Fredsvt

At home, I was given a kneeling pad that came from Griot's garage catalog, I like it, but I see it being destroyed quickly at work. I like the idea of a carpet piece or carpeted padded piece of wood. Maybe I'll make one. I have to push through the pain. Can't afford to stop working. Most days are tolerable. 1 circumin pill, 2 ibuprofen in the a.m. before I go to work. If I need more, I'll take 2 more during the day. At night, if only moderate pain 3 ibuprofen before bed. If nerves have triggered muscle contraction pain, 1 Formula 303 pill. They work great, take 2, and you're out for 8 hours guaranteed. I will not take any opioid pain pills, they make me sick to start and really don't work well. On another subject I did research: I have a friend who's a disability lawyer, now an administrative law judge for the SSA. He saw my MRI report and said it was the absolute worst he's ever seen. I could qualify for disability, however, here's their requirements for SSI disabilty (permanent). Not working for a minimum of 5 months. Starting the process, that's when you stop working, taking temporary disability. Which is only partial of what you'd end up getting. The whole process, before you see a judge, can be up to 2 years. So in that time you can have zero money coming in. As part of the requirements, you must divest yourself of: all cars, save one, preferably old, spend all money saved, you can't have a 401k or pension plan, you can't have any stocks/bonds, IRA's or annuities. You're allowed to keep your home if you own one. After working 30+ years now, I'm not selling out for that crap which wouldn't pay enough to keep me afloat here in NJ.

50, 51 in September. 11 blown discs, C7/C8 worst, has spinal cord bend 90 degrees upward. Loss of feeling in primarily my right hand, last 3 fingers. Ulnar nerve affected in both arms, impeded in shoulders and elbows. Carpal tunnel, severe. All of the above are inoperable, or as my spinal surgeon told me "you really DON'T want to do this surgery", which goes in from the front, they'd have to remove my thyroid (nodules), then give me a vertebrectomy, removing most of the cervical spine, and replacing it with a titanium "spinal column" but, it's not flexible. I'd be wearing a halo for 6 months, as the bone grows onto the titanium. I've been told the carpal and ulnar tunnel issues, there's no point since the nerves are impeded at the neck. Some disc damages are from work, others a minor motorcycle crash and 3 bad road bike crashes. The nerve damage/interference often causes false pain in my shoulder blades, mid and lower back. Left knee screwed up from years of kneeling on it setting up lifts. Now using pads, or thick cardboard to lean on. I'm already limited to how long I can stay bent over doing under hood work. I always tend to set any car on a lift and raise it so I don't ever have to bend over, no matter what I'm doing. I have real problems with 19.5 wheels and tires and the 20'+ aluminum rims on trucks. I've been tested by an audiologist, luckily I have no hearing loss, but I have bad tinnitus, not caused by work. Vision, well, when I hit 49, forget it. I'm still getting used to having to wear glasses. Since all of us where I work are 50+, we're known as the "geriatric mechanics" by some customers.

I was aware of the driveshaft nightmare/recall. The owner was warned it needed to go back NOW. He did, as the brakes were 1 sliver away from destroying the rotors. I see the car service/shuttle service in the lot next door with a fleet of Transits have them towed in over and over with dropped shafts. They are too stupid to read the letters they get. I agree about the looks. The similarity to a Sprinter or the other way around is quite annoying. The guys that drive them to compliment them on the ride and drive vs their E vans.

There's only a few that want a box or utility body on their trucks. They all seem to be ridiculously attracted to a van with a very tall model they can walk around in. I've only had a couple of experiences with a Transit, one putting on a trailer hitch and aftermarket wiring for the lighting for the guy's trailer. The other was nothing more than an oil change, both NA gassers. I find them as much a pita to lift as a Sprinter. Stupid putting things that are able to handle weight up so high under the chassis. I really hate crawling around on my stomach on a piece of large cardboard to get the adapters under them. This customer bought the maintenance plan to 150k iirc. At 40k, the stupid giubo (euro speak for that stupid driveshaft coupler) was already all split and spitting stringy crap and the rear brakes were on steel.

Gentlemen, Since we're being asked by customers with E vans getting well past it, what they should buy, what issues other than the driveshaft issues, are you guys seeing? Many are die-hard Ford buyers. I've been leery recommending the Transit only because it is so Euro. It reminds me of the ultimate shitbox on the road; any year Sprinter. Although some fleet drivers have been happy with the Transit, as far as ride/drive vs the Econoline. But, then anything with low miles may be better than a half million mile E box. We've reluctantly recommended gas engine only GM G vans. Full frame, but it comes with it's own issues. The duramax, while running well, is harder to work on than a 6.0 in an E box. And it has issues that are unrelated to the base engine, but are impossible to access easily.

It's really quite sad. I feel for the families of those killed and hurt, and for the dump driver, who had NO chance of stopping a fully loaded tri-axle at 60+ mph in a short distance, he or she has to live with what happened. The driver entering I80 at that on ramp, stopping and then crossing two lanes of high speed traffic to make it in that "official" U turn. After a few years of speaking to several customers that are more recent bus drivers, they are of the opinion that all traffic must stop or yield for ANYTHING a school bus does, regardless of whether or not the red warning lights are on.

The idiot who couldn't make the core support on a transit connect unbolt from the top. So when changing a radiator you get constantly dripped on, even after capping off hoses and rad fittings because the damned radiator drain sprays like a sprinkler all over the place.

IVS? I had to go look up the owner's manual. The Si has an EPS (steering wheel) indicator on the same side of the cluster as the VSA and MIL. I didn't get to do the searching I needed to do today. Did it act up with the VSA system disabled?

Have him disable the VSA system by holding the vsa button and see if the brakes still heat up. He should hear a beep and the VSA light will stay on. Normally, if the system is active, it's quite obvious and lights blink in the cluster. The rear calipers on these and other Hondas are problematic at times. All late model Hondas do have a lot of rear brake bias on light braking, they do tend to wear rear brake pads at a faster rate than most cars. Are there any aftermarket add ons to the factory audio? Have there been any codes stored in the FCAN (PCM, cluster, VSA) or the Body network? IIRC the audio system shouldn't be on the fast network.

We have a customer that has just gotten 5 2018 3.3 powered XL F150s, for a base truck, very nice. Considering it's the base engine, it's not bad. Very, very quiet riding truck too. Beats out the other trucks they got along with them, 10 2018 Colorado 2.5 I4. How GM can continue to sell 4 cylinder engines that sound and feel just like the old iron duke 2.5 engines.... Awful. Rest of the truck isn't too bad. They need the new Ranger, but why no V6 Ford??

For the blown plug, I use the Time Sert "big sert" kit for modular engines. Works very well. The 3v, I've used the Lisle setup, works pretty good.

It apparently is a derivative and updated version of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_AJD-V6/PSA_DT17 I don't know how scary that might be. The timing belt is an oddity.

That 6.4 made it farther than the '05 exploder I've got with a 4.0 sohc with a Jas-crapster engine and trans. 400 miles on powertrain. Bad knock, rattle in lower end of motor, noise in R valve cover, found broken oil spray bar under cover, fixing that. Test drive, rough idle with random jumping misfire on 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, low power, crappy shift quality. (typical of their transmissions) Whole mess installed by property management company that owns it. Now I'm married to it. Also found bad ball joints, front and RR upper, blown rear differential, front diff with blown pinion and side seals. 144k and such a mess.

The engine is definitely significantly higher than a regular E, and the cross member, sits insanely close to the oil pan. I've never seen one so close, When it comes back I'll take some pictures. It just doesn't look at all factory. We have no idea what place did the conversion, the 4 link brackets are welded and bolted to the frame, Unless the guy who owns it now, actually has documentation, it's going to be a pita to get parts for this front end. It appears to use stock-like springs and shocks, still in the same spring perches as a regular E-van.

Hey guys, I have a question regarding this fine 1995 E350 ambulance (now mobile detailing rig), had to do some work inside the doghouse. I have no idea who converted it to 4x4, I know of Quigley (sp?) or if it's a home made deal. It shows on Oasis that it's was originally sold to a municipality, and some other research revealed it's either a theft recovery or total loss. Anyway, on this particular van, the engine has been raised to the point that the right valve cover is less than 1/4 inch from the sides of the doghouse opening. The top of the turbo is approximately 1.5" from the top of the doghouse opening. No room at all to get your hand between. Luckily, or not, it seems it's had at least 1 engine, since the black paint is still fresh even up to the exhaust manifolds, while the rest of the chassis, underneath is horrendously rotted. How have you guys, if you've run into this, get the valve covers off these things? It's got glow plug issues as well as soon needing an oil pan. There's no room to drop the engine as the cross member seems to have been raised to nearly touching the oil pan. Body raise? A scary proposition on this thing.

I sent a letter (email) off to the electric company after hearing that they may cover losses, who knows? I've heard horror stories about them though. I'm hesitant at this point to call homeowners' insurance. Never had a claim, but since it's Allstate, they may slap those hands closed if I do. Now I'm up to 3 gfci plugs burned, I've got the receptacle breakers shut off in the garage until I get new ones installed.

Power surges into your home really suck... Emergency phone call from my sick elderly mom (housebound) at my house about "no power" and her O2 machine down. Standby gen started, then shut down. I called company that installed it, and prepared to leave work. Get home, a few minutes before electrician. Find partial power, 9 breakers blown, including the 60A for my garage. I'm not touching anything. Long story short, electrician believes surge came through. I found the aforementioned breakers blown, 18 damaged surge protectors, 3 smoked completely, in my garage all breakers for plugs popped and 1 gfci completely melted. Turning on one breaker in particular made a sound and flash much like a transformer exploding. Ended up unplugging everything on that circuit and putting them back. Also lost my receiver and suboofer in the garage. Gen works fine, he believes as shore power came back, it surged, doing the damage and causing the gen to shut down. I found out later a car hit a pole earlier in the day. Needless to say, I'm a bit wound up, looking, checking and smelling every piece of electrical equipment in the place. As a side note, electrician did say that when many surge protectors go, they sometimes deliberately short input lines to blow the breaker to prevent surges from going through. Just ordered 18 new surge protectors and the electricians are coming back to install a whole house protector in the box and some other work I want done.

I didn't get into asking or pushing for the information on what happened to each motor. It's gone, hopefully for a good long time. But then, I get another, 2000, customer says it's sluggish, when pulling his supposed 8k horse trailer. I rode the brakes on this F250 to make the motor work, no bogging, or sluggishness. Proper boost, etc. Found some other maintenance issues, and he approved that. Found the reason he thought it was sluggish, ask it's sluggish in comparison to WHAT. His friend has a 440 hp 6.7.... DUH. Only just about double the 225 hp of his old 7.3. Matt, check the base oil pressure hot on that old 7.3. I've seen them with very worn oil pumps that only have 5 - 10 psi at hot idle, and on shut down, the oil from the hp reservoir somehow finds itself back in the pan. Had an E van with the worst hot engine lower end knock, it had 6 psi at 220 oil temp. After an 8 hour shut down, the reservoir would drain out. That one would start briefly, die from lack of ICP and not restart as it would lose the batteries before it could rebuilt base oil pressure and fill the reservoir. I'm sure the very worn lower end wasn't helping it.

Thanks to all that replied. Truck is fixed. We found some information that was pivotal in the history of this thing... The AD injectors that were in it, weren't. They said AD, but that was meaningless after I found the receipt for the "Swampy High Performance" injectors in the console. At some point, after the last engine let go, and the used blue engine was installed, he had someone, who he won't admit to, put in the above injectors. My boss called the shop that installed the engine to get some information. They said, those injectors were not put in by them. He then called the local hp diesel parts place, and they told us the Swampy injectors all come with either a programmer or a chip to install in the PCM as the factory PCM program will not work, it'll lope (yes), it will smoke excessively (yes), it won't idle smooth (yes) and it won't have any power at anything below 2800 rpm (yes) if the injectors are installed without the chip/programmer. In went a set of Alliant new AB injectors (proper for it's early pro-date). HUGE difference. Truck actually runs as it should.

It's coming in on Tuesday, ran the vin, based on the very early pro date, our Ford parts guy says it should have AB injectors in it.... I swear I saw AD injectors in it. Supposedly, the set was replaced between engine 3 and this one. Based on what the owner said he paid for a set of 8, they were used or some off brand remans. He's going to bring all the paperwork for all the engines that have been put in it. I'm going to look at this thing more closely to see what's been swapped from the Ford version to this one. I'm getting tired of fixing other's abortions. Seems like that's all that's been coming in lately.

Truck is an F250, 7.3 auto. 120k on it. On it's FOURTH engine. How this guy has done what he's done, I don't quite get. First 2 engines let go under warranty, both broke crankshafts, or so the owner says. Third engine let go, supposedly in the same way. He was told the torque converter was bad then (rattles) and he had it replaced. (the "new" one rattles) Here's where I have gotten involved, unfortunately. The engine is used, out of an International truck. It's that metallic appearing blue, with the Ford valve covers, upper HP reservoir, fuel filter housing and wastegated turbo on it from what I can tell. It appears it did have a mechanical tandem pump and someone rammed a brass core plug in the pump's mounting hole. It came in a while ago for uvc harness and gasket meltdown (single connector cover gaskets) Now, it seems to need injectors, runs horrible cold, misfire and gradually picks up, but low power and heavy smoke unloaded at 2200 rpm. Here's where the issues comes in, it runs on start up much like an early '95, with that romp, romp romp and eventual settle down even hot. While in the valve covers, I'm unsure if it has the correct injectors for what it really is as well as the proper HP pump for the injectors it is supposed to have. The letter codes were AD iirc. All 8. I remember early dit 7.3s were AA, then they went to AB, was there ever and AC injector? In the last couple of years they used AD, with the LL or AE injector in cylinder 8. The guy said it ran ok with the "blue" engine until the past few winters where it ran worse and worse. Any help for my now foggy memory would be a great help.

Thanks guys, I'm going to make a call myself, I think something gets lost in translation between me and those in the office to the parts department. I picked out all the needed parts from the procedure, then to the fax, should have all of that coming. The left turbo looks much easier to access than the right, the right ones on both trucks currently leaking coolant are both dry.

Hi Everyone, On these turbos, specifically the left side, I have two, so far, in a fleet with the jiffy tite coolant fittings in the turbine housing leaking badly. Are these available separately from the turbo itself? Our local Ford parts guys are telling me no. Second, I saw the parts list posting a while back, our shop's access to PTS via installer support, does not offer the ability to look up the procedure with the little shopping cart icon mentioned. Can our local parts department guys see this. There's a bunch of bolts, nuts, studs and gaskets that they say they can't "see". So I had to pick them out of the terrible faxed images they sent us. Thanks for any assistance.

Same thing happens to Hyundai Sante Fe with 3.5 and Aisin 5 speed auto. The transfer box (their speak) begins to grenade, and the input shaft to the box begins to move, it then tears up a tiny seal INSIDE the hollow transfer input shaft that also allows the right front axle to receive drive. These start leaking atf from between the transfer box and trans. Once that happens, the trans is a throw away. A new trans is pretty cheap, 1600 list, the transfer box.... 3600 list Ouch. Last one took 3 used boxes to get a good one.

Depends on the "charger". Was it constantly "baking" the battery all winter? Much like stupid RV inverters that cook the coach batteries if left plugged in constantly. I have my '99 Lightning on a battery maintainer 24/7 as long as it's sitting. Same motorcraft battery for 14 years now. Keeps voltage at 12.8v. I also put my S2000 on a maintainer (different brand) in the winter, it first does a desulfation, bring voltage to 15.1, then drops to 12.6 to 12.8. Haven't had issues with either.