Matt Saunoras

My Christmas present is a key to the building, oh yeah and the shop's paying my deductible

2006 F-250. 150k on the clock, never been touched for anything. This is a weird one, it's right in that January cutoff area for non-commonized engines. It has T40 injector hold downs and M8 rocker box bolts. It also has a ring oil dipstick, upside down up-pipe bolts, solid turbo feed tube, saucer ficm nuts, one piece intake duct, etc. It needs 4 injectors, coolers and a calibration update. Also doing an STC, dummy plugs, hot side boots, FPR upgrade, metal cold side duct, turbo drain tube. All the normal stuff. Next up is 5.4 3v phasers, solenoids and tensioners. yawn

I'm sure you deserve it. You are the man, I'm glad your shop recognizes and promotes over achievement.

I pulled a 6.7 with the convertor still attached. Just waited until it was out to access the nuts. For good measure I replaced the convertor seal but no issues otherwise.

Jim, that's definitely it. The right side is probably the same just flipped over

I'm not going to lie. I've got a permanent woody working on these 18k lb lifts.

I believe I'm going to have to hand it over to the body shop next week. It's a little bit worse than I first noticed. The front plate for the bumper support bracket is bent in a little bit on the right side. This being welded to the frame leaves me wondering how a piece like this is repaired.

I'm with you, this is just something we haven't any of yet. I have heard of it, and I look for it quite often but I just haven't had one.

I think I could do it myself, it's really just the bumper, grille and it severed my block heater wiring. It wasn't leaking any fluids or I wouldn't have drove it home so the damage isn't that deep. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, I will still report it to the insurance company tomorrow and they'll most likely have me get an estimate. Somehow I couldn't have been going very fast when I hit that tree because it was a head on hit and I really didn't feel anything. I think the deep snow in the ditch had a lot to do with slowing me down.

So as I may have mentioned I was in Buffalo for 3 days for my advanced electronics classroom. For anyone who is not familar with Buffalo in what I would consider "might as well be winter" I don't recommend it. Being from Pittsburgh I am quite accustomed to snow but perhaps not as much as someone who lives on the shore downwind from a massive body of water. Not only have I been volunteered to attend a class 200+ miles away from home but I am to do so at the worst possible time (our other guy went up in May). For those of you who have watched the weather channel I am sure you have heard the term lake effect snow. I had heard of it, snow is snow, right? Aside from the worst drive I have ever experienced in my life I made it from Pittsburgh to Buffalo in 4 hours. As soon as I hit the lake it was a wall of snow that didn't stop for most of 3 days. Putted around town til today and never pulled it out of 4wd the whole time. Everything was fine, Buffalo is flat as can be, not like the treacherous hills of PGH. I could even see pavement today when I was leaving so I assumed conditions were improving to near normal levels. Turned my manual hubs out and proceeded down I-90 west. Big mistake on my part. I wasn't on the interstate for a half hour before it got really fucking shitty... for a lack of better terms. So in the end I wiped the truck out, lost the back end going about 40-45mph down a very slight down grade. Fish tailed 2 or 3 times before I was 90° on the highway headed for a ditch. Went down in, back out and into a tree. Jumped out of the truck because once I hit the snow I couldn't see anything. No one else lost it luckily as I was in quite a bit of traffic. I managed to back down into the ditch and turn myself back in the right direction but I wasn't going anywhere, the highway was at my roof line. I wasn't there for 2 minutes and a guy showed up in an Escape with a beacon light flashing on the top, he said a tow truck was on its way(he also said "I know you think you can get out but that's not happening"), They literally drive up and down I-90 winching people out. A minute after he left a state cop showed up and took down the accident info. Once he determined I was okay he had to attend to several other accidents a few miles west. The tow truck winched me onto the highway and the guy had me follow him to the next accident where he processed both at the same time. I drove the truck 3 more hours home and it seems like nothing more than cosmetic damage. I guess I'm lucky to have made it out in the shape I did although I can't help but feel like this could have been avoided.

I suppose a ficm could short out a coil and burn it up. Interesting

Thanks guys, it's going in a glass case on my mantel

I've got about one whole truckload more than a typical technician has. I didn't realize how much crap I accumulated in the last 4 years.

Nothing in here except all my crap. Good news is I'm off to Buffalo for 3 days.

Here's my home-reman turbo. I bead blasted the compressor housing today.

I've had .007" taken off 2 sets of heads now and....knock on wood....both are okay so far. The set I did last week was very nicely done. I would prefer to have the less is more approach to machining heads but if they need resurfaced, there's usually a reason why. this is the set from last week

Hmmm I may have to give that a try. I am using 80 grit glass bead media from harbor freight, it works extremely well on aluminum. I am going to try some 20/40grit black beauty next on some harder cast iron parts I have. Suprisingly no one has mentioned a word about the mess it makes. I am just using a cheap siphon gun and some large cardboard to contain most of the media. After everyone leaves the shop I can pretty much get away with anything

I agree completely, that's why there are 8 ford remans in my truck. Our cost on injectors is a little more though. 4 of the ones I bought were after October 1st. I just want to open a few up so when I explain to someone what the design improvements were I can actually know what I'm talkiing about.

The turbo rebuild went great, very straight forward and very easy to reassemble. The most time consuming part is cleaning the turbine seal area and the exhaust side of the housing. I did get a chance to media blast the turbine housing and vanes, this resulted in them being much cleaner and more free than the typical cleaning method. I did not blast the CHRA for obvious reasons. Looking at the turbine spring seal, new vs old, I could tell the old seal had lost most of it's "spring." It appeared smaller next to the new one even though they were the same diameter when closed all the way. Not finding any noticable wear on either the housing or the shaft I installed a new seal, new bearings and popped the turbine into place. I don't believe the seal spins so I made sure to orient the opening upwards. All it took to seat the seal was a hard hit on the turbine with my hand and it snapped into place. Cleaning the groove for the seal was a little difficult, it is hard to get anything in there but the overnight soak did wonders on all the hard carbon build-up. I would have taken pictures but we were slow on Friday and I did this throughout the course of the day. Hopefully I will get a chance to run this turbo soon and verify it's operation...... even though it looks really good on my bench

I have a feeling these clamp plates will become available for sale soon, they'll start popping up just like the oil rail nipple tool. I have a few OEM 2006 cores laying around I am going to disassemble. I am mainly interested in what if any improvements have been done to the spool valve in remanufactured injectors. I know the DLC coated plunger is supposed to be a great improvement but they can still collect varish from poor quality fuel. When I'm done with the OEM injectors I'll trade them off for some core remans and try those. I have 8 new reman injectors in my truck right now so I shouldn't need this for a long time. By the time I do, there should be a lot more information about it.

Okay I have in my possession a halfway decent turbo core that doesn't have much wrong with it other than a slightly leaking turbine seal. I didn't take many pics because I wasn't sure what I would find upon disassembly. The exhaust housing a new style dished design which I'd prefer for spending money on a rebuild kit. I rarely see any center sections that have less rust than this one did. Here it is all disassembled and cleaned up While not ideal all I had at my disposal was ultra fine steel wool. The turbine sealing surface needs to be clean and free of scratches,marks or carbon. It took a while but I did get the hole clean. I can still see the original machine marks and no noticable wear. Prior to this imagine the hole completely coked up with hard carbon and staining. I will put this thing back together tomorrow. Tonight I am soaking the turbine and plate in some carb dip. The amount of burned on carbon was a lot more than I could easily scrape off.

Yeah I rarely use the block tester either. Used it on a 02 duramax LB7 today though

Try a combustion gas leak detector on it?

I think we all have. In all the articles I've read Ford has never mentioned why. I did start a new thread about it here but it appears not much is known about the subject http://www.forddoctorsdts.com/topic/4953-length-differences-in-60-pushrods-new-vs-old/ I was told why they were changed by a reputable engine rebuilder but I can't confirm or deny the info. Supposedly there are a number of 6.0s out there that will hang the valves open under very high engine loads and high RPM causing the vehicle to have a random misfire. This is from the lifters pumping up and not allowing enough slack in the valve train, the valves can actually hang open slightly not allowing the combustion process to complete. I am also told that if lifter preload is excessive it can cause the lifter to internally bottom out. When the force of compression closes the valves the lifter will hammer itself into the cam either causing it to come apart or start to flat spot. Lifter preload should have been checked at the factory when the engine was assembled and it's really not going to change much over time unless something else in the valvetrain was changed (resurfacing heads changes geometry). This is why you should not mix up rockers and pushrods like the WSM warns. I figure at the very least (even though I cannot measure preload) I can counteract the missing cylinder head surface by installing the new shorter the pushrods.