Matt Saunoras

These things won't stop coming in faster than I can get them done. Got a 12 F-550 service body doing some weird stuff with the transmission. The first time I looked at it OSS was dropping periodically. Now it comes in and OSS has a terrible signal and it had all the TCM codes I can imagine. Cleared them out and KOEO passes every time. Wiggled all the wires I could see while watching voltage pids and can't find it outside the trans. Tried to drive it and I was in for a big surprise, going about 50mph climbing a hill it slammed 1st gear in, over revved and stalled out. Coasted to a stop, it restarted and I finished the climb and stopped to turn around. No TCM DTCs. Started back down the hill and the same thing happened so I coasted it all the way down and damn near back to the shop with the engine off. Got close, started it up again and it was defaulted to 5th gear. Can't even pull the little hill up into the shop. Shut it off, Park indicator is not lit up and it won't crank. No damn TCM DTCs, TCM is online. One time amongst all this I even pulled out a DPF pressure sensor DTC that came out of nowhere. Took a small sample of fluid, it's cooked. I don't have a hold on what that one is doing. I gotta drop the pan but that's gonna be a weekend deal. Also got a 12 F-550 roll back in for a turbo today, they need this ASAP. And another 6.0 F-450 with running issues and a tranny concern too.

The new pump ball is staked in for sure but like we stated before I believe something is pushing the ball out of the low pressure side.Got a few pics of new vs old. This old pump definitely has something wrong inside, it does not spin smoothly and has one spot that it binds up hard. The truck would start and idle but make only the bare minimum ICP with IPR maxed at 84%.I haven't paid too much attention to old pumps but you can tell this ball is on its way out. I also noticed too that the large snap ring on the old pump has shifted from it's original spot.

Maybe I should be careful what I say next time

I put some new pump/j-tube orings in and I'm going to ship the truck with the old pump and see what happens. Wouldn't it suck if this thing was a no start after headgaskets?

Say you have an 04 6.0L torn down for headgaskets and coolers. You remove the standpipes and heads and have everything opened up for a day or so. Then you remove the oil cooler, would you expect to have oil over run the reservoir like any other time? Or would you expect most of the reservoir to have drained back since the standpipes are out? This customer mentioned his truck was getting hard to start but didnt say when. I did a pre repair vc-9 flush and everything seemed to be in order with ficm voltage, injector compensation, etc. never verified anything other than the stuck turbo, cooling system pressure and ECT/EOT correlation. Now I'm wondering if the pump is draining back causing his issue but I can't seem to remember if having a dry reservoir is normal or not given the circumstances.

Yeah I read all that the message boards also but I haven't done one myself. I guess we'll see

Air checked that 6.0 and its gurgling through the oil filter housing. Pump must be shot.

In the shop right now. Retail headgaskets and coolers on an 04 F-250. Next to it is a 02 F-550 7.3. Has a hole in the RH up-pipe, turbo compressor is dusted, borderline fuel inlet restriction and front swaybar endlinks /bushings are blown out, on the road test yesterday it left me stuck and had to get towed back. Only made 150 psi ICP cranking after it died, thinking IPR, oil not aerated or overfull. After it cooled off it ran again fine. They left me a oem starter to put in it too, that should have been my clue not to drive it. In the drive lane is an 04 F-450 6.0 I dragged in that has low ICP. This truck would reluctantly start and run at like 3-400 RPMs but that was it, no throttle response, wouldn't move in any gear. IPR was pegged at 84% and ICP was barely making 500psi. I've never seen one do this. Swapped in a tester IPR and no change. Air check tomorrow. Pump maybe? Outside is my favorite F-550 bucket truck that needs inspected, has brake line leaking, fuel filler neck leaking and needs some rear tires. Last I checked this thing did have a rear pinion seal leaking too, I may call that also. There's a few other trucks out there too that need some minor shit. This is about as busy as I can remember. In the middle of the week there were seriously no parking spots around the front of the shop. I could see customers coming in for service getting irritated because the whole place was clogged with trucks and buses.

The way I see it is with VGT so low the PCM wants to dump exhaust back pressure. It may be setting that code because it knows how close it is to being out of control of the VGT.

Got a truck here in the shop with an unstable front end and found the lower trac bar bracket is cracked all the way through.This truck does have a leveling kit with a relocation bracket that probably aided in stressing the original piece to failure. The relocation bracket uses one bolt that holds it to the old bracket, this bolt is all that's holding the trac bar on right now. Now the broken piece is actually part of the front axle housing on a 99-04 super duty, it's not serviceable from Ford. At my service managers request I did some digging around on the Internet and found a few cases of this happening. Also found that Performance Metal Fab (PMF) makes a replacement piece. You cut off the bracket portion of the axle while leaving the spring saddle in place. PMFs bracket actually uses the ubolts to center itself and ubolt nuts to help attach the part. http://www.pmfsuspension.com/19995-2004-F-250350-Excursion-Replacement-OEM-Trackbar-Mount_p_91.htmlI called PMF and they explained all this to me but there is welding required to properly attach the new bracket.We got the customer to order this bracket and an adjustable trac bar to recenter the axle. We basically own this truck now, another guy in the shop did balljoints, drag link, shocks, etc to correct this. We'll see how it goes, I'll take some pics along the way.

I have changed a lot of valves and that was the first one I've seen that actually failed the test.

Had my first bad reman EGR valve. Within 20 miles of me driving this thing and flushing it the valve damn near left me stuck in a bus in the middle of an intersection.

I haven't been looking past the negativity lately. Techs, as I've noticed, are very competitive (read the ford message boards). Someone somewhere, makes more money, works faster, makes a higher rate, works in a nicer shop, etc. There's a whole hell of a lot of super techs out there but somehow when you talk to other dealers service personnel they all disappear. I constantly have people asking me why I work for a dealer and don't open my own shop. I don't even know what to say to that. The corner cutting flat rate ways are killing dealerships and we are just as guilty as anyone. Go look in any of our techs bench cabinets and you'll find a multitude of unopened flush chemicals and fluids. Our oldest guy here has been with the shop for over 40 years now and has been stealing oil filters for his personal cars probably since day one. We just got a new alignment machine and everyone has already figured out how to cheat the heads off the tire to "fix" a camber issue. My problem right now is lack of strive. It's like I have nothing to prove. No one asks what I'm doing or even questions anything anymore. I could turn 10 fucking hours this week and no one would say a thing. Free reign of the brand new shop, come and go as I please, I feel like I need some discipline but there's no one around worth respect (the boss doesn't work in this dealer). It's very strange how things have changed in the last year. The only thing that hasn't changed is parts, we still don't have what I need when I need it.

I am done with flat rate. I've basically become a salary tech with my 40hr guarantee. The day I came to the hell hole we worked in I was getting beat down by hours. I was never ahead, always chasing my ass trying to learn something and make a paycheck at the same time. When I started doing trucks my paycheck really suffered, I was on course to make about 10k less that year. How the hell is that even feasible when we make so little to begin with? Why would management even let that happen? Well I put an end to that, pay me for lost time or I'm leaving. At the time I was doing all the trannies too. Then as you get better you become everything but a technician, you now have a customer base that wants you for all the answers. I can't turn shit for time anymore because I can't focus on one single thing. Now everyone's constantly borrowing my tools or my time, the only 2 things I have here. Right now as you can tell my attitude is pretty poor. I don't know what the hell to do to snap out of it. I've been feeling the burnout for a while now. All I have to look forward to is when our latest tranny guy quits, then I get all that shit all over again.

Yeah when I found my trucks VIN it wasn't built yet, just a blank oasis. It was listed in an extended inventory for a dealer almost 300 miles away. I didn't look much after that, once it was built everything showed up. What I found odd (and maybe someone knows why) was that my truck, a 15 built in May 2015, is listed on HVBOM as a Job 1. It wasn't even a week after I took delivery of mine that we started receiving 2016 super duties in. I thought Job 1 trucks were the first ones built for that model year?

Had a good one tonight. 06 F-550 service truck I put heads and a tranny in at the same time earlier this year. Running like shit, idling very choppy. Only codes where a #2 contribution and P2290. Power balance with the injector compensator disabled was a saw tooth. 1, 4, 6, 7 were high, 2, 3, 5, 8 were low. Now I'm not a ficm expert but I do know those cylinders share a common harness plug, you know they have to share common drivers. Ran a self test, 1,4,6,7 no click but self test passed. This truck had a harness put in it last year so I put a ficm in it and it runs great. I wish the ficm coffee table book went a little more in depth. I couldn't tell you how this ficm failed.

Woohoo got something to work on finally! ....Wait it's coolers on a E-450 bus.

Yup that's the "Trustmark Facility" that Ford has designed. They want all the dealers to look the same and are reimbursing a percentage of the renovations. There's a general guideline to abide by but I've got a feeling they'll find any reason they can not to pay. Way more dealers are participating than they planned on and it's costing them a ton.

Delete

We were lucky I guess. They built us a whole new shop first, then took the old shop and turned it into the showroom. We weren't dealing with much of the construction hastles. Also we were supposed to get a big fat check from Ford but that hasn't happened yet. It's been about a year since the whole dealership was completed.

Trustmark facility? When the turned our old shop into the showroom I was honestly surprised how quickly it went. Granted we're small but everything went smooth

Nice find. Sold my 6.0 today, no more noisy stinky diesel. I will miss it that's for sure. Also took my boat to the shop today for a routine checkup. Been having an issue with the parking lights on the trailer intermittently blowing the fuse. Found one of my fender lights is shorting out

How many truck techs do you have right now? Flat rate?

Wow that is awesome Mike, what did you go with?

Damn! That is a good chunk of change! I got offered $7k for mine and excepted.