There are only two things I know of that will keep a diesel engine from starting, short of total mechanical failure that is. One is a fuel problem such as a plugged fuel filter or a leaking fuel line which lets air get into the fuel pump. The other is glow-plugs. These little plugs are a lot like gas engine spark plugs, but they are only needed to get things warmed up enough to start the engine, and then they are turned off.
I went out to the car on Monday to go to class and found it had been smitten by a bad glow plug. It would not start. The last time this happened, I messed around with it most of an afternoon and into the evening. Dad finally came over and gave me some tips, and a replacement (used) glow plug to swap out with the bad one. This system is not the best design either. Five glow plugs are wired one after the other so when just one goes bad the circuit is broken and none of them work! But this time I was ready for it! I had been mindful of the fact that I was depending on a miss-matched group of aged plugs, but also of the fact that I did not know how to work on them. When I was searching for some small diesel fuel line, I was directed to a foreign auto parts store that has a lot more that I'd like to buy! Trust me on that one. While there, I picked up a repair manual and five brand new glow plus. I just hadn't had the time or maybe the incentive to install them.
Here in Idaho, I think the mentality of most people is to spend as little as possible on repairs. For example, find which one went bad, get a good one (used if possible, they cost less) and just replace the one that went bad. This saves you a lot of money on repairs, right? But does it? Sure the cost of the parts is less out of pocket, but isn't there a lot more to consider? In my case, if I just replaced the one, how long would it last? Winter is approaching and the glow plugged are working harder in the mornings than they have all summer. More heat is needed to start a freezing cold engine than is needed when it's about 70 degrees out. By changing out all five, I should avoid having to do this again anytime soon, especially in the bite of winters weather. But I was talking about costs here. It took me about three hours to swap them all out. If it had been done in a shop, the final bill might have come to about 4 or 5 hundred dollars. In addition I lost a day of classes... I paid for those too! If all I had accomplished was to replace one that was blown with a plug that is just as likely to fail soon anyhow, how many more times this winter would I be missing classes and spending several hours under the hood searching for a bad glow plug?
With some things, it doesn't make sense to buy new when used parts are available. With some things that wear out or burn out over time, it just doesn't make sense to buy used when new parts are available. Obvious examples are tiers, brake pads, clutch plates, ignition parts, starters, alternators and such. These things fail eventually and replacing them with another used part is perhaps a stop gad measure, at best. It ensures that at some near future date, it will have to be fixed all over again. So the cost out of pocket is soon exceeded by the "down-time" and by the "shop-time". By that I mean the cost of not having a working vehicle (in my case it was the loss of classes that I pay to attend) and the cost of labor to make repairs, which in a shop is above 100 dollars an hour now? So the cost of new plugs over used is cheaper if I don't have to put it in the shop just one extra time.
Still I thank God for his grace. If this car had not started one time earlier... things would have been quite different. You see, at home here, I had the parts and tools and manual. Everything I needed to make the repairs. The last time I started this car was Thursday, leaving school. (I stayed home sick Friday (flu) didn't go anywhere Saturday, and Sunday we used the wife's car to go to church.) So if the car had failed to start just one use earlier it would have left me stranded at school, in Boise (25 miles away from home) mid-day, ill with the flu, no tools, no parts, no one to call for a couple hours... that would have been the Murphy's Law moment! You know, the guy who says that things always go wrong at the worst possible moment. Well, in my case it didn't. That is something to be grateful for!
No comments:
Post a Comment