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My old foreman said to stop guessing and pull the valve cover, and I fought him on it for 3 fights
Back when I was still green at a shop outside Tulsa, I had a 6.7 Cummins come in with a dead miss and a rough idle, and I was convinced it was injectors, so I started pricing out a set. My foreman Dale, who had been turning wrenches since the 80s, kept telling me to quit guessing and just pull the valve cover to look at the rockers first. I blew him off because I figured no way a valvetrain issue felt like that, and I spent a full day swapping parts and getting nowhere. When I finally popped the cover off, one of the rocker arms had walked and the pushrod was bent like a banana, which explained everything. Cost the customer about 40 bucks in parts instead of the $2,400 injector job I was about to sell them, and I felt like a real idiot. Dale never even rubbed it in, he just handed me a torque wrench and said check the simple stuff first. Now I want to know how many of you still skip the basics when a scan tool is throwing codes at you, because I catch myself doing it sometimes.
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adam_hernandez7d ago
Man, the wild part is Dale probably learned that exact lesson the same hard way back in the day, and that's why he didn't rub it in. I've started asking myself what the cheapest test looks like before I touch the parts cannon.
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