Mark: Hi, it's Mark Bossert. I'm here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver. Vancouver's best auto service experience, as voted by their customers, 25 times best auto repair in Vancouver. We're talking cars. How you doing Bernie?
Bernie: Doing very well.
Mark: So today's victim is a 2017 Dodge Ram, I hate to say it, called an EcoDiesel. What was going on with this vehicle?
Bernie: Yeah, so this vehicle had a check engine light on, we did some diagnostic found a couple of trouble codes related to EGR flow and an intake manifold runner performance issue. These are fairly common codes. We fix these issues a fair amount in our shop. I believe we've even done one podcast on this issue already. So it's a common one on one of these.
Mark: So this is the smaller diesel that you can possibly get in terms of a Dodge product.
Bernie: Yeah, it's V6 in the 1500, I guess they call it EcoDiesel cause it's supposed to be ecologically friendly cause it's small, I don't know where they come from. It's all marketing, but it's a it's a clean diesel when it works well, if there's such a thing.
Mark: So let's go to the pictures here. Here's our vehicle.
Bernie: There's our vehicle. Good shape, you know, seven years old now. It's a 2017. Pretty low mileage. We'll talk about the low mileage in a little bit and how it affects some of these issues that we're repairing.
Mark: Okay. Who dropped the spaghetti?
Bernie: Yeah, who dropped the spaghetti, I know it looks like a mess. So the best way to replace this intake manifold runner and a lot of work on these vehicles is to remove the cab, which seems like, you know, oh my God, that's a humongous job. You know, unless the bolts are rusted, which we don't find too often around here, it's actually a much better way to do the work.
For a tech, he's pretty good at a couple of hours. The cab can be off. And you've got this beautiful engine just sitting on a, you know, virtual engine stand that you can access and repair.
There's another good view of it. You know, again, the drive train with the cab off, you just stick your hands in, work on it really nicely. Whereas if he'd left the cab on, you'd be hanging over the hood, hard on the back, hard to get at things fiddly. And about a third of the engine sits behind the cowl, which is sort of the back end of the hood because it's a cab forward instruction. Is that the right one? Cabin forward. Anyways, whatever, every vehicle is like that these days. It just makes more sense to remove the cab and Dodge has actually made it really easy to do.
Mark: So up above here in here, this is where the cab is right now.
Bernie: Yeah. It's sitting right above up on our hoist.
Then when we're done, we just lower the cab down, bolt it all together. The air conditioning recharge is really kind of the biggest additional item that needs to be done on the service.
Mark: So as you start digging into this vehicle, tearing apart things, where did you start?
Bernie: Yeah, so, of course, with the diagnostic, as I mentioned, there was codes for intake manifold runner, very common for these things to carbon up and for the actuator to not get make the intake runner move properly or air flow codes. There's also a code for EGR performance. And unfortunately, there was no EGR parts available that we could find, they were all on back order. So we just cleaned passageways in the EGR system and concentrated on the intake manifold for this particular repair, which often is enough to fix the issue.
So there's the intake manifold. The bottom of it. We replaced the whole piece as a unit. So if you're looking at the sort of bottom part and the top, those are where the passageways are. If you're looking around that one, you just highlighted the 1st, 3rd and 5th intake runner have a little butterfly valve, it's on a rod that goes through. And so depending on engine conditions, RPM, engine load, whatever the computer deems necessary, it will actually close those butterfly valves. And allow air to flow only from one intake port or it'll do both depending on, again, when, when the computer deems it necessary to have that kind of flow. So there's an actuator on each end of the rod, of the runner.
And basically if you look at the closer slide. You can see the carbon build up in these passageways. These are, you know, in the new one, I don't have a picture of the new one, but there's basically clean and round. You can see a lot of rough black bits and pieces, that's carbon deposits in the intake. It's a curved piece of plastic, so we could have carbon like build up pretty badly in other areas that we can't even see. And it's very common on these. As a matter of fact, on any diesel, you know, with an EGR system, which is all of them. Eventually these things carbon up and cause problems.
Mark: So as you're starting to put it back together again.
Bernie: Yeah, this is the final view of the engine you know, with the noise insulation covers on top. And, you know, there's a few things again, just sort of lying in place that will find their home as the cab goes down and we can bolt things back up.
Mark: What do we have here?
Bernie: Yeah. So we're looking down, on the right hand side is the transfer case. It's a four wheel drive vehicle. That this is a transfer case. You can see the drive shaft coming out the back and on the left side is a reasonably new SCR catalyst. That was replaced previously by the dealer, apparently under warranty or a recall. So fortunately for the owner that was replaced and you know, those are in the multi thousand dollar price tag usually. So it was good that the owner had that replaced.
Mark: And then everything back together again.
Bernie: Everything back together. Ran great. And you know, the 1 comment on this vehicle I mentioned earlier about mileage, this vehicle, 7 years old 94,000 kilometres, which is not a lot and not good for a diesel. You really want to be working your diesel hard. You want to be driving it on the highway. You want it hot. You want to be pulling heavy loads. You want to work it. If you're just doing little grocery getter trips or dropping kids off to school five kilometres away and then coming home and the engine's mostly cold, this is when a lot of these problems will happen with diesels. Getting them running and getting them hot, is the ticket.
Mark:Buy the proper vehicle for your use case, in other words.
Bernie: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you know, many people buy diesels for the wrong reasons, you know, and of course someone in the showroom isn't necessarily going to go, well, I don't think you should buy one of these because blah, blah, blah. It's like, they're just happy to make a sale. It's unfortunate, but you know, we service an awful lot of diesels that are just not used properly.
Mark: It's not a city car folks.
Bernie: Nope. No, not unless you drive a lot. I mean, if the engine's hot and if you're driving, I don't know, like 40 kilometres a day around the city, it's maybe okay, but yeah, better on the highway.
Mark: We might agree to disagree on that. I think it takes even more than that.
Bernie: Highway speeds are definitely much better for sure.
Mark: Alright, so if you're looking for service for your EcoDiesel, any diesel in Vancouver, the people to see are Pawlik Automotive. We've done dozens of podcasts about diesel repairs on all makes and models. Whether they're heavy use or in the city, which we don't recommend. Please, buy a gas vehicle, buy an electric vehicle for in the city. Diesels are for hard work. That hasn't gone out there, but we're sending it. We appreciate you watching and listening. Thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Thank you, Mark. And thanks for watching.
