Cm 870 head being replaced

[JimT]

(04-04-2020 )Signature620 Wrote:  Yet they are horribly unreliable without extensive maintenance or programming.

I would disagree with this statement. Look at owners like Rawze and others who have owned and properly maintained their equipment from day one and they are still going strong.

I think the problem has less to do with Cummins shipping an inferior product as it does with the industry pushing, for lack of a better term, lazy. Extended service intervals, less experienced drivers causing more abuse, promoting bad driving habits with speed limiters, bad gear ratios, low pay, and such. The industry, at least the large companies who primarily buy new trucks, look at these trucks as disposable 3-5 year assets. They only plan on getting 350,000-500,000 miles out of them before they sell them off. They budget all maintenance and repairs based on this time frame and do as little as possible. They pressure oil companies to come up with high mileage oils and the manufacturers to endorse longer service intervals. Then when the 2nd owner gets a truck thats beat to hell and gasping for life they blame the manufacturer instead of the abusive first owner. Yes, the emissions systems are bad and take a toll on the engine life (especially EGR), but with good maintenance even that can be largely mitigated. I'm not saying Cummins is absolutely awesome and makes perfect products or sources the absolute best components. I'm just saying that most of the problems people complain about with regards to these engines can probably be traced back to some combination of abuse or neglect.

The other side to this is the reality we see on this forum fairly often. Which is that there aren't many good mechanics out there that either take the time to properly diagnose a problem or have half a clue about what they are even doing. I've experienced this first hand and it's what ultimately led me here.

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The first company I worked for was a local LTL with about 100 daycabs, owned by the 2nd and 3rd generation of family that started the company. One of the owners said to me once that they used to pull a truck in on friday, strip it down and rebuild the engine over the weekend and have it back in service come monday. But not anymore. I speculated that it was due to the new electronics or complexity and he said no, they just can't find anyone who knows how to do that kind of work anymore. (they do all their repairs, including body work, in house)