bryan wann :: binary fury

The truck has been in the shop all week and I’ve realized it’s a great way to save money and diet. All of a sudden, shopping and cheeseburgers are not convienient. Lots of bike riding in the meantime. This morning I feasted at Taco Shack and loaded my backpack full of groceries from Randalls. This afternoon I went for a cooker ride around the neighborhood. My weight is varying wildly, which I blame on the heat.

Things aren’t looking well for the truck. They still haven’t found the leak, but discovered cylinders on the same side of my busted O2 sensor is running hotter than the other. The concern now is that the initial lifter rattling is a sign that the engine has a sludge problem, due to coolant seeping in somewhere. Even if the leak is fixed, is it too late? We don’t know yet how bad it is, nor if it is recoverable.

I haven’t been able to decide what I want to do with it. I got a couple of quotes on new & used engines. A crate engine+install is around $4200, whereas a used engine with 41k miles is $2900 installed. I keep coming up with different numbers for replacing heads, could be anywhere from $1000 to $3000. At that point it’s worth the extra grand to put a new engine in.

Alternatively, I could just put that money toward buying a new one. I really, really do not want another truck payment. 2009 Silverados are $32k, wtf? 2007-2008s are still in the mid-$20s. I’ve pondered buying a 4WD Z71 if I did get another, since I’ve been in a few spots where that’d be handy. Ironically, I found a 2006 Z71 at a Mercedes/Lexus/Maserati dealer in Dallas that was a trade-in.

Right now I’m leaning toward a new engine, just to get it over with. If the shop comes back and says they can make it go away with a $1k head gasket replacement, that works for me!

I’m anti-vehicle this week. The bicycle is doing very well at getting me around. Unfortunately it takes careful effort to go someplace without being a sweaty, smelly mess. I have a horrible craving for a bacon cheeseburger at Roaring Fork or Trudy’s.

It’s been a busy past couple of weeks! Victoria visited me for a week, then the same day she left my sister and her friend arrived for another five days. Lots of running around and heavy eating. I’m glad to have had visitors, it’s a welcome change. Weather has finally settled down and it’s sunny out.

Between all of them we went to Fredericksberg, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Congress ave bats, the capitol, UT tower, and many eating establishments in between.

I finally took my truck to the mechanic again to work on my mystery coolant leak and my usual basket of other problems. It’s to the point I’m putting in a half gallon every couple of weeks. I would think it’d be fairly obvious where it’s at, but no luck today. Really, I’m not any better off than I was. I need to have them fill it full of dye, put it in neutral, put a brick on the gas pedal and run it at 3 K RPM for a couple of hours.

He did point me to a TSB on that engine that describes a casting defect on cylinder heads built by Castech which is known to cause coolant leaks with no evidence. It claims in the oil drain holes a porous crack can develop, letting coolant weep out. To verify, it involves getting inside the valve covers. Once inside it should be pretty obvious from what I can tell. The telltale manufacturer’s name should be on the top, and there should be clean/shiny spots around the crack while the rest of the head is oil-stained. There could also be coalesced oil+coolant “butterscotch” everywhere.

There’s a few obvious problems with this. It’ll take a couple of hours of labor just to get into it to see if it’s even made by Castech. It may not even be the cylinder head, it could be a head gasket or intake manifold gasket. Any of these could be weeping at high temperatures and it burns off without a trace. Once in there, if it is identified to be a leaking head, that means new heads. Worse, the vented coolant could’ve corroded my rods and lifters.

From a previous estimate, I know replacing a head gasket would be 10 hours of labor+parts at $1100. Fine. New GM Goodwrench cylinder heads are $344 each, so that’s at least $1100+$688+gaskets+oil+more labor. If it involves rods and lifters, it gets ridicuously expensive. It takes 16 lifters, OEM are $11 each, AC Delco are $44 each. By my estimate, the worst case is around $4k in parts and labor.

The upside to the visit, he’s very convinced my lingering P0135 code is caused by a flaky replacement Bosch O2 sensor I put in. As soon as I walked into the parts store and said I wanted a new sensor, the guy said “you must’ve just failed an inspection.” I mentioned I was replacing a Bosch, and both of them audibly tsk’ed. So, one expensive new O2 sensor later, we’ll see what happens.

Two other interesting notes from today. They inspected my brakes, my pads were at 60% wear — and they’re original parts, 160k miles on them. I clearly don’t stop much. The other, I discovered GM actually makes coolant seal tablets. More interesting, they’re made from ginger root and walnut shells. There’s a couple of tech notes where they recommend this, they’re designed for DEXCOOL and aluminium engines. The only problem I can find is that they also recommend draining the coolant every 24k miles to help maintain the pH balance.

I’m certainly not a fan of cutting corners, but I’m very tempted to try the tabs for now. I’m still angry about my financing deal on this truck. I don’t want to give up on it yet by trading it in. The rest of the truck is in great condition. I may have to get my Maserati coupe sooner than I expected.