Another thing I can safely say is that taking the downtime and the cost of addressing problems early on is a hell of a lot cheaper than running and gunning the machinery until something fails completely and often make the repair an order of magnitude more expensive.

Quite a few Honda 2.4L earth dreams engines have timing chain issues when the tensioner starts to go bad and there’s slack in the chain. As that happens, the engine will make ugly noises on startup that mostly go away when it warms up. When they show up, it’s usually around 100k miles (160,000km for the folks outside the US). If caught early enough, it’s a relatively easy fix because the front cover on the engine has a small hatch to access and remove the tensioner. But if someone ignores the issue, eventually the chain will slack up enough to start skipping gear teeth and eventually the pistons will collide with the valves due to cams and the crankshaft turning out of sync. When that happens, the most practical solution is an engine transplant with a used good motor.

A lot of the times when this issue shows up, you’ll get error codes related to the high pressure fuel pump performance. The pump is fine, but it’s not developing the correct pressure because it runs directly off of the camshaft that’s no longer turning in sync with the crank and the pistons, throwing off the fuel injection and ignition works.

I’ve also seen the same scenario play out repeatedly at my previous job whenever there’s a production crunch during the busy season. The line would run six days a week along with at least two hours overtime Monday through Friday. No maintenance getting done apart from quick fixes and, any halfway major work would be put off til Sunday or Saturday (if the main line isn’t running on Saturday).

This would usually go on about two to four weeks with few major problems. After that, it’s at least one major breakdown every week where the line would stop for an hour or longer while the supervisors ran out visibly panicked. Fun times.