I would consider "drive-by postings" with no meaning but to stir internet traffic...*)

 

[FZ1]

My brother's gasoline-powered truck blewup at 100,000 miles. He was towing a camper and driving from PA to North Dakota, doing about 65 he said, when the engine made a loud bang and died. He then spent $5000 buying a new engine.



I keep asking him if he did anything "wrong" and he says not. quote]..........................................................................When your number's up;it's up!

 

[rrrrrroger]

We'll probably never know because the engine was left behind at some country dealer & replaced with a new one. My brother has no clue other than it went "bang" and just died in the middle of the interstate.

As for his new diesel:

He's uses whatever the dealer gives him. He then looked-it-up and told me its 15W-40, so probably some natural oil. I recommended he use synthetic but he said, "No way! Not until the warranty's done."

His wife is frustrated because the darn truck uses ~12 quarts of oil, and she says, "It's costing us a mint & a waste of money to change it every 6 months." I agree, but my brother does not listen.

 

[NortheastPest]

I have to disagree with the person who said that it was his fault. Might not have been his fault. I had a motor go like that on a 1991 Ford 150 5.0 liter. This motor ran like a champ. Never had any indication that it was going to go bad. It was a 2wd model and I did beat on it but not more than anyone would. It had about 150,000 miles on it and BAM one day...a ring went on it. I used to change my oil every 5,000 and like I said..it ran like it was brand new until the second a ring let go. Sometimes it just happens. No warnings. On the other hand I had a friend with the same truck about a year older and his motor lasted up until 250,000 miles and then the motor let go and his was a 4 wd. Im not sure how he maintained it but you just can't always tell.

 

[mechtech2]

Timing chain or thrown rod would result in an instantaneous bang type of stoppage.

 

[rrrrrroger]

UPDATE:

My brother got rid of his new diesel truck that had replaced the dead one. He said something about "Ford diesels have a problem with EGR valves blowing-up and causing a $2000 repair job." So he traded his perfectly-working truck which cost $35,000 to the dealer for $20,000 in order to avoid a two thousand dollar repair (which may never have happened). :-| Well whatever (shrug)