mchan68

-'05 Sport Trac getting a boneyard engine after pan removal revealed pieces of cassettes and some metal filings. -'11 F-150 Ecoboost getting a new timing chain, tensioner and phasers. -'12 F-350 6.7L in engine idle only mode with a hard P207F by itself. Last, but not least, an early build '04 F-350 DRW cab and chassis. This one's a bit of a story. Just this winter passed, it was at our shop after being purchased used, in for a commercial vehicle inspection. The frame on this unit was so rotted, along with the engine block, brake and fuel lines, not to mention the engine had a cracked y-pipe and was blowing coolant out the degas bottle the moment the engine was fired up. At that time I condemned the truck, and told them it's not worth putting any money into to put into service. The guy that bought it has a whole fleet of 6.0L trucks that he has brought to us in the past. In any event, they picked it up and brought it to "their mechanic". They changed the y-pipe along with the head gaskets and have not been able to get the truck started ever since. In it arrives on the hook, on our lot. I already told our service advisor that I don't want to go near this thing with a twenty foot pole, due to it has "ever since you ....." written all over it. Both he and the manager approached me today, with the manager informing me that he's paying for a rental for this guy (I call bullshit on that, but anyways) and he needs me to "look at it". So, later on this evening, I connect IDS and there's every DTC under the sun present. I crank the engine over, and it sounds like it has ZERO compression on any of the cylinders. I pull up with datalogger to look at the list of my favourite 6.0L PIDs. I see "yes fault" for ECT, EOT, IAT #2, FICM_M, FICM_V and FICM_L all read zero, ICP volts reads 0 volts!!! When cranking the engine over, I can't even get an RPM reading!!! Soooooo, what do I tell the advisor and manager tomorrow? Looking under the hood, it looks like the hacks have reaally been to town on it.

The last one I had with exactly that noise described ended up having a failed horizontal cooler and an 'S' shaped cylinder #8 connecting rod.

I just filled up truck today at 1.29/L for diesel at a station where it was 1.38/L for regular unleaded (87).

Just throwing my 2 cents out there, but I vaguely recall seeing someone attempt to boost start one, that fried the PCM when the polarity was accidentally reversed. There are also two small grounds, each adjacent to the headlight assembly secured to the rad support. If I recall correctly, if one of them is disconnected, the fuel pump won't run and if there is an issue with the other ground, the corresponding headlight and signal light won't work. Not sure how much if any, this helps. Can you still retrieve codes with these, by cycling the ignition between OFF and RUN three times?

Sure the CKP is gravy (but when do they ever fail?), but how much extra do you hoop the customer when one of the injectors on that bank needs to be changed?

I was going to chime in, but after reading all of the above, I am completely SPEECHLESS. WOW!!!

Did I read right? That's from an E-Series AMBULANCE? How bad is the piston/cylinder head damage? Better you than me.

Sounds almost exactly like my world here for about the last five or six of the nine, going on ten years since I've been at my store. Rumour had it, that our management found a guy from Puerto Rico to come to our store, to do some trannys. All of us in the shop were toying with the idea of giving him ALL the 13S12 recalls.

BOTH.

With two techs off on workman's comp, and one apprentice off on comp as well, one apprentice left and our last manager left, I've been running pretty ragged here this last couple of weeks. I haven't been able to leave earlier than closing every night, and I've pretty much been working almost every Saturday to fill in for the MIA techs normally scheduled, as well as my own scheduled Saturdays. In the last nine years I've been here only two have tried doing diesel work and left very shortly after. They can't even get anyone to touch anything base engine, be it retail or warranty. I've got two waiting for me to get to, but at the same time they can't afford to tie me up long term so they keep getting pushed to the back of the bus.

If air testing the high pressure oil system reveals air exiting the oil filter housing, THAT is positive evidence to condemn a high pressure oil pump.

Aren't Ford Flex hub and bearing assemblies a lot of fun to replace?

I still have a few pictures of a naked woman in a bathtub...... with big boobies too.

That sounds pretty close to what I charge.

Well, I did my first one this week. My gripes are getting the damn heat shield installed the way they instruct. I must've spent the better part of half an hour to 45 minutes to get that damn lower bolt started. It took me about a day and a half to do. This was with getting pulled off and on the job about twice during the process. Should I happen to get another one of these to do, there will be A LOT of steps that will be combined, thereby reducing the total time spent. ADDED: Bleeding the cooling system really sucks big hairy donkey balls too. The next one I get will be getting vacuum bled for damn sure.

NGS and WDS?? How about SBDS??? Wasn't that THE high tech diagnostic system for the very short time it was around, that only a select few techs were allowed to touch in any Ford store?

Every EGR cooler/oil cooler replace that comes into my bay gets new coolant, oil and filter, but definitely for higher labour times.

.... and funny enough, the very next video in line is a Geo Metro with a 600cc bike engine stuffed into the engine bay. Talk about one extreme to the other. Hold on a minute. Did I actually see the doors open? I thought they were supposed to be welded shut.

Brainfart. If I remember correctly, these cars use quite literally the same manual steering rack as the Chevette. I'm sure most of you remember those gems.

My best friend's dad owned one, and I remembered how ridiculously small the fuel tanks were in them. Less than 200 kms. from a full tank and it would be time to re-fuel again. BTW, isn't the firing order on that engine the easiest to remember? I recall it is literally 1-2-3-4-5-6.

Pontiac Fiero??? Appropriately named too, since it means what they were prone to in Italian if I recall correctly.

Those of you who desire getting just the intake to front cover rubber "donut" without having to buy a whole bunch of un-needed parts to go with it, can do so if you go to your nearest Navistar dealer and ask for part number 1836551C1. Just thought I would pass this along.

DITTO!!! Same goes for dumping the Crown Vics.

Being a manual transmission, MAKE SURE IT'S IN NEUTRAL when he jumps the jumper under the hood.

You can't buy just the gasket by itself in the kit from Ford. There are some places that sell packages with the ARP head studs in conjunction with OEM Ford head gaskets without all the extra junk Ford puts in their kits. I just don't know the vendors off the top of my head.