DieselD

It really is a stereotype with a dealership and old public thinking that all dealerships or "stealerships" are out to bend you over. I know my far share of non-dealer shops bending people over more then the worst dealership could. But in their eyes its better still better then taking it to a dealer. Dont get me wrong there are lots of dealer techs that are flat out hacks but so are non-dealer techs too. Consumers fail to realize how complicated a vehicle is now days and it is very hard for outside shop to compete without the proper resources. As with anything they need to do their research and find a good shop/dealer

Been there done that with the roush side. I feel your pain brother!!!

In my experience if I did not "cover my ass" and replace both of them at the same time it would tend to bite me in the ass later. On top of that I would find the "adapter" to be bent or tweaked from past repairs when people would get a little carried away with their pry bar removing the turbo

Was it a true incomplete build vehicle from the factory? If I remember correctly when ordering the trucks for our fleet a F350 or lower SRW or DRW it was a bed delete option and not a incomplete vehicle build like you would have on a true cab and chassis like the 450/550 This could explain the truck having RSC as it was intended as a pickup truck and not a work truck

I totally get this point of view however when is putting up with being unhappy enough? I did this same very thing for years. I sacked up and delt with stupid shit all day. Told myself to push through it and give it time to improve but you can not sit around and wait your whole life for a company to pull their head out of their ass. In my experience I have worked at 3(second was a 7week stretch) different dealers for a total of about 13years and eventually they all seem to get to the same point in frustration levels. As much as tried to suck it up wrench I got really tired of dealing with the BS, I have been told Im worthless as a tech(to my face), forced to work for free on another techs major recheck or loose my job(motor overhaul), directly told by management the customer is not worth taking the time to fix his truck correctly the first time and if you do you will not be paid or fired. All while I was one of the top techs in the shop. If you confront management it was a dick sucking contest trying to tell me how great I was and I can not leave blah blah blah. The best was telling me I was stuck working there and couldn't get a better job that was going to pay me as well so I should just deal with it. I laughed and smiled as I couldn't believe what I heard. Game on I thought to myself and set out to prove them wrong. A year later I did just that and ended up with alot better job for a salary wage greater then what I could pull flat rate. Jokes on them! I have been getting phone calls ever since to come back. I understand the business and put up with a lot because I know thats the name of the game. It can be a good living but I believe every tech has his breaking point both mental and psychical. I mean really how long are you going to be able to wrench on a diesel? Most of the work is heavy line stuff. If your lucky you will get into a foreman position which ends up paying you less money for more responsibility and headaches. When the job starts affecting your personal life and you bring that anger home or dread going back to work on monday its time to pull the plug and find something better.

What did the pump look like inside? any signs of water intrusion? It almost seems the fall back excuse now days is water contamination. I know its a big issue and we have even had it happen to our fleet trucks. I would be hard pressed to believe the pump failed in that manner due to water contamination without seeing the inside of the pump and rest of the fuel system.

IMO the one and only way to cure stickion is to prevent it from happening in the first place by changing your damn engine oil!

Yeah screw those belt drive pto/air setups. My understanding for the dual ribbed was the amount of HP it took to drive the fan at 100% duty cycle along with everything else on the FEAD system required enough "traction" to keep the belt from slipping. Wonder if converting it will cause slipping?

I have alot of bays now. This week consists delivering two vehicles to las vegas and 10 different DOT inspections with minor repairs in two different states along my way

Yep cummins claims get processed through RapidServe if its anything related to the engine. The transmission claims are through allison and body/chassis concerns are Ford. Alex is correct in stating you get a dry ass raping by Rapidserve when processing those claims. they basically dictate to you want you will and will not repair along with how much they will pay you.

This thing brings the awesome

sounds just like CA...A bunch of lesbian hippys that think they are saving the world.... We had a women that was a decent driveability tech at my last dealer. she could have passed as a dude however so not sure if that counts

sounds like Arizona and Mexico. Its getting worse by the day and I have even been spoken too in Spanish first then English at the bank several times. Some parts of town you could swear you crossed the border into mexico with horrible bright colored buildings with a llantra on every corner and not a word in English to be found

yeah the 6.7 radiators pay nice fat time thats for sure. But with anything time is ticking until ford figures out the short cut or recalls it and drops the time to barely enough to cover the repair

Don't you think ford would have learned how to build a radiator by now? As if the 6.4 endless radiator failures was bad enough

I agree. Cant tease us with a broken crankshaft without a proper picture

welcome to 2009 keith

holy awesome! nice work brad

Our EPA is far too concerned about polar bears then actually allowing us a engine that will get 50-60mpg. however the diesel jettas are close to that ballpark. Then again Europe has a whole lot worse fuel prices then we do. I agree the connect is a large version of a pos focus. Not the current focus but circa early 2000 focus.

The E series will be a hard vehicle to replace. As boring and difficult to work on as they are they where a solid vehicle. That fullsize transit BS they are planing on looks like shit. I hope it performs as well as the econoline did

As you know you can not be efficient in your job with support like that. I have about 160 vehicles in my fleet which are kinda mixed bag. However a majority of them are fords and any new vehicle bought will be ford. One of my requirements I had was we needed to get the support needed to repair as much as possible in house. My employer recognizes the benefit in supporting me in what I need to do my job and making the right choice for he company to keep stuff on the road. The past few months I have setup all the training/fleet ford subscriptions and even got a P&A code set up for in house warranty. I can pretty much see and do whatever a dealership can with a few exceptions. This is the only way too fly and be able to repair your fleet efficiently and effectively.

I have only been out for about 6months but wouldn't dream of going back!I made good money doing it but talk about a stressful pain in the ass. You had to be on your toes and know the warranty system inside and out to make hours. I ate my fair share of repairs due to politics and warranty bs. I would gladly eat my own mistakes but when it came down to something that had nothing to do with my craftsmanship it get under my skin. The politics, drama queens and watching hack ball techs get fed pushed me to find something better. Funny thing is the experience and learning I earned with my dealership experience paved the way to my current job so I can not really regret one minute of it.

I hate that hose. more so hate trying not to take a bath in coolant. I do the long pry bar trick too and be quick. Get in there and pry it apart and jump out of the way and hope you hit one of four drain buckets under it

I have had a few but only on the aft axle tanks in chassis cab trucks

sneaky bastard