Saw an 18 wheeler overheating today, he just kept going!!!

T

The motor guy

Joined
Nov 29, 2009
Messages
7,268
Why??? The engine was pouring antifreeze out on the ground, saw this huge cloud of white smoke a few miles back thinking it was a typical late model diesel with a blown egr cooler or something, nope I think it was just flat out overheating. Caught up to him at the light, he had it revved to the moon to keep the engine fan running as fast as possible. It was way too loud for me to say anything unfortunatly, but he knew. You're looking at like 15k to rebuild that thing.....and I could by way off on that number. I think 15k is very conservative.
 
eljefino said:
More than likely he doesn't own the rig, and his company doesn't want to pay for the tow, so they said limp it on in.
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I would think he'd get pulled over driving with a trail of coolant and smoking out the entire lane behind him.
 
He should have shut if off. I wouldn't trust a limp mode on a high dollar vehicle like a diesel truck or even a an old car. Extremly high heat will destroy an engine quickly. Those engines are so expensive and run forever if kept up.
 
joekingcorvette said:
He should have shut if off. I wouldn't trust a limp mode on a high dollar vehicle like a diesel truck or even a an old car. Extremly high heat will destroy an engine quickly. Those engines are so expensive and run forever if kept up.
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It was an older truck, probably didn't have such a thing. He clearly had a busted hose somewhere
 
joekingcorvette said:
He should have shut if off. I wouldn't trust a limp mode on a high dollar vehicle like a diesel truck or even a an old car. Extremly high heat will destroy an engine quickly. Those engines are so expensive and run forever if kept up.
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Shutting it off is always the best thing to do. Although I did have an automotive teacher in college say that you can keep driving it if you think you can get it cooled back down, because shutting it will make it get even hotter for a short time. lmao I still roll my eyes about what he said years later. I suppose if it's a busted cooling fan and you're about to pull out onto the freeway, but imo it's either overheating or it's not.
 
He probably wanted to take a nice long nap. What better way to get nap time than to seize the engine up?
 
Soft Cars said:
He probably wanted to take a nice long nap. What better way to get nap time than to seize the engine up?
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Must get paid by the hour. Nothing better than sitting at the shop for a week not driving. I do think it was a day cab.
 
eljefino said:
More than likely he doesn't own the rig, and his company doesn't want to pay for the tow, so they said limp it on in.
Click to expand...
We had an incident like that close to where I lived about 20 years ago. Unfortunately it was brakes, not the cooling system. The driver was told by the company to limp it home and the result was a bunch of dead bodies and jail time for the driver and a company exec.
 
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