Mock Tender
Adventurer
I had a nasty little surprise about a month and a half ago. We were driving on some trails in the Arizona Strip, when the red “Eng Sys” light went on. After looking around the truck, what we spotted was the def hose to the def dosing nozzle was hanging. It had broken away where the plastic “Tic Tac Box” connects to the extruded aluminum doser. The connection is a small weak nylon plastic part that has a “C” clip that connects the two.
Being, what I thought was pretty far from a Fuso Dealer- I called the best mechanic for Fuso that I have found at Washington Auto Carriage in Spokane. He said that yes he could send me the replacement part, but that the problem would be that until I had the ECU reset by a Fuso dealer, that the truck would start to work its way down to creep mode with an alarm blasting.
Turns out that “dumb blind luck” was on our side. There is a Rush Truck Center in St. George, about a 2 1/2 hour drive from where we were.
At the end of one hours driving, the alarm went on and by the time we were driving a the last 5-6% grade hill the fastest I could go was 30 mph.
Like all good breakdowns go, it was a Friday afternoon. The Service Manager and the Fuso Mechanic, looked the problem over, hooked up the Mutt and made some calls. They had 5 dosing nozzles at the Salt Lake Rush Truck Center and would have someone get one down on Monday. They let us stay in their parking lot (not the best or even close to the worst campsite I have ever been in) and had us up and running by noon on Monday.
Now, they couldn't figure out how it broke and either could I. There was no trauma to it or the puny guard covering it. Did a rock hit it, or being nylon/plastic next to the exhaust and rattling weaken it or did we hit it with some low hanging sage brush or something else. So, Fuso covered the $825.00 part plus labor. Rush only charged me $22.00 for getting the part from Salt Lake.
Something else to consider, is that the Salt Lake shop had 5 of these in stock. Sounds like a high breakage item. Fuso didn't balk at covering it. The mechanic commented that the fragility of the part was surprising and that it was easy to swap out.
But the biggest “stop me and my trip to Alaska plans” were that without a Fuso Dealer, even though I could have easily replaced the part myself- without resetting the ECU, the truck was only three hours from “limp mode” after it broke. There are no Fuso dealers in Central British Columbia and north. None in the Yukon or Alaska.
I have included pictures of the electrical tape wrapped fix (didn't help) and the fixed nozzle and hose- and unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures of the break itself.
I am going to have a bigger and stouter guard placed around that area and something to guard the top of the DEF tank as well. Both areas are always covered with mud when off-road.
Being, what I thought was pretty far from a Fuso Dealer- I called the best mechanic for Fuso that I have found at Washington Auto Carriage in Spokane. He said that yes he could send me the replacement part, but that the problem would be that until I had the ECU reset by a Fuso dealer, that the truck would start to work its way down to creep mode with an alarm blasting.
Turns out that “dumb blind luck” was on our side. There is a Rush Truck Center in St. George, about a 2 1/2 hour drive from where we were.
At the end of one hours driving, the alarm went on and by the time we were driving a the last 5-6% grade hill the fastest I could go was 30 mph.
Like all good breakdowns go, it was a Friday afternoon. The Service Manager and the Fuso Mechanic, looked the problem over, hooked up the Mutt and made some calls. They had 5 dosing nozzles at the Salt Lake Rush Truck Center and would have someone get one down on Monday. They let us stay in their parking lot (not the best or even close to the worst campsite I have ever been in) and had us up and running by noon on Monday.
Now, they couldn't figure out how it broke and either could I. There was no trauma to it or the puny guard covering it. Did a rock hit it, or being nylon/plastic next to the exhaust and rattling weaken it or did we hit it with some low hanging sage brush or something else. So, Fuso covered the $825.00 part plus labor. Rush only charged me $22.00 for getting the part from Salt Lake.
Something else to consider, is that the Salt Lake shop had 5 of these in stock. Sounds like a high breakage item. Fuso didn't balk at covering it. The mechanic commented that the fragility of the part was surprising and that it was easy to swap out.
But the biggest “stop me and my trip to Alaska plans” were that without a Fuso Dealer, even though I could have easily replaced the part myself- without resetting the ECU, the truck was only three hours from “limp mode” after it broke. There are no Fuso dealers in Central British Columbia and north. None in the Yukon or Alaska.
I have included pictures of the electrical tape wrapped fix (didn't help) and the fixed nozzle and hose- and unfortunately I didn't think to take pictures of the break itself.
I am going to have a bigger and stouter guard placed around that area and something to guard the top of the DEF tank as well. Both areas are always covered with mud when off-road.
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