YukonTyler

It's excellent reading your update, Jim. I'm glad to hear that some of the 'little' things like actually wanting to eat are coming back, and it sounds like you had yourself a mighty fine Christmas.

1) VCMII and IDS license

2) A good meter with a good set of probes/pins

I may or may not be typical of a Ford land mechanic, but when I was working on blue ovals I received (and asked for) a ton of electrical jobs. I'd rather go after gremlins than tear into an engine any day, so for me a good set of tools for electrical diag is top of the list.

Continuing that list, a really nice want to have as opposed to need to have is a Power Probe. I love mine - and I know that is has helped me make a bunch of money. No more playing with fussy jumper cables from the engine bay to the back of the truck to rebuild trailer wiring! I'm pretty sure all the times that I've used it on that simple job alone has paid for the tool, let alone all of its other uses.

I miss it - please send some out this way. This east coast business has nothing on Whitehorse.

it's head gasket time! i'm doing a set on a 2001 Impreza and there is an 08 Forester waiting for the same treatment.

I got an assembled long block dropped off for an '11 Forester to put in later, too.

Between all that is brakes, ball joints, a hub bearing and PDIs. Life is okay in Subaru land.

I have had good luck with mine. It's going on 13 months now and it still does the job.

A few weeks back I thought that I had lost it and I found Amazon to be the cheapest option. I found it the day before I went to place the order.

Well, after moving to PEI and giving things a shot at the Ford store here things just aren't working out. It's a big change going from flat rate to an hourly wage - not so much on a personal level but more so when there's a profound lack of urgency surrounding you.

I'm drawing on my past experience and making a move to the new (still under construction) Subaru dealer in Charlottetown. Prior to joining Ford in the Yukon I fixed boxers in Whitehorse. They're a well-made car and I'm looking back to getting to both AWD and flat rate.

Thanks to this community for the knowledge it contains. Ford has some very good techs working at its stores and a good number of them are on this forum. DTS has helped me through some problems, made me a better mechanic, and I hope that I've contributed at least a small amount back.

About a year or so ago my parts manager gave me a box of 'dead/old stock' PM-15 and I used it all up. Now that I have a six four I use 22 as others have stated.

Almost time to hit the road! My cousin and I built a shed for the back of my truck the day. When I get to the Island I'll give it a floor, tin the roof and it will be the new chicken coop for the acreage. In the mean time it's covered storage and a fuel economy killer all the way east.

Kind offers of meetings and drinks en route. We'll have to see how travel goes, but I'll be connected to the ol' internets via my laptop to check in on the way.

31 July. time to get busy building/packing.

I will let you know in a month or so. I purchased a VCM II w/ a flight recorder for use at the shop I just left - the deal was I supplied the laptop and VCM II and they picked up the monthly tab. In a flat rate environment it was great.

I am moving to a straight time shop and I do not imagine they'll feel like putting out for me to have a private scanner. I'll be there in late August and I'll have an answer around then.

well the wedding part is all done.

my buddies from ottawa and calgary came up to join my cousin/neighbour/best friend as groomsmen. along with my new brother-inlaw they kidnapped me on thursday night for a midnight fishing trip for a bachelor party.

pictured is my new brother-inlaw with the 'small' one of the night. ~12 lb lake trout from Tagish Lake in the southern part of the Yukon. still pretty light out for 11 pm. the big one of the night was 20+ lbs. forget the bars and the peelers - this is the way to do it.



then we actually, you know, got hitched. fun times!

Much thanks guys. There's some kind words and offers on here.

We will hit as far south as Burlington in Ontario in order to see her folks en route. Also Aaron, I have an extra Yukon tags. One has your name on it.

Might have to change my name? Hard to say.

The fiance and I are getting hitched next Saturday up here in the Yukon, and then next Wednesday is my last day here Whitehorse Motors.

I'll be sticking with repairing blue ovals - I have an offer at Fair Isle Ford in Charlottetown. That store is a short 10 minute drive from where we just bought a house, shop and 10 acres in the town of Suffolk, PEI.

7000 km from coast to coast starting July 30. The plan is to convoy from with my 6.4 (with a shed built on its flat deck) and a tandem axle travel trailer (packed to the brim) in tow. My future bride will have her Rav 4 with a small utility trailer behind it. Here goes nothin'!

aannnnaand VCT solenoids does the job. i have done a lot of them, but this is the first time that solenoids have fixed this type of an issue for me.

i have seen crank end play on these, but usually that comes in to play with low oil pressure hot, and we all know that condition tends to manifest itself as phasers going crazy under load. in fact, the last one that i saw with slop the crank had bad main bearings @ 40 000 km - and again that showed up as bucking under load when hot. still, it's something worth checking. i'll put the pry bar and dial indicator on it tomorrow morning.

also, after my wonky bank 1 relative compression i did a manual compression on holes 2 and 4 .... got 200 psi after a four 'cranks'. that's plenty to fire.

the base oil reading will be interesting. i know that the pass side head is last in the line for oil pressure, but the fact that the running rough happens at idle lends itself to not being vct/oil pressure stuff.

*shrugs* .... more stuff to check i guess. i'm looking for ideas, so thanks for the ideas!

^^^^ to see the images in thier full size: http://tpiwwp.com/out.php/i9214_camsoff.jpg

http://tpiwwp.com/out.php/i9215_scope.jpg

i think that's off just a bit. they should mirror each other @ 180 degrees.

i know that i put the chains dead on the marks - double checked before i put the cover back on. i wonder if i have a sheared dowel pin on the phaser or something like that.

- that's where my gut went first jim. no change when i dropped the pipes earlier.

- i'm in the process of using the vmm to scope my cam signals. let's see if anything's off.

more info ....

relative compression

1 - 1% down

2 - 5%

3 - 1%

4 - 7%

since it was like this before i did the timing chains and tensioners i don't think that i timed it incorrectly. soooo ..... broken locating dowel on the phaser? bad phaser? i wonder if that would be responsible for my perceived oil pressure leakdown and rattle on startup. ... multiple bad valve springs?

I have an '06 F250 in my bay. 65 000 miles on a 5.4 ..... came in running rough and check engine light on. p0316, p0300, p0303, lean bank 1 and rich bank 2.

customer requested plugs and a fuel filter prior to diag. did those - no change - and then went ahead with diag - power balance shows the entire right bank weak with the entire left bank strong. this all occurs at idle - no phasing of the cam shafts.

when left to sit and cold soak the engine has a rattle on restart - akin to tensioners bleeding down oil pressure. the noise is quite noticeable, and given the poor performance of the right bank i thought that it may have jumped a link on the chain due to a faulty tensioner. pulled the front cover and found the left tensioner blown out and very weak, but the right one to my surprise was good. changed tensioners, chains and guides while i was in there instead of doing just the bad one. timing was bang on before and after this part of the job.

left to sit and i still get the rattle on startup, and i still have weak contribution from bank 1 (though that was expected once i saw its tensinoer was good).

dropped the exhaust for giggles - no change to the right bank. i get the odd flatline on my upstream bank 1 02 sensor. i am going to play around there for my driveability.

any great ideas for either my rattle or my driveability? i'm going to start banging my head against the wall soon.

Just a heads up on the upstream cats ..... before I wen to Ford I worked for the Kia/Subaru store in the Yukon. While we don't have many Amantis up here (maybe one or two in town) we did see a lot of their V6 engines in the Sportage and Rondo. Does this one have the smaller V6 or the bigger 3.6?

We had a hard time keeping cats in these things - don't go crazy trying to sort out why the upper one took a dump. On the old 2.7 V6 I remember having issues with the TP sensors - there was a bulletin on them. Often the ones which came in with driveability due to the TP potentiometer would wind up blowing out the cats five or six months down the road. The rear cat was usually a casualty, too.

Otherwise, many of them simply bit the dust without symptom. These things always started nicely in the (extreme) cold, which I attribute to rather generous fueling strategies on cold start. I think they just mildly flood themselves and the cats pay the price.

Also, there is a bulletin for lack of activity (usually stuck lean) from the upper 02s on some years. Check the build date on the 02 sensors against the bad range if the bulletin applies.

you get what you pay for. back when i was in ontario we installed quite a few of those universal catalysts to get some old clunkers to pass the e-test. often they would do the job for their first test, but often in two years time when they were due to be run again they again weren't up to grade.

the guys buying used cats knew this, too. there's a reason why you could sell a used universal cat for $20 while the OE version would net close to $100. the guts just aren't the same.

Also - when I lived north of the 60th parallel - Ford warranty didn't like it when you had to mix coolant stronger than 50/50... Hey, dingalings...it's colder than -40 here... LOL

Indeed. They also don't like the cost difference between the regular and synthetic-blend Merc V for power steering repairs.

Called tensioners and chains on an '06 5.4 in a Super Duty, put in an ABS computer on an old E450, and I got the okay for a long block on an Edge (customer cracked the oil pan and drove it 'til it wouldn't move any more). All retail : D

Or was yours the shit story dealer that was making the techs wait until claims got paid before they got paid?

I despise this system. Same with our front end which consistently fails to get claims sent out.

Sometimes I'm left chasing for two months to get paid for jobs ... only to find that they let the RO stale date @ 60 days. I mean it's their money, too. You'd think they'd be right on top of it.

Corrupt download. Wound up reverting back to 85.0 and all is good .... just in time to put a cluster in an E van.