Jim Warman

Kevin, your store should have the correct block off tools to enable you to use the ICP to help with diag.... 303-S626 should be the tool number you require... Some shops may not have a decent way of tracking tools in their various boxes... any tool inventory program can be a PITA to set up - but it is something that is vitally important. We use M$ Excel or, your store can try THIS.

Not sure where to put this... OTJ? Or dealing with the internet... Anyway, it's late... can't sleep and I'm furbling around the internet looking at sites dedicated to Ford truck "enthusiast".... (other than the monkey house). Amazing... simply amazing. Though some of the screen names may change slightly, most of these sites feature the same people asking the same questions.... and they feature the same people offering the same answers as a half dozen other web sites.. But with a slight twist. Not all of the names go to all of the available venues.... Hmmmm.... my frosted side says there is a chance for some fun... But that would be considered cruel. Just an old guy rambling on late at night...

"Back in the day".... I had a customer with a new '86 F150 - 2nd year for the EFI 302 in the pick ups... long before the amazing thing called the cell phone... we had mobile phones that were not much better than a two way radio. You would key the handset to get the operators attention and then give her the "phone number" of the person you wanted or she could patch you to a land line. While your conversation was private, there was absolutely no assurance of security. Anyway, this customer with the F150 would be cruising down the highway on cruise control.... and every time he keyed the heandset, his truck would speed up.... Today, in most instances, RFI is a really big deal... It upsets computers in odd ways... And the effect is going to be unpredictable. And it is one of those things we need to keep in mind....

Larry, a while ago you were asking about that Slave Lake film clip. I stumbled across it today at http://media.putfile.com/driven-around-town Thankfully, we don't have that much snow right now (but the lake is still frozen last I looked).

Hmmmm.... Is this a rhetorical question? I've seen bad coils on 5.4s give ABS codes... RFI at it's best. Any place that we have a VRS sensor, we have the possibility that RFI is going to be a concern... Notice that VRS sensors usually have a "twisted pair" for wiring. And thjat can bring us to.... Electrical "resonance". If our twisted pair is "sympathetic" to a particular frequency... and if our RFI generator is working in that frequency envelope, anything and everything could happen. I don't recall seeing any Ford CAN buss that is shielded as Bruce has indicated with the Navistar apps. But the CAN buss is digital and isn't frequency dependant. VRS sensors, OTOH, are.... Once again, back to the twisted pair. And it isn't that RFI is going to "displace" the desired signal - it only needs to disrupt it to the point that the PCM is getting bogus info and believes it... If the disruption doesn't fulfill the requirements to set a code..... Wacha gonna do, bad boy? I would suspect that a broken shield ground can do somewhere between everything and nothing... One of the truly marvelous things about getting old... we start to realize how little we truly know....and how much there is yet to learn.

They are kidding the consumer.... it ain't the car that's bad... after all it ran for umpteen thousand miles with no problem. Ergo, it must be the tech that's no good... /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/2cents.gif Automotive customers can be a strange breed of cat... their car represents their "freedom" and they WILL shoot the messenger if the news is bad.

Here's the thing.... the "expected service life" of the spark plugs is 100,000 miles. This far too long for the 3V spark plugs to remain undisturbed without expecting problems at the end of their service life... But, this recommendation is under "normal" conditions. Remembering that very few people fall into the "normal" operations category, we trip on down to the "severe service" recommendations which has a spark plug expected life of 60,000 miles. Which would probably be right about hwere a sane person would recommend inspecting the spark plugs in any motor... So... is the problem with the spark plug? The head? Or is it with the people that are unwittingly exceeding design limits?

Personally, I feel "cab off" is taking on a life all it's own... one that it may not deserve... For anyone that may have missed this, I offer, for your reading pleasure, this travesty

Looking at the map, I didn't think New Joisy was that big /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

I found this

Weighing in here, real late. And I'll admit that I have only glanced at the replies. I'm going to hope that I'm not repeating something already stated. It appears that there are several "flavours" of the vehicle report card. We use form QC550. This is similar to all the other ones I've had the opportunity to see with various maintenance OPs depending on the "level" of the service but still with the familiar "red/yellow/green" priorities. Our report cards offer that the first service interval for premium gold coolant is something like 160,000 kms ( interestingly, this is the same as the warranty offered on the PSD). After that, the service interval is the same as that for "green" coolant... Food for thought.

James... yes, Canajun vehicles get owners manuals... Sadly, just like 'Muricans, nobody reads the damned things. We usually refer to them as the "worlds most expensive unread book..". Just before our usual winter cold snap ( each year we have at least one week where the temperature never ventures above -30 and can sometimes hit -50F... and NO, I'm not adding in the windchill), an apprentice did a heater core/thermostat/coolant flush on an aging Taurus. When the cold snap hit, the car came in on the hook... Customer states "the heater started blowing cold air... then some lights came on in the cluster... then a cloud of "smoke" came from under the hood... and then the car stopped running". What I found... I managed to draw a couple of pints of coolant from the rad petcock. It was good for about -25C - apprentice swears he checked coolant strength one last time after the car was driven. I cannot judge but I have something that tells me we f*cked up. But.. the crux of the deal - no heat didn't phase the customer - warning lights didn't do a thing - and although there was a cloud of "smoke", the car was still running. And, for most civilians, this means that we can still drive it... right? This is todays mentality... and it scares me that these people are allowed to vote.... and drive.

James, flatratetech.com was founded several years ago with the idea that if a large enough group of techs went up against FMC, something could be done about the shrinking SLTs (this was back about the time Jacques Nassar was busy hacking and slashing his way to higher profit numbers). Somewhere along the line, FRT became an advocate for trade onions... the IAM in particular.. and eventually lost sight of their original plan on the class action suit. The core group seemed to lose interest in the class action suit - at least one even quit mechanics to become a onion employee. Whenever pressed for details on how the suit was progressing, no real details were ever offered. In something like the last two years or so, a splinter group formed and started blueovaltechs.com. Accusations and innuendo followed (I don't believe that there's a whole lot of love lost between some of the opposing members) and BOT finally got the existing records for the class action suit. To learn more, I would suggest visiting blueovaltechs.com and see for yourself. The lawsuit is in dire condition... nowhere near as many signees as the original list implied and the "spark plugs" of the site are in danger of throwing their arms up in dispair. Most of the frequent posters seem like a decent bunch but forum traffic is usually light. For things onion relateed, FRT is probably one resource... but I feel the need to say that I haven't read any articles on that site so I can't tell if there's any meat or if it is mostly onion rhetoric. Quite some time ago, FRT had a sister website called 6.0literpowerstroke.com. Like the "monkeyhouse", this was open to the public... The idea was to attract members of the public through dispensing free advice for diesel owners in exchange for them being urged to read about the class action suit and the plight on flat rate paid techs. I was a member of the staff for quite some time before the site was absorbed into FRT where I continued to be a staff member until the matter of organizing shops into trade onions became the focal point. It was an amicable parting, I explained to Warren Johnson that I had my own views of labour onions and I felt uncomfortable being on staff on a predominantly trade onion website. Before this FRT was also in the "business" of dispensing free automotive advice in exchange for the exposure of civilians... But soon after the focus sweitched from the class action suit, FRT started charging admission to the public to gain access to the "help" forums. I still visit FRT on occasion and still post there infrequently... sometimes to help some poor boob avoid bad advice and sometimes simply to p!ss someone off. Anything more that I could say on this subject wouldn't be fit reading for some...

Ermmmm /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazy.gif , I have my own (very unattractive view) of trade Onions. UAW is gear towards those working in assembly type operations... For anything else, you might be wise to take a look at flatratetech.com .... IAM appears to have gained a lot of members from the automotive trades (though it appears they are doing little more than collecting Onion dues). There has been a class action suit against Ford that underwent some.... errrrr... problems in the last couple of years. Several techs splintered from flatratetech.com and started blueovaltechs. com , taking what they could of the class action suit info. The class action suit is still foundering badly and could use all the support it can get...

Mike... did you run OASIS on the car? It would tell you if 02S41 has been done or not..

FWIW... we have a used Expedition customer that is jerked at us... He doesn't understand that you can't drive from Vernon, BC to Slave lake in 4WD because you "think" you might hit some ice.... By and large, people feel that stupid is a warrantble concern... I mean, if they really wanted people to know about their cars, don't you think they could at least put an owners guide in the glove compartment? (you should be able to see the sarcasm dripping off this one).

FWIW... I don't know anything either... But I can see that what is happening around the ECT isn't necessarily what is happening in the rest of the system. May 9th, 2001... the world lost a great man. Smokey Yunick was a man that explored the "whys" of the modern automobile engine. He played a big role in the development of the Chevy "rat" motor (starting with the 396). I've read just about everything he ever wrote... And the one thing he taught me is that most of what you think, ain't. When he was alive, there is a very good chance that he forgot more than many of us will ever learn.... I never had the opportunity to meet the man... but he managed to teach me that all I can measure are those things that I am given the opportunity to measure....but there are ever so many things I do NOT have the opportunity to measure. But this doesn't mean that things will be equal throughout whatever system is the object of our desires... We can have a "localized condition"... like waves in a pond when we toss a rock.... The further away from the "epicentre", the smaller the wave. We cannot think in absolutes... we have to think in actualities... and we have to consider those waves in the pond... I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box... I start down a lot of wrong roads - sometimes taking too long to say "Whoa... not this way, Trigger". But there are subtleties in everything we work on that we desparately need to come to grips with. "Back in the day" some inline engines featured a water distribution device in the cylinder head. These mteal pieces were primarily meant to direct coolant flow to the exhaust valve bowls... They would sometimes corrode and fail to do what was intended.... Engineering has overcome the need for these devices through other methods of flow control... but they haven't overcome the reasons for needing this type of control in the cooling system....... And the need is borne of localized conditions... The "Smoke"... may his soul rest in peace.... Read what he has written... but don't consider it in "absolutes".... Take his writings and think about them in his discoveries... For an example... we discuss oil pressure.... all we can state is that "this is the oil pressure at the test port".... The longer I live, the less I seem to know....

Crimps look pretty much the same side for side... Bear in mind, I haven't seen any multiple failures.... If I were to see a repeat failure, especially in the same area and especially if the rad was "certified" stock, I would try to get involved with engineering to find out why.... The cooling system is very "dynamic"... localized hot spots making coolant flash into steam.... concerns with cavitation due to harmonics... and possibly several other possible concerns. We read coolant temp at the ECT... and all we can be sure of is that the temp of the coolant surrounding the ECT is "what it is".... Look at the head gasket... notice the "steam ports"... there's a lot of stuff going on that we, in the field, can't "see"... With the 6.4, we are treading on ground that nobody has walked on before... Could it be as simple as a poor crimp? Yep... but it could also be the harbinger.... (how 'bout that? Another new word....).

I've seen it often enough that, when the oil is drained, I like to hit the bottom of the oil pan with a rubber mallet... and listen for a reply... Long term concerns? If the truck is an unchipped penis enlarger, the owner will probably never know the difference... If the owner is a "who needs a Kenworth, my 350 can haul that" kinda guy, we could see melt-down... Let's look at it this way... the "bottom line" is the bottom line for any manufacturer. It costs money to drill and tap these oil passages... and to manufacture and install the cooling jets.... If they weren't necessary for some instances, there's a pretty good chance they wouldn't be there to drop into the pan in the first place... Just so we're all on the same page... the job of the piston cooling jet is to direct a stream of oil to the bottom of the piston crown... This helps to draw heat from the piston. CAT has them, Detroit Diesel has them, Cummins has them... Hmmmmm.... Me? If I have reason to believe or evidence that a piston cooling jet isn't in place and doing it's intended job, I will highly recommend that the appropriate repair is made... In a round about way, we are the part time custodians of our customers finances... We must choose our repair recommendations and priorities with care... Can we put a cooling jet on the "back burner"? Yeah.... but not if he is going to be dragging his 5er all over the countryside next month... If we are to err, we should err on the side of safety....

Centre housing rotating assembly (well... pretty close to that...). Basically, a "cartridge". Friggin' typos

Like Bruce was getting at... assuming something can be both dangerous and embarassing (look at my one reply to the AWD... errr...., I meant WAD thread). If anyone has ESP, you can tell if the causal part is covered when you run OASIS... for everything else there's the good old warranty procedures manual...

Like others, we often have bouts of creating new and interesting epithets getting these things off (why is it they will fall off on the road but we can't hardly get them off in the bay?). I haven't tried Dwaynes method ,yet.. but I'n sure there will be an opportunity real soon (mud season is upon us). But I'll vouch for the power of a long stroke air hammer... After years of those dorky short stroke things, I'll never go back. FWIW, mine is a Blue Point (t'was $156 in the coin of our realm) - it wound up as a guest of the SnapOn repair depot not long after I got it... but whatever they did has worked like a charm since.

S'funny this thread should come up.... I finally got the parts to finish what is hopefully the last thing on a long list for an 03 Expedition... Customer drove back from some Gawd awful place in 4HI... on bare roads.... We overhauled the front diff (burned up - even melted the rubber mount bushings)... next the transfer case was replaced (burned up) and now I am re-installing the 9.75 diff... (also burned up)... And all of this leaves me feeling "burned up"...

EWWWWWWW... and here I thought I'd seen them all... Actually opening the book, looks like the planetary carrier is the driven member with the ring gear driving the rear shaft and the sun gear driving the from shaft... It also appears that the viscous coupling is splined to the input shaft... making it the reactive member - the one that "holds" the sun gear (remembering that one part of the gear set needs to be driven and one member needs to be held to get anything done)... The viscous coupling resists any speed difference between the ring gear and the sun gear... Without a drive shaft to the front, the viscous coupling is going to be working it's heart out all the time. Maybe I'll stick to more conventional 4WD systems /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif

YOOHOO..... Dwayne...... "come to the dahk side...".