DENVER -- Four brand-new metro area fire trucks -- worth about $400,000 in tax money each -- have spent much of the summer at the engine manufacturer because mechanics are having trouble fixing a glitch with the motors.

“What's your analysis of what's happened in this situation?” CALL7 Investigator Tony Kovaleski asked Denver City Councilman Doug Linkhart.

“We bought some trucks that are lemons, basically," said Linkhart, who chairs the council’s safety committee.

Denver bought four engines for $1,587,000 last winter and three of them have had problems that cause the engines to lose power for a few seconds – sometimes on emergency calls.

One engine has had no problems.

Along with Denver's three engines, the Greater Brighton Fire Protection District had a similar problem on a fire engine that taxpayers bought for more than $300,000.

Brighton Fire Chief Mark Bodane has been frustrated with engine manufacturer Cummins, and said he doesn’t believe the corporate office has made it a priority to fix the problem until 7News started asking about it.

“These were emergency vehicles and it should have been their top priority and it's just not clear to us whether it was or not," Bodane said.

“Did you see a difference when we started to investigate?” Kovaleski asked.

"We certainly, at that time, started to receive much more communication with Cummins at the corporate level," Bodane said.

Cummings had promised to get the engines back before the Democratic National Convention started Monday, but as of this week two Denver fire engines remain at the Cummins repair shop in Henderson, which is in Adams County. The problem has been with the engine builder and not the manufacturer that built the rest of the vehicles, according to fire officials.

Cummins spokesman Mark Land said the company has been working “extremely hard” to fix the problem and wishes it would not have taken so long. But he said the CALL7 investigation had nothing to do with speeding up fixing the trucks.

“The timing has nothing to do with anyone putting pressure on us to get it done,” Land said.

Bodane, whose engine was put back in service on Friday, was not happy Cummins waited until the Friday before the DNC to get the truck fixed.

"That's part of our frustration,” Bodane said. “We've expressed to them is that it's not a time for us to have any fewer emergency vehicles is when you have that type of event occurring in the Denver metro area."

Denver Fire Chief Nick Nuanes was more understanding, saying Cummins was trying to fix the engines but just has been unable to find the problem.

“I don't think there's any blame to go around,” Nuanes said. “I think we have a problem with it and they're trying to fix it. Nobody's back away from it."

Fire trucks that were more than a decade old were pressed into service while the brand-new vehicles were sitting in the Henderson lot.

A captain from Station 20 fired off an e-mail on May 25, complaining about the problems with their new engine.

“Yesterday we responded on a call and the throttle cut out six times in a matter of eight blocks,” Brad Balding wrote in the e-mail, obtained under state open records laws.

“Due to all of the problems that we have had with this rig, I estimate that we have been out of service changing rigs out for approximately 30 hours ... (which has) more importantly left us out of service for the community that we serve,” Balding added.

Nuanes said the replacement rigs did not compromise safety, but conceded that he pulled the new trucks to make sure they didn’t endanger the neighborhood.

“It's a safety issue, number one, I want to make sure the citizens and the firefighters of this city are protected,” Nuanes said.

Linkhart seemed more upset than the fire chief.

“The money's out the door so we need to have the truck's working," Linkhart said.