DwayneGorniak

I had one that was ten litres overfull and went through that whole frigin TSB procedure only to find nothing. It has been over a month now and the customer has been in touch with us. Hasn't done it since. But here was the interesting part: truck had 38,000km's and the hour meter read 1170 hours multiplied by 55km's = 64,350 km's. He literally uses his truck as an office. He is a home builder and pulls a trailer with equipment in in it. And he has flat out told us that he will never shut his truck off in the winter. He refuses to get into a cold truck. This was the first thing I had reported to Hotline and they had me go through that whole friggin procedure anyway, only to find nothing. Then they told me to put it back together and punt it right after they had told me they produce oil as well, But they seem to produce more oil if they are in regen frequently. According to hotline, they are prone to washing down the cylinders during the regen process which allows for alot of the fuel to make it past the piston rings into the ccrankcase. Great system!

Larry, I think the biggest problem Ford has, is the fact that they have strained the nuts out of the Sick-O by cranking it up 90hp more than it was originally intended to produce. That and the rubber Mexican head bolts that we have in that engine and the fact that when they stretch and lift the heads off the block these engines fill the cooling system with carbon which plugs the engine oil cooler passages and most likely does not do any good for water pump bearings or even the thermostats. I don't think there is anything wrong with premium gold at all. How many late model 7.3L's that came from the factory equipped with premium gold have we ever seen issues with? When I bought my 7.3L, that was one of the first things I did was to flush it over to premium gold.

Yep, anything truly is possible Keith. Hell, the engineers figured out how to make it possible to shoehorn that mo-fo into that tight hole in the first place. Right? /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/hammer2.gif

Scored cylinder wall and piston on the last one I saw. I have seen two and heard of quite a few.

Man, I do get good laughs in this place. I didn't even start this one yesterday. Yesterday I was putting a Sick-o engine back in and when I was trying to line the engine up to the tranny, one of the other Journeymen come running over and gave me a hand. after we were done, he yelled out in the shop: And you don't have to pay me for that! All the journeymen here ahave always helped eachother. But yesterday all the journeymen decided they are going to prove that we don't need apprentices to make us efficient. So we have all been running from eachothers bays helping eachother out and yelling at the top of our lungs: You dan't have to pay me for that! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

I've got the Blue point air hammer as well Jim. Can't complain about it. It has way more jam than anyone elses in the shop. Sometimes the Job may take a bit of rattling, but they always come off.

I know you said you have tried air hammers. But I have a long barrel air hammer that I use with the one inch hammer head. I go around between the studs in a star pattern and the rims come right off. And no damaging the rims or studs. I do the same thing with seized drums and havn't had a propblem yet. I know the other guys in the shop with the cheap air hammers fight and swear as well. Not sure if you are using a cheap or good air hammer.

You know Jeff, the thought has crossed my mind. I'm one of those guys that does quite a bit of looking into a new place before I make any rash decisions. For now I'm still making money and not having to share it just yet. However, if they push real hard, it is not a hard decision for me to make. I've always lived by the theory: if I've done it before, I can do it again. But I'll keep my eyes peeled. I would just like to be able to do my job, make money, and have management leave me the hell alone. But it seems every time I'm at a dealership for a little while, they start to think they own you and can do whatever the hell they want. Is it just me that thinks this way or what? And I'm the kind of guy that will prove them wrong if that problem occurs. I just wish the problem would never occur. Wishfull thinkin, I guess. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/shrug.gif Jim, I was wondering when you were gonna make a poke at me or put a bug in my ear. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

Another vote here for pullin turbo and opening it up.

Well the order came down from the D.P. yesterday that apprentices are no longer to work with me. He said if I don't want to share my time, I don't need an apprentice. He figures the apprentices do nothing more than make us journeymen efficient. All the journeymen in this shop are in an uproar right now and they don't want any apprentices working them either because they don't want to get charged like I did. Funny thing is this happened to me two years ago here and my fix for it was to refuse to work with apprentices. Then they figured I must have forgotten about it. All along, I had suspected it was his order anyway. Like I said he makes all the decisions for every department here and managers do nothing more than apply them. I think it's time to start lookin again. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/scratchhead.gif

I have an 18,000lb Rotary two post in my bay. Once you have a routine, it doesn't even seem to bother a guy. But I do love my hoist.

Sorry for replying late, but I remove regular cabs all the time. I pull the extending arms out of the hoist arms and then I can lift the cabs with three hoist arms. I just make sure I use ratchet straps to secure the cab to the arms so that nothing moves. Tripod system if you want to call it that. It seems that you can never get four arms to lift these cabs without hitting the frames.

Man, I love it. Like I said, it's just freakin awsome.

That would be a great idea Keith. But I fear the warranty Nazi's now control most of FOMOCO and will do anything to not pay out another dollar. They are kicking back crap like this and don't have a damned leg to stand on with this issue.

Ad-Hoc vs. Infrastructure mode. Ad-hoc is great for going on a road test without cables but sucks when you have to do a ton of FICM or PCM reprogramming like I do. Disconnect from Internet and connect to VCM, find out you need to download a later calibration, disconnect from VCM and connect to internet, download file, disconnect from internet and connect to VCM, punt in the calibration, and so on. Now take into consideration using your laptop to look at PCED's like I do and that makes the disconnecting and connecting unbearable. Infrastructure Mode is great if you want to do what I was just talking anbout seemlessly and have a larger distance range within the shop. However, there is that slight pain of hooking up the cable for a road test. Didn't bother me that much. But curiousity got the cat. So I thought, why can't I use my internal wireless card for our main wireless network and add another wireless card into my expansion slot to be programmed exclusively for Ad-hoc mode? So I did it. It was a bit of a tit fight figguring it out. (What is a tit fight you might ask: Well....you know what it is like when a woman has one tit bigger than the other and you have to reach up just a little further with your neck and strain to reach the smaller one. That's a tit fight. Good thing I got a woman with two huge ones. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/thumbup.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif ) Any way, Here's how I did it. Go to start menu and right click my computer, then click properties, then click hardware and then device manager. Go down to network adaptors and find your internal wireless card, click it and disable it. Close that all out and then install a new wireless card into your laptop. You may have to restart your computer once or twice during this procedure. Go to your VCM wireless cofiguration wizard and program that card for Ad-hoc mode. Get your VCM up and running on Ad-hoc and verify it is working good. Then go back into Start menu, right click my computer, click properties, click hardware, then click device manager. Go down to network adaptors and find your wireless card that you disabled and enable it. Now your second wireless card is exclusivly for Ad-hoc mode and your internal card is for your regular wireless network. I have found that it is quicker to power up the VCM before you open up IDS. The IDS system automaticly bridges connections. I can download callibration files, surf the web, go in and out of service manuals and never quit communicating with the VCM. I can go on a road test wirelessly and when I come back to the shop, my laptop automaticly connects to the network like it always did. This is awsome. I now have two wireless antenna icons down on the bottom right of my laptop that tell me the signal strength of each signal. I did this a weak ago and wanted to give it a good test run before I posted my results. I must say the results are just plain frickin awsome. Hope some of you guys can enjoy the same results. Warning: My laptop is a Dell Latitude D810. I installed a linksys wireless card. When I put it in, my laptop automatically recognized the wireless card as a Dell 1300 wireless adaptor. I ignored that and installed all the linksys drivers. Then the lynksys wireless utility and my internal Dell card starting fighting eachother /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/boxing.gif. That was the tit fight. The lynkys would not allow the Dell to enable. So I had to fool my laptop and program the lynksys card as the Dell 1300 card. It worked seemlessly after that. So some computers may have software issues that you may have to fight with.

Aaron, Make sure you phone those pricks and tell them to shove it up their arses. They don't have a freakin clue. And keith, keep in mind our winters. We can change a valve in the fall and by spring the damned thing can be plugged solid from a large amount of factors. Our average cetane rating across Canada is 35. So piss poor fuel, sometimes extreme amounts of idle time, babying these things or even the fact that alot of these trucks go up north all winter in live in minus 40 to minus 50 degree celcius weather. Even cold injector missfires contribute to this as well. Start these things up every morning and they are barely running and slobbering like hell. Yeah, we change alot of valves. But we also have other causals. It is not always just the fault of the valve. We have to always get to the root cause. Which is why I do the coking TSB all the time. However, I have had maybe a handfull of bad valves right out of the box. Damned mass production. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/2cents.gif

Nice. Wasn't it Keith tha once said, It is tempting to drive a seal screw into the top of these things and yank them out with a slide hammer? Gotta love modern engineering.

When you are looking at the top of the valve and you see the two lines of numbers, the bottom line is the date. The first three numbers are the day of the year. The fourth number is the year. And the last number doesn't mean anything. The only reason I know this is because we had some EGR valve reapirs kicked back from WEPEC(warranty evaluation parts whatever center) and they were telling me that that dates on the valves were newer than the truck. So I checked OASIS on these trucks and phoned WEPEC back and chewed them a new ass. Some of these trucks had the EGR valves relaced two or three times. So it is possible to have an 05' or 06' or 07' built valve in an older engine. After asking these Idiots if they had any frickin idea how many egr valves we change on these damned engines, they got the point and paid all of our kicked back claims. I don't know what the hell the rest of the numbers mean.

The basic unwritten rule of thumb up here is 1/3 or 33% of the door rate. We were at $98.00 door rate last year and raised the door rate to $107.00 this year. Our current base journeyman rate is $30.00/hour. So we are expecting a raise seeing as the door rate went up.

Well, the D.P was back after lunch and we had a chat. I opened up the conversation with the question: Why am I as a Journeyman getting charged to train your apprentices? He was confrontational and defensive at first like he always is. At first he was going to bat for the Service Manager like he always does. After our heated discussion and him understanding what was going on, he advised me that he had nothing to do with the decision and that he would resolve the matter. I am just not totally convinced that he is sincere. I get the feeling that he is just trying to hang on to his only Journeyman Diesel Tech so that he is not left strapped. He has that typical salesman/businessman way about him. He makes all the decisions in our dealership. Our managers really have no authority for anything unless he says it goes. They are nothing more than puppets. It is an issue that disgusts alot of the employees at our dealership. I will be watching my time tickets very carefully over the next while. Not that I already don't. I know exactly where I am at every day. You know, it could be like Shanghai Noon. I'm just not sure which one of us would be Jackie Chan or Owen Wilson. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/icon_crazy.gif /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif And back to the main topic: .25 cents above base Journeyman rate for every specialty up to a maximum of eight specialties or Master status. Then we have a $1.00/hour bonus for warranty work, then $2.00/hour bonus for when you are working on diesels whether it is warranty or retail. Our door rate is $107.00/hour.

Like I said, I am absolutely Pissed! And Jim, You're right, I'm gonna make this freakin topic at work a fuckin big mess. Man, I'm pissed! It's a good thing I havn't bought a damn house in this town yet and my home pulls behind my truck.

Here's one for ya. HOW MANY OF YOU JOURNEYMEN OUT THERE ARE BEING CHARGED TO TRAIN APPRENTICES? Here's the issue: the shop has slowed down drasticly in regular automotive work. I am still busy in diesel. Because the there is no work, I have one first year apprentice is told to come and work with me to learn. However, I am to pay that apprentice out of my flat rate time to help me. This is the first time in my life I have worked at a dealership that charges Journeymen to train apprentices. I am fucking vibrating about it and am currently starting to look for a job again. My dealerprincipal is not here to talk to him about it. But I am trying to run this through my mind before I tell him to find another deasel tech. I would just like to know If I am wrong or right for thinking this way.

Did the weasel piss help at all?

I have had a couple like that. Great friggin Idea: Stick a piece of aluminum inside another piece of aluminum with lots of condensation and an extremely corrosive environment. Anyway, try to soak the hell out of it with penetrating fluid and tap on the valve with a hammer while trying to remove it. I have even tried to get them to turn slightly with water pump pliers then tried pulling on them. Don't know what to tell you about the screwed forcing screw. Sorry dude. I feel for ya. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/puke.gif

Try this Bruce: https://www.fleet.ford.com/truckbbas/non-html/Q108.pdf or https://www.fleet.ford.com/truckbbas/non-html/Q162R1.pdf for the new models. Lots of info on this site.