Dennis from All Engine Distributing in Fresno sold us our last irrigation booster pump. Unfortunately it started spitting oil. It took us a week or so to find out what the problem was. It appears that some water got into the vegetable oil that we use to fuel the engine. This caused corrosion inside the cylinders, some small metal parts even got loose and damaged the cylinders and the piston rings. Oil was able to pass by the piston rings and out the muffler.
The remedy was to rebuild the engine, a costly adventure in time and money. We did not have the time to wait so I called Dennis at 4pm on Monday afternoon. He had an engine that fitted our needs for less that $5,000 out the door. The only catch was I had to be in Fresno by 8am the next morning. Later in the day he was expecting a container of engines to arrive and they would have no time to spare. By 7.30 pm I was on the road heading south to Fresno. I got a hotel room and was at Dennis's premises at 8.05am. The pump was removed from our engine and installed on the new engine. Unfortunately our impeller had cracks in it so that added another $400 to the bill. The engine is an Isuzu which was made for ThermoKing. It was used on refrigeration units that transported beef from Kentucky to Japan. The engines drove the compressors to keep the beef frozen. The were started in Kentucky and turned off three weeks later in Japan. The engine has an extra large oil pan to extend the time intervals between oil changes. The life of the engine is supposed to be 50,000 hours, ours currently has 12,000 hours of use at the present time.
By 10.15 am and a few bucks poorer I was back on the road to Dixon. I call that service. Thank you Dennis.