Keith Browning

How's this?

One of my guys has one in right now. It's a 6.0L in fact and once he consulted the service manual he discovered that all of the heat exchangers have to be removed as a unit. Unless anyone knows of a short cut?

Quote: SSM 0168 - 2008 SUPERDUTY 6.4L VALVE COVER REMOVAL PROCEDURE UPDATE - UPDATE REDUCES DAMAGE TO PLASTIC HEATER TUBE. THE 2008 SUPERDUTY 6.4L RH VALVE COVER PROCEDURE HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REDUCE DAMAGED TO THE PLASTIC HEATER LINE DURING VALVE COVER REMOVAL. THE UPDATED PROCEDURE IS FOUND IN SECTION 303-01C 6.4L BASIC ENGINE OF THE WORK SHOP MANUAL.

Quote: SSM 0168 - 2008 SUPERDUTY 6.4L VALVE COVER REMOVAL PROCEDURE UPDATE - UPDATE REDUCES DAMAGE TO PLASTIC HEATER TUBE. THE 2008 SUPERDUTY 6.4L RH VALVE COVER PROCEDURE HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REDUCE DAMAGED TO THE PLASTIC HEATER LINE DURING VALVE COVER REMOVAL. THE UPDATED PROCEDURE IS FOUND IN SECTION 303-01C 6.4L BASIC ENGINE OF THE WORK SHOP MANUAL.

So it looks like we are back to throwing turbos at them again eh? Just when you thought Ford was letting us become technicians again. Has anybody actually used the turbo tool yet? I personally have not had the opportunity, I know my mechanics have been told about the tool. I still don't see the justification for cutting the time so much. I smell an article coming.

With that age and mileage one cant help but consider corrosion of the base engine parts including a head gasket and even cavitation erosion! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/shocked.gif Thats a term we don't discuss much.

I'll pass that along in the morning! Cant hurt.

Well more shit hit the fan today, a third tech gave notice today and HE"S ONE OF MINE! Lost to the wrecking company he came from, higher pay, benefits, the same story. I don't blame him one bit and will miss him greatly. This is not good and it translates to more crap work for the two of us remaining and my soon to be partner has been having difficulties lately. Crap work means tow-ins no starts, bad turbos and transmissions. My new writer wants to book more work so we can sell more services. Fat chance. We can barely get jobs done now without it backing up in the lot. Technicians are hard enough to attract let alone certified diesel techs. Anybody want to move to New Jersey? /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/sick.gif Then again, if things get really bad I might have to bail myself! Anybody hiring? /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

Strange irony Part 2: Spoke with the tech, the customer was replacing the spark plugs himself and somehow broke #8 in the head. The porcelain broke off inside the sleeve about a 1/4" in from the top. He cant get the porcelain to break or come out of the sleeve and he cant get the tap to thread in. This one will be interesting for sure. He thinks he's going to end up removing the head to pop it out... maybe. This is a good sales customer but not that good to do it for free. Why should we eat it?

I was screwing around with a new truck just for giggles and grins and tried a manual regen. IDS displayed a message saying that a regen was not needed and the function swiftly ended.

Did you check the module configuration? I saw a few busses that were built at the same time that were looking for pretensioners and a right side airbag... they only had the drivers side airbag, no pretensioner. I reconfigured the module and let it know how the van was really equipped. Have the 07's changed?

Strange irony: I was discussing a few things with my service manager this morning and happened to notice a spark plug with a really long electrode sitting atop a stack of files. Ring! goes the bell. I knew immediately that the plug represented this topic and asked what it came from... and how are we fixing it... fishing to see if my service manager or the tech knew of TSB 06-15-2 or the tool. No. Perhaps I can assume that this vehicle was the first one of these failures that the other side of the shop has come across so far. I would expect more from a coworker, a technician, to have come up with this TSB and a direction for repairing this truck. Apparently, the effort was not made and this worries me. This is a seasoned, well trained tech that has been with us for years and he cant even check for TSB's? Oh, this is one of the guys who just gave notice which could explain this... but there really is no excuse for it. Do we have the right to look down upon independents when many of us in the dealers don't utilize the vast information that is so readily available to us??? For crying out loud, it took me, a DIESEL tech two minutes to navigate the PTS web site and bring up the TSB... without a repair order or even a VIN! We are doomed! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/whattodo.gif

Jim, you should send that post in to that newspaper and see if they print it. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif That was exactly what needed to be said.

The article all but states Ford has a problem. One could debate that for either side of the argument. But it also reeks of an independent that is inexperienced with the product and not equipped with the proper tools to perform the job. Since I have not driven an F150 in over six years, let alone change spark plugs, I gotta ask are they really a problem? I am of the opinion that a steel spark plug should not remain in an aluminum cylinder head for 100,000 miles.

Quote: And then Keith walked on water..... Not exactly. I walk across engineers floating in the water. I have wondered what that term meant in the past while reading the manual. When Sajeev posted the question I decided it was time to ask the real experts. I wrote the Gents at the HotLine! The post above is that answer.

No, Ford will monitor the actual times and the claims and eventually come up with labor times. I am actually surprised that a there is no labor time with all of the financial problems they are having. I know claims are being scrutinized like never before. Never fear. I know we will get it in the end! I know it is unlike me to take the negative view but I am just going by what I see going on around me.

Cool! What medium are they in? Can you share them? I am still not 100% confident with the scope so examples mean so much to me and others I am sure.

Quote: Currently, our shop is booking for almost two weeks in advance... this is ALL work, not just diesel.... We are pissing people off due to the wait times... many of these are the wrong people to piss off.... This is the exact problem my shop has been facing for years and I believe we are now paying the price, big time. This issue applies specifically to my truck team. We move many trucks out of our store, we were second in our zone last year for truck sales which I think includes our large fleet division and the many Utilimaster and Quigley vans that are drop-shipped throughout the country. Long story short, we have a large customer base. Then, along comes the 6.0L Power Stroke. My truck team has varied in strength from two to four technicians and I have had to deal with an amazing variance of skills and ability. At the current time I have two guys that are probably the best of all that I have worked with so far. We have always been very busy with a decent mix of warranty and customer pay work with appointments going out two weeks. When the 6.0L hit us and began to be problematic, trucks started to back up. When the new Torqshift transmissions started to show some early flaws, they back up. One winter we had twelve trucks towed in in one week, covering two snow storms. All of those owners expected their trucks turned around immediately. Some sat for weeks. To this day, despite having become experts with the 6.0L and the TorqShift, three or four big jobs hit us and they start to stack. One of my techs has "friends and acquaintances" that own trucks and he hears that they get pissed waiting for their trucks to get fixed and they end up somewhere else only to return when something major (and under warranty) goes wrong. Our retail business has fallen badly. At the moment we are in a bad dry spell. Maybe a handful of cash tickets a week. Constant tow-ins for SCT fittings, EGR valves and turbos and transmissions sprinkled in. Some weeks, ONE of us will break 60 hours but for the most part, its 40s for the two of them and if I am lucky I will make it to 40 hours. Jim, I am convinced that if you make your customers wait, many will eventually stop waiting and it has a snowball effect. It is hard to get them back if not impossible. You would have to be insane to let a non-Ford customer or somebody who was last seen at the dealer ten years ago when they bought it come before your long time paying customers who regularly maintain their vehicles at your dealership. It will hurt you severely in the long run.

So I am surfing around the net on some links I found on a cool site and discovered two (or was it three) tuner manufacturers looking to test vehicles. I assume that the owners are given the toys for free. Now, what happens if the truck breaks while testing? DPF clogs? There is that thread going on powerstroke.org and I saw on TDS some guy has a Magnaflow DPF back exhaust and then installed an "cold air intake" that immediately produced gray smoke and a check engine light. This is going to make for some interesting reading as these 6.4L parts hit the streets!

I just say "no, I am not." What I don't tell them is that I am a technician! I don't mean to be rude and there are some people I talk to. There are days though, that it's 6:00, I have to stop at the store, it's been one of those days and somebody wants to bitch about the service at one of our other stores on the other side of the county. I just wanna go home lady.

I could not find my copy of the document so I asked the HotLine to resend it and they did very quickly. I needed this today for a truck we have been playing tag with for a year. Finally died and stayed dead long enough to diagnose. Move the harness right at the CMP and we restored the signal. Will install a connector pigtail in the morning. And Bruce reminded me to post this... hope you guys find this helpful. I know I did. sync.pdf

Torque converter cross flow is an engineering term for the amount of flow passing from the turbine, through the stator, and against the impeller. Blade angle and design affect cross flow and stall.

DOH!

Greg, that was a little more philosophical than I was fishing for but good post. It sounds like you have made peace with your life and what you want out of it. That just might be the key to this though. I just think its a little alarming to see techs disappearing though. I was wondering if anyone else is seeing this as well. My shop seems to have some morale issues and many of the guys are always pointing at others instead of looking at themselves.

I think we all have made use of a zip tie on an electrical connector at some point. I know I have. If it is the only fix at the time, it's not too "rigged" and is a lasting repair... besides, its under the cover so aesthetics wont matter either. Flame? I am actually impressed that for one, you figured out how to lock the connector on and two, pulled it off professionally! But if you insist: What is wrong with you! Did you order a new harness and call the customer back in? How can you sleep at night knowing that truck is running around the planet with that shoddy repair! /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/boink3.gif