After a couple of weeks, my wife decided to pull the trigger on a 1996 Bluebird TC2000 with 155K miles on a 5.9 Cummins engine.
We looked at the bus several times, started it, drove it etc. We decided to make the deal on Saturday, and 10 miles into my trip home the "engine warning" light and alarm came on and shortly after that I began to lose power, it started sounding different, and white smoke bellowing out of the blowby tube. Immediately exited the freeway, and luckily found an empty parking lot to park.
Got back up to where it was parked this morning and started looking into the problems after some research the night before. It looks like this engine has significant blow by / high crank case pressure. All indications are that this will require a rebuild of the power plant..........fairly deflated after an extreme high of getting started on our conversion.
Does anyone have stories of this sort? What kind of costs am I looking at for a rebuild? Do I take my loss and use it as a lesson and find a better bus.
Any encouragement would be appreciated. This will be my first used vehicle that I've purchased that has failed on me, I either have been lucky over the years, or have pretty good knowledge of mechanical things.
A little bummed in Tulsa, OK