@Kajtek1 , I’m sure your intentions are good.. please understand many of us have spent hundreds, even thousands, of hours beating our heads against the wall working through issues on the T1N platform. Do you 100% need to have spent this time to have a good understanding of these vehicles, I suppose not, but it doesn’t hurt. And sure, many mechanics have worked on enough vehicles across the spectrum to be able to understand issues quickly on just about any vehicles, but these folks are few and far between and they do this as their profession.
Just Thursday I completed an inspection for someone looking to buy a 2005 with only 95k miles. The seller only wanted $13.5k for it while similar Craigslist listings show value between $17k - $25k. Shoot, I’ve sold a few T1Ns with over 200k miles for more than $13.5k and that was during pre covid times. The potential buyer also brought a folder of receipts totaling in the thousands of dollars, and these receipts were just in the past year. What gives? On the initial test run the temperature shot up past 215F on a flat hard run and the outside ambient temperature was only 72F. Records and visual inspection showed the radiator and all hoses were replaced. But the thermostat was crusty and the viscous fan clutch was very crusty. It also had the incorrect coolant in it. The foreign auto shop doing this work billed at $150/hr and didn’t fix the over heating issue! So how can we dig into how badly this vehicle may have been over heated? Through my experience on working on T1Ns, I’ve correlated injector seal leakage with over heated motors as well as gross oil leaks which you wouldn’t expect on a vehicle with such low mileage. Neither was present.. of course the head gasket could have been compromised if the motor was over heated as well. I tested for a head gasket leak which wasn’t present either. Oh and the fan clutch assembly passed the cardboard test but that doesn’t mean &&@? in my experience. After further discussion with the potential buyer it turns out the seller is a close friend of hers... ut oh... talk about the possibility of ending a good friendship.. okay, let’s call the seller and drill into this a bit more. Seller not only knew of the over heating but also communicated that it would run hot to the buyer. Seller also communicated he would pull over and run the heater when it got close to the red. Okay great. No one is trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, the seller also didn’t just melt the thing, and the buyer just wanted me to earn my $150, fair enough.. So what was my final communication to buyer.. hey, the thing runs hot and most likely there has been at least a few instances it was over heated. Does this mean the motor is bad? Not necessarily, but there is risk. How could it be bad?? Head could be warped although the gasket hasn’t failed yet. Pistons and rings could be compromised. Block could even be compromised although I would expect to see other items fail first if that happened. But the normal things I typically see on a motor that’s been severely over heated are not present; gross oil leaks all over the place, injector seal leakage, head gasket leak. Can she fix the over heating issue?? Yes, most likely with a new Mercedes viscous fan clutch assembly, but let’s go ahead and replace the thermostat, do a coolant flush, and put in the right coolant as well. No record on the belt tensioner, belt, idler pulleys either... let’s take care of that. There’s always the water pump, but let’s save that one. Although the harmonic balancer was replaced and I personally would have done the pump and the other items listed above then. Isn’t that what mechanics charging $150/hr are supposed to recommend and do?
anyhow, I now own a 2017 4x4 and I’m starting to learn that platform. Every now and again I’ll try to add VALUE to a discussion on the NCV3 forum, but usually in the form of a question and definitely not with any kind of authority.
I am and will forever be a student always learning and although I have a couple brain cells working I know there are those who are not only smarter than me but also have a lot more correlated experience in the subject I’m trying to learn.