Egr cooler question

[Waterloo]

Oil field trucks... I spent nearly four years in the fields in Montana and North Dakota. These guys beat the hell out of the equipment. Fifty miles an hour down washboard roads, I have seen these guys blow out every air bag on a tractor when they have tried to catch air... Yes, TRIED to catch air. It was not their equipment and they could care less. And that attitude was at every place I worked up there. It was a game to them, and they could care less. Then you had the bosses telling them to drive as fast as they can, time is money... The money we lost with down equipment far surpassed what we would have lost by simply slowing down...

The last outfit I worked for had the SCR T-800s with the ISX, and trust me, they were not built for the oil fields. If you do go this route, really inspect the drive line, you will more than likely have to replace the EGR Cooler then remove the "mandate". The coolant issue could be a few things. We were always tightening clamps and filling the coolant jugs, it was a daily thing as the trucks simply shook/vibrated themselves to pieces on the roads, if you could call them that.

The oil pressure in some of those trucks was really low when operating, to the point it scared me on one occasion when it was running in the high twenties at a high idle. They told me to drive it. The electrical cabling was always an issue, along with air lines, always rubbing against something, need to check the integrity of all of those under the chassis along with the main harness. Check the rear ends, the guys loved to blow those out too... Along with the u-joints and carrier bearing, axles, wheel bearings and seals. Look at the fuel tanks and the fuel lines, it seemed like we were putting new fuel tanks on at least every two weeks or so... You will need new shocks all the way around too, we never replaced those, to expensive. Also, the transmissions, most guys did not know how to shift, I would drop the fluid and inspect for metal. Odds are the clutch brake is blown too. I would do the same with the oil, look for metal, get an oil analysis if possible.

The emissions always gave us fits, and none of us knew a thing about any of it, we were told to drive them and if need be they would tow us in. Driving with check engine lights was normal, we put electrical tape over them. You drove them until they broke. There were no qualified mechanics up there other than one that I knew personally, but he did not work for us. He came direct from PACCAR/Rush out of Colorado, when an outfit bought two dozen new Petes. Yes, these new SCR trucks came with their own mechanic to North Dakota. The outfit was Brady, they pulled the sand cans. I think Gary was the only one within a thousand miles that knew anything about these trucks.

I don't know if I would do it. Unless you have a shop and or the ability to get under the hood and chassis. You may be buying something that already has a million miles of abuse in 220,000 miles... Not saying the guy you are buying from tolerated this kind of abuse, but you never know, the oil patch is a different world.