C15 TT cat issues

[Electric Chicken]

Well I guess when your new to you truck has problems that aren’t simply remedied with easy fixes, this is what happens. These old-ass trucks weren’t in the best of shape and the boss got 6 of them for fairly cheap considering they’re pre Kommiefornia-emissions trucks. I’m sure the right way to fix it would be to down the truck in an actual Peterbilt shop for a few days, spend a bunch of money while losing a bunch of money cuz the truck’s down and making me sit at home losing money since we don’t have any spare trucks right now, so the mechanic does what he can over the course of a weekend to keep the truck on the road. Lol. We got a small shop and a shit load of trucks and only three well-knowledged mechanics available.

I'm just teasing because it's a little bit funny. Especially that chimney. It's probably got @Duck inspired.

 

[Duck]

I'm just teasing because it's a little bit funny. Especially that chimney. It's probably got @Duck inspired.

I used to make weed pipes out of brass fittings when I was a teenager. I'd grind down the corners and hex shapes and polish them up with a dremel and they'd look like one solid piece of brass.

 

[tony97905]

I used to make weed pipes out of brass fittings when I was a teenager. I'd grind down the corners and hex shapes and polish them up with a dremel and they'd look like one solid piece of brass.

We were visiting my parents a few years back and sitting amongst all the pictures on top of the TV cabinet was a pipe somebody made out of brass. I finally had to ask why my parents (mid to late 70's) had a weed pipe. I thought they were going to die when I asked.....dad had found it on the parking lot of a store and had been carrying it around for a week prior asking his coffee drinking buddies if they knew what it was, lol. He thought it was some kind of hydraulic/pneumatic coupler....said he'd never seen one like it before. I just laughed and told him you might want to throw it away.

 

[Duck]

We were visiting my parents a few years back and sitting amongst all the pictures on top of the TV cabinet was a pipe somebody made out of brass. I finally had to ask why my parents (mid to late 70's) had a weed pipe. I thought they were going to die when I asked.....dad had found it on the parking lot of a store and had been carrying it around for a week prior asking his coffee drinking buddies if they knew what it was, lol. He thought it was some kind of hydraulic/pneumatic coupler....said he'd never seen one like it before. I just laughed and told him you might want to throw it away.

One time when I was a teenager I had cleaned off the dried up mulched grass from the bottom of the lawnmower and a piece of it got on my clothes and fell off on the kitchen floor.

My mom found it and thought it was weed.

My parents were total nerds in their teens and 20's. When everyone else from their generation was doing LSD at Woodstock and stuff, my parents were spending their Friday and Saturday nights in the library reading about how to be bigger nerds.

 

[MichaelJT]

Had that problem with a C15 Cat years ago. Cornered a Cat technician who was at my shop and talked it over. He had one of those lazer/ infrared heat sensors. He found the motor was hot on one end and cold at the other. Advised me to take it to their shop. They did and long story short, they found one of those blue paper rags some mechanic at THEIR shop stuffed into the oil cooler when they changed the water pump. Problem solved.

 

[corneileous]

Well guys, guess I should update the thread to the situation....

I don’t totally get have my truck fixed the proper way like it was stock but at least I got my temps figured out, it warms up much, much faster and runs around 200°, and my fan works.

Nobody’s messed with that sensor yet that is on the lower front side of the thermostat housing that goes to the computer but, after finding it out on my own, I figured out that up on the top of the thermostat housing where the upper radiator hose comes in, there is a threaded plug right to the right of it... and of course, right to the right of that, is where the temp sensor goes that goes to the gauge on the dash..... y’all know, it’s the hole that had the big ole, slopped together 5 or 6inch threaded-together fittings with the T on it when he originally had the temp sensor on top, and the added in, old school fan switch threaded in on the side....

Well, I told him I found out about that plug and that at least for now, until our other independent mechanic has a chance to mess with it and fix the damn thing the right way, he pulled that plug and put the fan switch in that hole so now, there’s no more chimney, lol, there’s no more air pocket causing the false readings on the gauge, and it all works, it’s just that the fan isn’t currently being controlled by the ECM, it’s actually being controlled from a heat switch, just like how the ole pre-2000 year model trucks were before their ECMs got as complex as they did like my 2004 model.

Anywho, I’ll report back later someday with it fixed right...lol.

 

[corneileous]

I'm glad to hear it's working right.

I'm extremely disappointed the fitting chimney is no longer standing. That thing was hilarious

I still can’t believe he did that...lol, especially when there was a plug right next to the left of that sensor hole where he coulda put that damn fan switch...lol.
I dunno, maybe in his defense, he didn’t think it was a plug because it’s not your ordinary threaded pipe plug like you buy at Home Depot or Lowe’s that has a big ole square head on it; this plug was flat and it was only about as thick on top as maybe about 3 or 4 quarters stacked one on top of the other, with like a 1/4 inch Allen wrench hole in the middle of it.

It acrually took him about 40 minutes to get the plug out because the Allen hole stripped, so he eventually had to modify an easy-out and finally broke the plug loose. Then he spent about 20 minutes trying to find a single fitting that would adapt from the fan switch thread to the thread of that plug.

 

[Shogun Warrior]

I know that those cheap fixes can be costly in the long run. Rebuilding a motor every other week with Dollar General parts is bad for the bottom line.