Cummins warranty obligation problems?

So I have had my truck in the shop for six months already this year. One month at the local Kenworth dealer and now it has sat like a brick for five months at a Cummins dealership. I have the Cummins X 15 and purchased the longest factory warranty for the motor when I bought the truck new. I have had ownership pride in my truck and have been very conscientious and stayed current with all of my maintenance and can document that it has all been done on schedule at Cummins certified facilities. The repair has been to the top level Cummins investigative review at least three times and yet both dealerships have had a difficulty fixing the problem and not only that, now the truck is still doing what it did when I first took it in and is making an awful noise that it never made before. Now Cummins wants me to pick up the truck and put it on the road. It runs, but obviously the problem isn’t fixed and my concerns are multiplied. I didn’t buy their motor new and maintain it the way I’ve had it maintained only to dump it before it gets off warranty. Whatever the problem is, it’s likely going to impact the performance and most certainly reduce the longevity of my motor. I think because they haven’t figured it out at Cummins, the economic incentive structure is such as to push me back into the truck, hoping that I will sell it or get into a wreck so their hands are washed clean of their warranty obligations. Even if I were to consider selling it, how do I get my value out of a truck that a buyer would see has been in the shop for six months and is making an awful noise? Am I the only one having problems with getting Cummins to fulfill their warranty obligations in spite of doing everything I need to do to ensure that motor is running right? I took delivery of this truck coming out of Covid and I suspect that the problems I am having with this motor are directly related to quality control problems in the manufacturing plant or the metal foundry while they were trying to get production up and running. I suspect that there are others that are having the same problems beginning to show up and they are trying to shirk their obligations, realizing that there should be a major factory recall that they don’t want to fess up to. Since they are unable to fix this, they should be putting a new motor in and then they may be wondering how many others will they be obligated to do with quality control problems if they were to admit a problem with those motors at the end of Covid?

 

I think that I am going to go ahead and talk with an attorney. I think after five months of being cordial, if they were going to make it right that it would’ve happened by now. It appears that being friendly or at least cordial isn’t working. I am afraid by signing anything and taking delivery of the truck just may let them off the current hook just like you say, but I do need to figure out if there are any pressure points that I can use for leverage because this has been completely unjust but unfortunately that seems to be the way too many businesses are operating these days. Thanks for your post..

 

The problem started when my APU kept shutting down because of large amounts of air in my coolant system. We disconnected my APU from the rest of the coolant system and still somehow, someway exhaust is being pushed into my coolant system with each blip of the throttle. It is not atmospheric air. Currently it is not enough to overheat the motor and not enough to currently impact the performance of the motor, but obviously that isn’t good and will increasingly create thermodynamic problems for the motor and eventually premature failure. The way things are going, it will probably have a major failure 1 mile beyond my warranty period. Somehow coolant is not getting into the engine oil but they’re having a hard time figuring out how the exhaust is getting into the coolant. There seems to be some type of a fissure that they aren’t finding. Since they tore the motor down and put it back together, it’s now squealing between 1200 and 1600 RPM in the high gears on acceleration when the turbo kicks in.

 

I will have to check to see if Pittsburgh power does warranty work on the Cummins because I’ve had several people tell me that they do good work. Thank you