Re: Technical forum for Caterpillar-powered Foretravels (and SOBs)
Reply #6 –
David,
You need to give us more information on what coach you have.
The Caterpillar 3116 was used in the 1995 U240.
The Caterpillar 3176 was used in some 1995 U300's.
Those are the only two Caterpillar engines used that year.
The U280 had the Cummins C engine and some U300's had the DD 6V92, some the Cat engine, some the Cummins M11.
And, for us to even speculate on engine life, we need to know it's care and feeding over the years. Unless abused or neglected, any of these engines should last many hundreds of thousands of miles.
But, I have inspected coaches that were 10 years old with original coolant, etc. Cat or Cummins, that kind of thing leads to failure.
Coolant changes/maintenance is particularly CRITICAL to the Caterpillar 3176 because it has an aluminum spacer between iron heat and iron block. If coolant is neglected, the spacer becomes the "anode" and erodes to "protect" the iron components (can you say electrolysis).
Miles don't hurt, neglect/abuse do.
Brett