I am at lost. Another bad luck with my TV
Some of you may recall that I totaled my truck on the way to pickup a camper in January. Few moons later, I bought another truck and bought a different camper. Yesterday my wife drove the truck becaus...
Forum Discussion
When I selected my used high mileage tow vehicle I spent months researching different trucks mainly focusing on reliability and known issues. All models have issues it is just a matter of finding the trends and deciding if the issues are something you can deal with.
I selected my 2006 Duramax with 180K based on the reliability record of its brethren. I knew before I bought it that this truck has a history of the internals of the transfer case eating a hole in the transfer case housing causing a leak and transfer case failure. I also knew before I bought it that the front end steering rods are a weak point that can be strengthened with after market parts.
The engine you have has a long track record and hopefully the spark plug problem wasn't a complete surprise to you. Others have had this same issue, what have they done to fix the problem? I recall reading something about replacement heads with more meat around the spark plug holes? Can you put inserts in each spark plug hole and never have to worry about blowing a plug again? If you are able to able to FIX the spark plug issue so it never happens again what other issues are common to your engine and truck?
At 180K I would start being nervous about your transmission. Most trucks I looked at seem to have transmissions that start wearing out around the 200K mark. The deciding factor for me on buying a Duramax was actually the Allison transmission rather than the engine. I believe Cummins is a better engine than the Duramax but I also know that the transmissions behind the Cummins in my price range are likely to need attention around 200K.
If you don't want to research your vehicle and take preventative measures for known problems how much is that worth to you? $400 a month?
I paid a good bit more money for my Duramax than I would have spent on the same vintage Ford Powerstroke because of the Powerstrokes reliability record. I could have purchased a Pwoerstroke and spent a good amount of money addressing all of its know issues but this made the Duramax a better deal for me.
I selected my 2006 Duramax with 180K based on the reliability record of its brethren. I knew before I bought it that this truck has a history of the internals of the transfer case eating a hole in the transfer case housing causing a leak and transfer case failure. I also knew before I bought it that the front end steering rods are a weak point that can be strengthened with after market parts.
The engine you have has a long track record and hopefully the spark plug problem wasn't a complete surprise to you. Others have had this same issue, what have they done to fix the problem? I recall reading something about replacement heads with more meat around the spark plug holes? Can you put inserts in each spark plug hole and never have to worry about blowing a plug again? If you are able to able to FIX the spark plug issue so it never happens again what other issues are common to your engine and truck?
At 180K I would start being nervous about your transmission. Most trucks I looked at seem to have transmissions that start wearing out around the 200K mark. The deciding factor for me on buying a Duramax was actually the Allison transmission rather than the engine. I believe Cummins is a better engine than the Duramax but I also know that the transmissions behind the Cummins in my price range are likely to need attention around 200K.
If you don't want to research your vehicle and take preventative measures for known problems how much is that worth to you? $400 a month?
I paid a good bit more money for my Duramax than I would have spent on the same vintage Ford Powerstroke because of the Powerstrokes reliability record. I could have purchased a Pwoerstroke and spent a good amount of money addressing all of its know issues but this made the Duramax a better deal for me.
