On the way to Houston, TX, with all of my stuff in the truck and towing my car behind, my truck's engine failed. It died outside a tiny town 6 hours from Houston. The engine needs to be replaced, which isn't a big deal since I was going to replace it anyway.
It's been sitting with a mechanic since about May 6. One of the only (small) shops in the town who primarily services diesels, he was already backed up with work when I dropped my truck off there. It took about two weeks to get diagnosed, then another 3 weeks for him to go back and forth with his "engine guy" who was trying to source a remanufactured engine. Finally he tells me he engine guy can't find an engine (?) and that I should probably take it somewhere else. To give you an idea of what I was working with here, the "business" was basically a guy running repairs out of a 60 year old shed that didn't even have any vehicle bays.
You may be asking why I didn't take it to a serious shop in the first place. This town is 80 miles from the nearest "real" city, and the cost to tow the truck there is roughly $1k. It was worth the shot to see if it could get fixed locally, even if the probability was low. Now that we have a definitive answer on that end, It's time to tow the truck to San Angelo, where I've contacted another mechanic who can get to it in about 2 weeks.
The engine is being replaced with a brand new remanufactured engine complete with a warranty, which was part of the plan all along anyway - I'd just prefer to not have to coordinate this entire effort from 6 hours away as I am currently staying in Houston while all this is happening.
So, for those of you wondering, that's what happened. It will cost me in total about 8-9k at the end of the day. There's a lot more to the story that I'll share later but best case scenario at this point is that I have my truck back in about 3 weeks. I will have to make the 12 hour roundtrip back to San Angelo to pick up the truck and bring it to Houston.
Trust me, I've been itching every single day to get back to work on this thing and once I've got it back I'll be working on it every single day.
