Quote:
Originally Posted by LarryBible
The worst part about driving a Dodge pick up is that every time you slam the door, your first inclination is to roll down the window and look out to see what fell off.
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Assuming that it wasn't the whole door that fell off...
I love my 92 Dodge/Cummins truck, but it's more about the drivetrain than the truck itself. It's got almost 270K on it and the engine runs like it's new, but the body is fast disintegrating. Awful early 90s paint job peeling and flaking away everywhere, cowl cracks that leak water into the cab whenever it rains (there actually used to be a cowl patch kit available from the dealer because this was such a common problem, even on low mileage trucks!), doors that are literally about to fall off their hinges, seat beaten down into nothing, window tracks that are repeatedly falling off the windows, and all kinds of little fleeting electrical glitches that are nearly impossible to track down.
The only thing that has ever gone wrong with my engine in the nearly 100k that I've owned it is that the in-block oil cooler spring a leak. It was a nasty, awful mess to clean up, but the part was not that expensive, and the repair was easy. While I had it apart, I pulled the oil pump and measured it for wear and it measured as having literally no wear at all, at over 250k miles. I've seen pictures of the cylinders of an early 12 valve engine at 350k that you could still see the cross hatch pattern in. I've got no doubt that one of these engines, properly cared for, could last a million miles.
That being said, I'm pretty excited to finally have a good Mercedes diesel, too. I used to have VW diesels, but the last one I had dropped a valve only 2000 miles after putting on a "new" head (I suspect cheap, non-VW valves were used), and I decided I wanted an all cast iron engine instead.