Paul Alton MBA

If you’re looking for the grid heater bolt write up it’s at the bottom of this page or you can find it here on a dedicated page. 

On the last day of May we drove to Edmonton where I went for a pre-employment D&A swab test. The employment is a nominal 12-day turnaround beginning June 10. It became available on short notice. In terms of other work there is nothing much out there that I know of until late August.

On Saturday we all went to the UA family picnic. “All” was Rebekah, the kids, Juanita and I. Nick is working up north. The kids and I shared his drink and food coupons. Becky left the picnic with a couple of kids for their soccer game then came back and left again with others for soccer.

Deborah, Ernie and Kohen were in Edmonton to check out a car that Kohen was thinking of buying. I left the picnic for a while to participate in the process. After a frustrating session with a DMV subcontract office and a trip to a competent one, they all drove back to Meadow Lake with Kohen’s new to him car. That office has a host of bad reviews online for rude incompetence. It earned one more bad review. While waiting in line Deborah heard them telling a customer obviously wrong information about how they couldn’t renew his license without some impossible to get document. As Deborah said, it’s probably better to read the reviews before you go there.

On Sunday after church, we went to the West Edmonton mall to accumulate the 10k a day steps. Lunch was at the Old Spaghetti Factory on WEM’s Bourbon Street. Once upon a conversation I was telling someone that I had run into an acquaintance from Edmonton on Bourbon Street, and we went out to dinner. The person I was telling that to didn’t seem to think that was remarkable until I clarified it was the Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.

The meal was its usual good deal. It probably had too many carbs especially the hot bread. I tried to balance it out with lots of garlic butter. Maybe it doesn’t work that way with macros if the calories are off the chart.

Monday morning, we took the Nissan Rogue to our early appointment with the Sherwood Park Nissan dealer for a brake flush. The service was its usual painfully slow self. Even the “express” lane oil service takes a lot of time. I paced beaucoup steps around the dealer floor waiting. That’s good I suppose. I was impatient to get back home and do what should be done before coming back to near Edmonton to work. After escaping from purgatory, we drove home to Meadow Lake.

The brakes on the truck are squealing a little. Are they worn out? Does the truck need a brake job? No shops can fit it in this week. It is raining, but I crank the wheels over and check the wear on the front pads then jack the truck up in the back and remove one pair of tires and check the pads. So far so good. Then manage to check the thickness of the other pads on the other side at the back with a mirror. The squeal is future Homer’s problem. They may be a bit noisy but should stop the truck okay. Especially an empty truck not towing anything. I proceeded to change the engine oil and oil filter. Once set up that’s a half hour job. Unless you grope blindly with the filter removal wrench and rip the wires out of the connection providing power to the A/C compressor. That adds another hour and a half of frustration working in a tight, dirty, wet (it’s raining) spot at arm’s length.

We puttered for the rest of the week at other stuff that had to be done before going to Edmonton for a couple of weeks.

It rained all week. At the north end of the property there is a leaning giant, spruce tree. The lean has become progressively more dramatic over time. Each day we expect it to have fallen across the walking path. There was some wind on Friday. The tree toppled, root ball and all. I donned my raingear, chainsaw boots and chaps and carried the chainsaw the ten minute walk to the tree. Standing carefully to one side I cut into the trunk. As I cut through, the trunk split. The tree portion fell to the ground and the root ball slammed back the other way, landing almost where it had been on Thursday. Dramatic, but expected. Stay out of the line of fire or it’s trebuchet time.

The tree was still across the path. Some more cutting, a twenty minute round trip in chainsaw boots to get a spare chainsaw bar to replace the one jammed in the tree trunk and some more cutting and we had a path we could walk on again. That was easy!

During the week we sent in a cheque for meals for my year high school reunion in August. 58 years! Who would have guessed? Covid cancelled the 55^th. The 60^th  is looking sketchy with the way the class of 66 is dropping so 58 is the compromise.

Sunday, we drove to Edmonton with both vehicles. Upon arrival I noticed the truck tires. They had lots of good tread but there were cracks in the casing! That’s the same problem one has with trailer tires. The elasticizing compounds are distributed by the tire being worked. If you don’t do many miles the tires rot out rather than wear out. The truck only clocks four or five thousand kilometers a year since we stopped towing our fifth wheel south in the winters. Monday, while I was at work, I ordered a set of six new tires. Juanita took the truck in and they checked the tires and deemed them good enough for driving around the city until the new tires scheduled for Tuesday. Juanita would need the car to go back to Meadow Lake on Wednesday and then I would need the truck for going to work. On bigger turnarounds there are often opportunities to carpool but all potential carpool buddies are working at longer term jobs elsewhere.   

Juanita bought goldfish for the pond in Lloydminster on the way home. The pond that was a so low earlier in Spring is almost overflowing with the recent, steady rains.

That’s about all to write about with the sleep, work, eat repeat cycle of long days all in a row. We will work right through until our work is done.

Becky and kids went to FT Mac for the weekend and to celebrate Father’s Day. Nick is on a longer-term job near there. To celebrate Father’s Day, I picked up a Donair pizza from Sal’s Famous in Gibbons on the way home from work.

Wednesday was the last day on the job. Juanita drove home during the day. I drove home by way of Bonnyville after work. The rest of the week was rest and decompression. When in town on Saturday to buy some bits at Home Hardware we checked out the show and shine car show in their parking lot.

We attended grad assembly at Kohen’s school. The school is K-12. The kindergarten grads got more bling than I got for my MBA.

Getting to attend school events is one of the benefits of retired life. Looks like we'll get a few months to enjoy retirement. There is not much out there for jobs other than a job north of Ft Mac that has odd hours. 4-10’s with an 8 hour drive home for your three days off each week. That schedule didn’t make sense. Apparently, it didn’t make sense for many people. It sat on the board for a long time.   

Cummins 6.7 diesels have something called a killer grid heater bolt. They do not use glow plugs to preheat the combustion chambers like traditional diesel engines. They have a grid heater in the air supply duct to preheat the air going to the engine. It is activated when the ambient air is cold. At forty below it is activated for a long time. If the control relay feeding it power gets stuck it is activated for a very long time. This can overheat the bolt holding the electrical connection to the grid heater. The bolt can overheat enough that it melts and the nut on the end falls off and ends up in the engine. Brace for an incoming $20,000+ repair bill.

There are some fixes out there that totally remove the grid heater. They are not cheap. BD Diesel recently came up with a fix that eliminates the bolt. It doesn’t eliminate other downstream weak links that could happen, but at $300 bucks it’s worth a consideration. I bought it online from an X ad. It arrived this week. Their videos said three hours for a complete install. Another video mentioned one hour but that was for modifying the grid heater bus bar once you had it in your sooty, fat hands but that was not getting it out and getting to turning the key to start the engine to test the installation.

I started on Thursday afternoon and finished on Saturday afternoon. Mostly. The engine ran fine on Saturday with no leaks. It wasn’t until the following Tuesday that I had the clip back on the bypass pipe and found where the “extra” bolt had come from (a cable bracket on side of EGR valve) that I could reinstall the cover around the dipstick. I think an experienced diesel mechanic who had done the job before and had the right wrenches could do the job in the three hours quoted. I probably took about twelve hours actual hands on wrenches time.

It is a big job for an amateur in his driveway. I kind of knew that going in but grew in appreciation of the size of the job as I stumbled through the step by step. As I told Juanita before and during, “if I get in over my head it may mean sending it to a shop behind a tow truck but I’m willing to accept that risk of cost and humiliation.”

Here’s some observations, occurrences and sources of delay caused by my ignorance.

The instructions are very detailed. They mention wrench and socket sizes needed for most steps. They do assume you know what you are doing and what engine components are named. I lost a lot of time figuring out how most electrical connectors came apart. For the most part they are not where you can examine them closely and they do not willingly give up their secrets by braille. I paused to watch several YouTube videos about connectors. The helped but not totally. The connector on the fuel rail defeated me. I managed to get the fuel rail swung out of the way still electrically attached to the truck. The last injector fitting at the engine also proved a challenge. It took a bit of ingenuity to at least loosen it at the block. A makeshift extension using a bolt in the box end of a combination wench helped. Thanks, YouTube. Cutting a slot in another ¾ inch box end wrench to make a flare nut wrench also helped. Once loosened I didn’t dare completely remove the fitting nut. There is no conceivable way I could reassemble that. I just swung the loosened tubing out of the way after it was disconnected at the fuel rail and loose at the block.

I learned on YouTube that a ¾” wrench is as good as a 19 mm wrench for the injector fuel line fittings. That was good to know. I have only one 19mm wrench, but two ¾” combination wrenches. Now, three if you count the one I just bought to replace the out cut into a flare nut wrench.

Stupid things.

I dropped the seal washer for the EGR cross over pipe. Twice. Finding it the second time was easier.

There are two seal type washers on the banjo bolt which I assume is a return fuel line from the fuel rail. The instructions warned about not letting it drop. I got the one easily, but the other was in there tightly. Until I loosened something else. Then it wasn’t. Gravity works. Couldn’t find it. I bought another at Napa in town Saturday morning when I went to town to buy some nuts and bolts for the homemade wrench extension. The RAM dealer was closed for the long weekend.

The clamp holding the EGR cross over pipe to the engine sprung open when I removed the bolt holding it to the engine. That’s going to be a joy to put back, I thought. It was. If you are a masochist. The radiator hose is in the way. You can’t see what you are doing.  The bolt is too short to make contact with the threads with the clamp sprung open. A much longer bolt would be too long and contact the plastic valve cover. I tried sneaking up on it several ways. All failures. I parked the problem on Sunday and Monday. There would be no stores open for the July 1^st holiday. It could wait. By Tuesday I had decided to go to town and buy a slightly longer bolt and grind it to a point to align things. It was either that or remove the radiator hose to get access. Ugh.

Setting the timer for thirty minutes for one last try I aligned the clamp with the hole with a small screwdriver and then compressed the two legs of the clamp with a small pair of needle nosed vise grips. Success. Now onto the remaining issue. The “extra” bolt. Another ten minutes hanging into the engine compartment with a bright flashlight revealed its home. Remove the dipstick. Go to install the cover. Loosen EGR cross over pipe flange clamp so it’s not in the way of the cover. Retighten. Install cover. Reinsert dipstick.

Job done.

The cause of the concern, the nut on the grid heater? Looked perfect under its layer of soot. The truck has only 120,000 km on it since buying new in 2012. Most of it was in the first eight years. When we were towing with it a lot we were south in the winters. Hardly ever ran it in forty below even when were here. Probably not a problem, but mostly out of the anxiety closet for now unless I created some new problem…