Here's one for you-A Dodge 1500

Here's the scenerio: Buddy down the street, 2004 dodge 1500 quad cab, well taken care of 80k mile trcuk, 4.7 v8.

He called saturday morning saying his truck wont start, went to look at it although im no mechanic by any means. Turn the key it makes a loud clunk, just one clunk. I said sounds like the starter to me. Saturday he takes it off, take it to have tested at the local auto parts store, tests fine, no problems according to the auto parts guy. Puts it back on same one time clunk when he trys to start it.

Ok the the full story is he said he came home late friday, drove fine, no check engine light, no abnormal sounds, no nothing. He parked it went in house. Came out next day and tried to start it, one clunk when turning the key.

Ok he thought low battery since it was 4 years old, bought new one, installed it, same clunk.

So now hes waiting on a wrecker to take it to a dealership for diagnosis this week.

Ok so any educated guess as to what it will turn out being?

pull the spark plugs and see if it will turn over and check for coolant out of any of the holes

Or you could just check the coolant level/reservoir

I have been heavy equipment mechanic for 15+years before I retired. Now I have a private shop at my house. I laugh my [censored] of at test benching a starter. I can't tell you how many I seen test good are work well on a test bench or hooked to a set of cables. Check your oil dip stick to make sure there isn't coolant in it. Like they said pull spark plugs check for coolant,but it's called Hydo Lock. But test benching a starter doesn't mean it's good because it's not under a full load of a motor. If you can take the starter off see if you can turn the motor over with a pry bar.

The only other time I have seen a motor not start not do to hydo lock or battery starter issue is I had a 740 articulate dump truck break a engine crank and it wouldn't start. But a broke crank after shutting engine off is very rare.

I had a crank break upon start up on a truck that was 5k miles over the 36k mile warranty. It cost me dearly for that pos!

My one and only ram had oil pan failure at 46,000 miles.

How the heck can an oil pan fail?

Oil pans mainly crack.
man grout scout that sucks...

It fail to hold a connecting rod in the engine.

How does an oil pan fail? It either holds oil, or it doesn't.

Well, what was the problem?

Problem turned out to be a blown head gasket, water seeping in #6 while it was parked for 4 or more hours. Heads removed, valve job, straightened up one head, total outlay $2k big ones.

That stinks, but it's the cost of doing business. The repair isn't as expensive as buying a new truck, but he's also still got an 11 year old vehicle. Hate to dump that kind of money into something that isn't worth much more than that.

I hear people say stuff like this all the time, but in reality it is almost always cheaper to fix the old one if the goal is simply reliable transportation. To me the only shame is he burned 2k on a head job when he could have likely gotten a full top to bottom rebuilt done for 4k or less and bought a brand new motor for 5. He ended up getting a valve job and a new head gasket for 2k.

2k seemed high to me but then again i dont know since ive never been a part of a repair like that.

Agreed, but I was just saying that at some point you reach a level of diminishing returns. In the short run, it's always cheaper to fix the old one. In the long run, it might have been cheaper to get a new (or new-to-you used) truck.