How long will the engine last? It's a 00' FL 70 road tractor,130,000 miles,one owner with all maint. records since day one.Looks like they kept up with maint. ECM shows 10,400 total engine hrs. with 6400 hrs of that time idling. It was a beverage truck,road tractor,single rear axle,Auto trans(Allison). New parts: water pump,fuel pump,a/c,starter,alternator,belts,tires,etc... Do you think the engine will holdup much longer?
I would not be scared of those hours or miles. It will probably give you good service. We have a Freightliner tandem dump with that engine, no problems so far! 99 model with 80,000 miles. Not sure about the hours.
It should last 20k hours, id buy it if the price were right.
How long the engine will hold up at this point is more a function of how well it was maintained,serviced,and how hard it was run.From what you see so far,it sounds like it will.If possible,for less than $20.00,get an oil sample,and see how it looks.If it was just changed it wont be as valuable,but if the engine is on its way out,the copper,tin,and iron will all be high,as will the fuel contamination levels.Also good way to tell integrity of the head gasket,look for coolant in the oil as well.An engine thats had infrequent air filter service or an intake leak will have high silicon levels in the oil. The 8.3 is a decent engine,it is also not expensive to repair if it has a problem,IMO,it's a much better engine than the small cat 3126/C7 overall,and parts are about 1/2 the cost.
Where I work (CN RAIL) we use the 8.3 cummins in lots of our equipment and have had great luck with it. We run the engine in a 240 hp configuration and can usually expect 15000 hours with it running at full load nearly all the time (7 hydraulic pumps and 2 tranmissions). This is with pretty religious servicing and maintenance. IMHO the 8.3 is an excellent engine and i wouldnt hesitate to own one. Due to the fact that it has been idling more then running it should still have many thousands of hours left in it (assuming that the previous owner maintained it). As others have suggested an oil analysis is cheap and can tell you many things about the engine. I have saved many engines from critical failure by detecting cam bearing material or coolant/diesel in the oil from a quick oil analysis. Parts are plentiful and the engine is all mechanical so its easy to repair. I like it more then the cat C7 but wish it had more power. What is the horsepower of the engine your looking at? Inline bosch pump correct?
$15,000
Hp is claimed to be 250. The fuel pump(ISC),I'm not 100% sure