2018 engine looks sketchy

My truck has been in several 'floods' but never flooded. Nothing wrong with that truck at first glance.

 

90% of owners don't work on their vehicle so wouldn't occur to them to make it easier for someone else.

 

This^^

 

Yeah no doubt hey. Like I care about some grease or grime…

Heck, all my seasons commercial fishing on the high seas, we showered once every 20 days. Working 18 hours per day, 20 days on, a half day off. We changed our clothes every 20 days. Do that for 5 month stretches.

Here is me, gazing romantically through the head of a 40 pound ling cod. The checkers full of salmon I am in the process of gutting. Would take me 7 seconds to gut a salmon spotless clean. Me and the skipper would race, he was slow at 8 seconds.

Gotta be fast since I could haul up to a max of 500 salmon per day by myself, and then gut them all, and then store them down in our -30c freezer hatch. We could store about 20,000 pounds of salmon in the hold. Diesel engine ran 24 hours per day to keep the fish frozen.

This is commercial salmon trolling, hook and line, no nets. We would have up to 150 hooks with gear in the water. Flashers with hoochies, plugs, spoons, etc. Each one pulled in by hand, then use a gaff hook to gaff them into the boat. Club them once in the head for a quick kill, then gut them. If you are on the fish, you work like a madman, head just spinning from the pace.

Fished the entire BC coast from south end of Alaska on down. Trolling salmon on the west coast of Vancouver island, chasing tuna 100 miles offshore same area, and longlining for halibut on the west side of Haida Gwaii.

Start at 3am each morning. Put the coffee on, and go out and pull up the anchor. If it were to deep to anchor, then we would just sleep and let the boat drift at night. If it were a strong wind and tide, we could wake up 10 miles from we went to sleep.

Haul the lines in non stop all day in torrential rain storms. Far reaches of the west coast often gets 3 times as much rain as Vancouver does.

Last fish into the boat around 10pm, then up to midnight in the back of the boat gutting them and getting them down into the fish hold. Whip off the stinky clothes, and hang them in the engine compartment to dry, then head down into the coffin sized bunk in the bow for 3 hours of rest. Not much sleep in 20 foot seas.

Clothes are as stiff as a board in the morning from all the dried blood and guts.

Not a job for the squeamish or those prone to sea sickness or if you have an aversion to drowning. First few years we fished we had no GPS, no radar, no loran, no depth sounder, no sonar, and no survival suits. Just a compass, some charts, and old fashioned life jackets which would keep you alive for 10 minutes if you were lucky.

I had one guy from point blank point a shotgun at my face. Herring fishing season. He put his net over ours, sinking our net to the bottom. We had no choice but to cut his net in half. Said he would kill us, but he took off after his threat.

I have been rammed by other boats, and rammed others as well when they tried to push us off the fish. Have come within seconds of being sunk by a passing freighter while we were asleep when we were anchored far offshore. Lots of crazy stuff.

That half day off when we came in to sell our fish, clean up and restock our supplies, were crazy times. Drinking and fighting like you cannot imagine. The true wild west in those days, and no one to patrol it. One time we locked a fisheries officer down in our freezer hatch for an hour because he was being a total asshole when he boarded us to inspect our catch.

Boat fish hold was damn clean. It had to be since the fish had to be spotless to get the top price. Traces of blood on the fish dropped our price.

The other pic is a partner boat of ours. Check out the skippers lovely choice of garments that day. Those clothes just a bit on the stiff side from all the dried blood and guts.

End of season I would throw all my clothes out as it was not possible to wash the smell out.

So that truck engine bay. Cleaning my truck engine buys me nothing but wasted time.

I get it, lots of guys like a truck that is clean all the time. I would drive a car if that were important to me.

Oh, and LOL. Thought I’d throw that in there since that phrase seems to be so popular these days.

 

My SR had corrosion in the same areas after a few months of brand new off the lot, and I'm on the west coast.

 

sounds like a true TV series I've watched , good original script you got there

 

The people that are posting proudly about their dirty bay are the same people that like to work on their own stuff....

 

Excellent read, I enjoyed it.

 

"I'm not a mechanic" = take if to a respected mechanic for inspection.

 

In general, it is always better to buy a vehicle that has not been 'cleaned up'. You get a chance to look for leaks and other issues. More important than that is the service history and any other info you can glean from its past ownership. That all comes together as a package to make a better buy decision. You also need to have a good mechanic give it a look over if you can't do that.

 

Finding small issues before they become bigger problems ?

 

There really is no good excuse for not rising the bay down once in a while.

 

Love the for sale pictures where a vehicle is sitting in a wet driveway with bucket and hose nearby ! First bath in xx years is easy to spot in person inspection.

 

I’d take only as anecdotal, an opinion at best. Here’s another. I worked as a licensed mechanic for a major airline 32 years. Cleaning the engines was a required periodic maintenance task not left up to whims of how someone “feels” safety being first and foremost and looking for leaks or anything out of the ordinary. I’d fall into the category of cleaning the engine bay about twice a year.

 

Same here. A few times year when I'm at the self serv car wash, I pop the hood is give the bay a quick rinse. It takes less than a minute.

 

That not even the tip of the iceberg as far as memorable events go. It was like that pretty often. Could be incredibly stressful. No sleep and 18 hour work days and crap weather and angry fishermen and booze don’t mix that well.

Balanced by an amazing coastline to explore and no shortage of incredible sealife. Breaching killer whales, same with grey whales, blue sharks, occassional white sharks, and exploring remote beaches and forests when stuck in anchorages during storms.

Would not have wanted a damn camera poking about like on those TV shows. What an annoyance that would be.

 

My point being, if one takes the time to hand clean while visually inspecting all major items, then chances are issues will be caught early and I'll bet they are also, very particular on the preventative maintenance.

 

I'm also an A&P, we only cleaned engines on owner request, gear bays on the other hand we did clean to properly inspect. Engines really didn't get dirty enough to impede inspections and there was the risk of washing away indications of leaks, which would make the inspection process more difficult.

 

Interesting that auto dealers and repair shops never cleaned under the engine when they serviced any I have owned.

In 5 decades of driving many new and used vehicles, I have never once had a mechanic or dealers service shop wash under the hood when they serviced or repaired, not even for major work.

Maybe that happens elsewhere, but not at Ford, Toyota, Mazda, Chevy or Pontiac dealers in Vancouver or here in the Okanagan.

Had a brake fluid flush done at the Toyota dealer when still under warranty. They did not even wipe off the grime off top of the brake fluid reservoir.

I have self serviced about 15 vehicles over the years. Carb rebuilds, front and back brakes, changing out rads, starter motors, water pumps, diff and tranny fluids, the usual easy stuff.

Of course the area I work on will be wiped down before starting, but I have never run a hose once in the engine bay. Never had a vehicle “fail” early either, just replacing parts at end of their life.

Conversely, I have had dealers and mechanic shops leave oil fill caps and radiator caps off, vacuum hoses disconnected, big oil spills not even wiped off, and more besides. Multiple cases of that stuff.

So bring in a dirty engine, and come out with one even dirtier. To this day, no matter what work is done, I don’t leave the parking lot until I pop the hood and check that everything is in its place.

And yes they have been called out for it. At one dealer, I refused to pay the $500 bill because of their performimg work that was not even requested or signed for. Took my keys and left, and made sure everyone within ear shot knew why and to watch out for their practices. That was a Toyota dealer in the general Vancouver area, but I will not name them here.

Christ, tire shops the worse. Tire pressure never close to spec, and all 4 wheels with different PSI a common issue. Plus torque different at every lug nut. Does not matter what tire shop I go to, all the same.

You have been warned….

 

I do that all the time. After every off road trip (twice per week) I drive up on my ramps and check the entire undercarriage.

I check under my hood before every off road trip. Belts, hoses, lookimg for leaks, etc. Don’t need a pefectly clean engine to shine a light.