BrunoWilimek

Unfortunately, if you read the fine print, hotline techs have no say in what will be covered by warranty. They are more like us in that they know(or should)what parts need to be replaced as they are compromised by a failure and may lead to repeat repairs. The warranty Nazis know nothing about our job, they only look at a set of printed instructions that look something like this: Deny all claims that come in. Make the technician jump through hoops to see how angry he/she gets. Laugh at their petty existence. Be-little them and make them believe they are ripping off Ford by replacing any/all parts, even if it is a commonly replaced part with a known incidence of failure. Use big percentage numbers to sound educated about denying their claims. Make them think all technicians are lower than dirt and totally dishonest. Make them grovel at your feet, for you are Nazis! At least that is an educated guess from what I have personally experienced and read here and on pro-tech about the warranty Nazis.

That is the one for auto locking hubs. For manual hubs, the tool listed is D85T-1197-A, which is a spanner locknut wrench that crosses up to 205-D065.

The Ford tool number is T95T-1197-B which crosses up to 205-349 and looks the same as the OTC #6796 indicated by Jeff_E. It is a 2 3/4 inch socket.

We haven't seen that failure...yet, but have seen the front subframes rusting out on 2001 Windstars. The right side lower control arm mounting ears corrode to the point they break off the subframe. Just did the second one. I got a used subframe for the first one that wasn't much better than the original. The second one got a new subframe. Recall? Sounds like a good idea to me. Did you send in a Global Concern Report on each one?

What's with the suede headliner?

Probably to keep customers from noticing how frequently it actually goes into regen, unless they happened to be looking at the message centre at the right time.

It only works on the older ones. The newer(05 or 06 and up)6.0's are not compatible as they use a high speed network. I would pass on it unless you only work on pre-2005 vehicles, no matter what the price is. They have been orphaned by FOMOCO, so no updates have been available for ages, so no reprogramming can be done. Ours mostly sits and collects dust, unless the IDS is in use and we are working on an older vehicle.

And the driver is in a wheelchair and uses a mouthpiece to drive! Wow, he's got bigger ones than me. Amazing.

I have a select few techs that I answer tech questions for over the phone. They are guys I have known for years or worked with in the past. They are also friends that will do me favours in return. On the other hand, I had a guy from the local Mr. Transmission shop that was a PITA. He would call, asking for a quick fix and then give me a slow, rambling, long-winded query that always took me some time to research the answer to. I would have to call him back and would frequently be put on hold while he answered a "more important" call. I hung up on him the last time, because he put me on hold before he even asked me the question he was calling about. Also, his business has screwed some of our customers over the years, so we no longer do business with them. I had been given some favours from them in years gone by, which meant I owed them, but no more. My time is valuable too.

If memory serves correctly, the parking brake needs to be activated to allow the higher idle, as well as one of the upfitter switches wired in to enable it on. I don't know if the parking brake can be substituted for anything else to enable it to work with vehicle moving.

Good work, Mike. I recently spent many hours trying to track down a squeak/creak on an 07 Edge without success. I tried using chassis ears with no luck at narrowing down the cause. I tightened every fastener in sight fron and rear. I took several people for rides to help narrow down the loaction, but everyone heard a different noise coming from a different location. If it comes back I will be sure to check the fuel tank out.

Pressurize the high pressure oil system with the oil filter removed from the housing. If the HP pump is bad, oil/air will blow into the oil filter housing.

Reminds me of my old(dearly departed)27" RCA TV that I bought new in 1993. While it was still in its 3 year warranty, there was a problem with solder joints in it that caused it to be inoperable. They fixed it for free, but a few years later, it was back with more problems, which got fixed for a cost. Years later, the original problem returned, but after searching it on the internet and looking inside to see if I was able to re-solder the circuits myself, I decided it wasn't worth the effort, and what was to prevent the solder joints from melting again, unless the cause was fixed, not just the symptom.

I read a tip on pro-tech that I now use and it seems to work. I remove the top filter first, not re-installing the new one yet. Then I lift the truck on the hoist and change to lower one. After lowering the truck, the fuel level in the secondary housing has dropped, so installing the new filter is problem free, but I leave the cap unscrewed so I can monitor the fuel level in the housing. This is where it gets a little tricky. I cycle the key to the run position for a few seconds a few times until the fuel level rises to mostly fill the housing without overflowing it. A second person to watch helps. When the fuel level is high enough to just fill the housing without overflowing when tightening the cap, I then tighten the cap, and usually startup is ensured, but to be certain, I cycle the key once more and bleed the air at the valve stem.

Sorry to hear about your back, Aaron. Not a nice thing to happen to anyone. Good luck.

It's bringing back memories from long ago. The tech beside me got the fun job of assessing and re-assembling one of these p.o.s.'s after the owner tore it apart to fix it and got in over his head. Then he traded it in, so it had to be put back together. The first time he started it up, he must have had it mis-timed, because it rapped like crazy, bending some valves in the process. It finally got put back together, but many hours were spent on it before it was a runner.

Great pics, Bruce. Maybe I will take the 6.7 diesel course after all. I was all set to let my diesel certification lapse if it looked like another pos to work on. lol. I wish I was in Vegas, I woke up to frost on the ground this morning.

Basically the same as the F series, but with a few additions. I got the instructions from flateratetech also, but are now so covered in my own notes that I would be embarrassed to copy them. Here are the extras as I see them printed. 1.Disconnect the fuel filler pipe from the body, 1-10mm nut and 3-7mm nuts and lay aside loosely(have assistant watching the fill pipe while raising the body off so as not to catch on lower fender). 2. Disconnect both licence plate bulbs at rear. 3. There are 10 body mounts, that require an 18mm socket and air ratchet to remove. They are in pairs up and down the body. The first pair are just inside the rear hatch. The second are about 2 feet forward of that. The third are just behind the front seats. The fourth and fifth are the same as on the F-series. 4. Disconnect the 2 heater hoses going to the rear(if equipped). Otherwise, all instructions for F-series apply. Note:1. These are as printed from flateratetech.com for pre-2005 models. 2. I have never done an Excursion cab lift, so have not had a chance to test the instructions as printed, or improve any mis-information as printed. 3. I scanned the entire list of instructions as printed off the website and hope I didn't inadvertantly miss any pertaining to the Excursion. Good luck with it.

Maybe things have changed, but the o-rings at the top of the injectors were not supposed to be serviceable. Are they all leaking or just the ones with new seals in them?

Probably because of the cost involved. Say the replacement switch costs Ford only $10. Then there is the connector adapter, which likely costs another $5(I dunno, maybe less?), then there is the labour which could take maybe .5. Add that up and you get probably about $50(all figures off the top of my head), multiplied by several million units makes many millions of dollars. The bean counters decided to cut the cost by issuing the inline fuse kit for probably $5 and pay .3 to install it, saving the company many millions of dollars.

There will always be a snake oil out there that claims to perform miracles for "whatever". The salesmen can make all kinds of outrageous claims and purport to have proof it works. However, I always remember the snake oil salesman from South Africa(of all places) that was hawking Forte products, including oil treatment, engine flush, fuel treatment etc. He came to our dealership more than 15 years ago, claiming the Forte line was the best thing since sliced bread. He gave us a demonstration of it with a machine that turned a weighted metal wheel against a steel surface. He dropped a few drops of the Forte stuff on the wheel and there was no wear on the metal surface. Then he repeated the demonstration with Ford oil. The wheel scored into the metal surface. We were all convinced that we should sell the stuff. He even gave us free coolant pH test strips and had us collecting bottle caps from his product to see who could sell the most and win a prize. We used the stuff with various success for a few months, until he came back one time working for a new company claiming to have the best products since sliced bread. The Forte stuff collected dust on a shelf until we were able to use it up and so too with the new stuff, that was similar, yet never really developped a following and that saleman stopped coming after a few months, never to be heard from again.

If all else fails, Mike, and the pulley itself is not damaged, you may be able to press out the bearing, match up the number on it and just replace the bearing. I have done this on several pulleys that were not available locally, yet the bearing was. Of course, if pulley is damaged, this will not work.

Just watch those pawn shop tools, though. On the first weekend on Sunday night, that our new shop was opened in February of 2000, a gang of thieves loaded all our tool boxes in the back of a used cube van from the lot after breaking open a safe to get the key. They used a forklift that was in the shop to load the boxes in the van. They had an inside man who got a job at the new Fastlane using another set of stolen tools. They drove the cube van over 2 curbs to get off the lot. Most of the tools were never recovered, except for one tech's box, missing most of the good stuff, beat up and painted black over the original red. They only found it because 4 years after the theft, the thief who kept it pawned a torque wrench at the local buy and sell shop. Another of the techs, who was not at the dealership at the time of the theft, looked at the torque wrench and recognized the initials carved in it and luckily the shop co-operated with the cops and the thief was caught with the box and lots more stolen loot from other burglaries at his house. The insurance company had already paid out on the claim, so the tech got his box back. Another tech's wrenches showed up at a flea market in a small town 100 km away. Buyer beware.

Yup. The hole in the end takes a bar(mine came with one attached), then put your socket on the 1/2 drive, a 3/4 drive tool on the other end and the bar(which goes the opposite direction to the drive end being turned) locked against something solid.

I just bought one from Princess Auto on sale, shipped to the dealership, taxes included for just about the same price. $210 or thereabouts. It worked well on the pinion nut on the F550 dually differential I was working on the day it arrived that needed to be torqued to 800 ft/lbs or thereabouts. I bought it with 6.0 headgaskets jobs in mind.