[Tim wade]

Hi all, not a good day for coach #530. Just crossed the Mississippi River into Minnesota on i90 going up a bit of a hill and oil pressure started to drop. I pulled over on the side of the road (where I am now) and big puddle of oil under the passenger side of the coach. I opened up the engine door where the batteries are and a bunch of broken metal pieces all over. Looking deeper there’s a big hole in the side of the block under the starter. 


If anyone knows a good tow company and a place to take it to around Lacrosse WI or Winona MN would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Update 9/19/23 

The newly rebuilt engine is being installed today! All the fancy chrome pieces are be put on the new engine! 

Early Analysis: The Rod bolts broke (WRONG! valve broke) which sent the the Rod through the side of the block.  I had the cruse control set to 65. I did notice my speed dropping down to about 57 just before the Rod broke. My main focus at the time was oil pressure. It was at about 49 psi still in 6th gear with Mode selected.  Then the gears started to shift. First 5th gear for about 1 second. Then 4th gear. Im guessing when it dropped into 4th gear is when all the drama happened because right after that my oil pressure dropped down to about 12 psi. 

What I learned from this: 

Take the coach out of cruse control going up any grade. I thought the engine and transmission would have safety precautions so the engine would not over rev the RPMs. I guess it did not?  If you do need to go into a low gear, try to ease into it.  

Safe travels everyone one. Hopefully we will be back on the road by the end of the week. We were lucky to have a condo in Chicago about 4:30 away from Peterbilt where the new engine is being installed in Minnesota.

[hypoxia]

NTTS Breakdown

[BusNit]

Wow Tim, I am sorry to see this happen to you. Please keep us updated

[TJ Clark]

darn sad news.

[bikestuff]

Tim,
I hope you can find someone to tow the coach. I had a very bad experience having 653 towed. Get an air line from the tow rig and air up the coach using the shop air port near the engine batteries. You will want to disconnect the drive shaft.

In my case they put the stinger under the steer axle and lifted the coach. However, the generator housing under the coach was in contact with the stinger. As they turned around corners....it made a mess of the underside of the coach. If they had raised the coach all the way up, it would have gone a lot better.

Of course putting the entire coach on a lowboy would be best.

bill

[Jack Houpe]

Tim this is stressful and its not even me, I read this early on but had no info on how to do the towing part but knew someone would chime in with what to do.

[Tim wade]

Thanks for the help guys. Hopefully tomorrow I can get it off the side of the road and find a shop to install a new engine.

[Richard]

Oh no! Tell the tow company its just like a prevost passenger bus, not a normal motor home.

[[email protected]]

Ouch, that hurts.. that is quite unusual on a relatively low mileage engine, generally this happens to the truck guys that push their maintenance intervals and rebuilds off. I would suspect a broken rod that made its way out the side. 

Never tried it on a S60 (doubt it would work due to electronics) but on the mechanical 2 strokes, we would bypass the injector and disconnect the rod and push it up out of the way. Clean the pan out really good and then you put something on the side of the block to keep the oil in and the engine will run minus the bad cylinder.

[Tim wade]

Hi Jeff, you are correct. Pretty sure the rod went through the engine wall. Any idea what the damage will be for a new engine?