Jim Warman

I've seen notes to the affect "check warranty status...". Not sure what that is about...

"Back in the day" we could purchase brake shoes in both single oversize and double oversize.... Part of the brake reline would be "arcing" the shoes to fit the drum.... The arcing machine was a purpose built device and we would remove material from the ends of the linings... How times have changed....

I've seen RABs valves that leak.... To check, remove the big cap on the end and take out the spring..... Get the pedal to fade away once or twice and check to see if the RABs accumulator piston has moved....

*Most* have the tell-tale box and jumper cable under the hood usually placed near the master cylinder. Still others even have a piggyback connector or jumper at the MAP sensor. Mode 6 or mode 9 data (I can never remember which - I usually have to fumble for a minute) should give calibration level but you might have to have a good memory for what is a lefit number and what isn't. I seem to get the odd one with a P0603 in memory and the CLRDIST PID at less than 10 kms or so... makes you go "Hmmmm.". The Edge control panel or Banks 6 position switch on the dash can be a real good hint, too. Some of the other guys might have their pet ways....

Awwwwww, c'mon guys. I'm starting to feel left out..... all we ever do to a 6.4 is oil changes.....

Old timey figuring would have machine to at 12.060 and discard at 12.090..... Does this truck have RABS or 4WABS?

Tony... the service advisor thing isn't limited to just your store... Ours are constantly succumbing to customer pressure and perhaps not "promising" a truck will be done, they do "indicate" that it will be done and then it's a mad scramble to get someone to work late.... As far as concerns with Ford.... I think that all brands are having troubles - Ford is just the one everybody loves to hate. We have many customers that roll for marque to marque to marque in some idiotic quest for a truck that will never ever break. The complexity of the modern diesel makes them prone to concerns and time consuming to repair. Lastly... if you are the last guy to touch the truck, it is automatic that it is your fault that the truck is broken again - this is a "consumerism"..... "Ever since you fixed my taillights, I've been using a lot of oil....". This is something you just have to reconcile for yourself. We all make mistakes... all we can do is come good for them.... at the same time, if is something beyond our control, all we can do is explain it to the customer in terms he can appreciate (use the glossy pics on the 6.0 bible if need be to help)... and continue to do the best job you possibly can.... Something that peeves my SM.... she will often get into some sort of panic or be infected by a service advisors panic... and then they all get pissed at me because I refuse to panic... serves no purpose.... I can recall one crusty old tech back in the 80s.... F250 is on the hoist - wheels are off, brakes are apart, rear diff is apart... the then service manager asks (for about the third time) when the truck will be ready. Old Bill simply said "He can take it now, if he wants" and went for a haircut.....

First things that might cross my mind would be a fuel quality or additive issue.... Is there anything trapped in the primary filter?

On inford (the tech website we Canadians get), a discussion on comparing ECT and EOT has broken out..... (we'll see how long it takes that to degenerate). Something I may have asked here before..... and I do realize that the engineers have to draw a line in the sand somewhere.... What makes a 25F difference "good" and a 26F difference "bad"? Faced with a fluid temp difference in the high teens or low 20's how does everyone else respond to the concern? Our guys refuse to expose themselves to the possibility of a repeat repair and view a restricted cooer as a restricted cooler - "normal" being a 4 or 5C (sorry to switch to metric in midstream) difference with the odd spike in my experience. Faced with a fluid temp difference in the high teens or low 20s, how would YOU respond? Fudge numbers and replace the cooler? Note it on the RO and pray for the best? Or simply say "the engineers say it isn't broken yet" and leave it be? Obviously, what the engineers have written will be "chiselled in stone" as far as the warranty nazis are concerned....

Years ago, batteries would come "dry"... In the mid 70's I worked for a large Chev dealership. One particualr day, we had some kind of a run on batteries and, rather than have several of us waiting around to fill or batteries, an apprentice was given the job of filling any and all batteries..... After he'd filled about 5 or so, I walked over and watched him fill a attery.... "OH, NO!!!! Did you fill hem all like that?". "How do you mean?". "Your filling them from positive to negative - they'll be charged backwards!!!". His face blanched and he immediately ran to the SMs office to beg forgiveness.... Breaker point igntio was always a favourite... charge a condenser and lob it to anyone unsuspecting.... In winter, we can always expect the odd snowball (I have strategically parked one of the IDS carts close to my bay because of this). One techs favourite ploy is to make TWO snowballs.... the first gets lobbed at the intended victim. While he is busy concentrating on that one, the other comes lightning fast in a straight line. Due to the events of previous years (we, thankfully, didn't have a third annual "run for your life event"), anything that generates a loud noise is strictly verboten...

Kieth Browning!!!! Shame on you!! You have nearly uttered <THAT> word and for that we shall be forced to drop everything (well, maybe not our pants) and come down there and wash your mouth with soap.... I'm talking certification.... even tighter certification than we already have in Canada..... Get rid of the deadbeats and pretenders... the guys that feed substandard shops that give us and our craft a bad image ("But the guy down the street will do it for half that price!!!"). Sadly, there is a technician shortage... "they" want more techs and they will have them one way or another..... unfortunately, once they have another crop of techs that couldn't align a wheel barrow, they will bitch about how poorly "trained" they are... Blissfully ignorant that you can, indeed, lead a horse to water - but you just can't make him drink..... Take a look at what we are seeing on TDS, lately.... "My 05 quit and wont start and they can't figure out what's wrong with it!!". WHAT?!?! Some moron with a few tools and a pair of coveralls with his name over the left tit can't figure out how to open the freakin' PC/ED and go to "No Start Diagnostics"??? I'm ashamed for those guys..... I don't know what it is going to take to get tighter control over competency... but that is where the key to the concerns with this trade is going to lie.... We have trucks on our lot right now that sticker over $73K CAD - and that's before they add the toys... With consumers spending this kind of money, I think they deserve some kind of assurance that they will be protected from thieves, charlatans and inadequate pretenders... FWIW, the problems with this trade aren't new.... but they have gotten worse. When I was indentured as an apprentice (circa 1968), the trade was called "motor mechanic".... Pay was low, working conditions were never any better than mediocre and the public,by and large, scorned us (we were thieves, charlatans and inadequate). In Alberta, at any rate, training was offered... sorry, mandatory.... It laid the groundwork so that a tech could build on that knowledge base and become "good" and then "better"... That didn't mean he absorbed anything.... he could have been lucky enough to catch enough multiple "guess" questions to squeak through his apprenticeship. And it also doesn't mean that he will build on the groundwork that training laid out for him. 50% of all doctors graduated in the bottom half of their class..... Sidebar..... I make more in .2 now than I made in an hour when I first got my Journeymans..... I make more in one hour now than I made in a week at my first full time job.... Do I sound elitist? You bet I do.... And we all should.... The fact that any of you are reading this shows that you care.... You care about your customer... you care about your product.... you care enough to gain more knowledge.... and you care about your career.... And that makes you better already.

The service advisors don't make out all that well from what I can see.... Lord knows we've just gone through a period of really high turn-over with them. No idea if they get a commish on what they sell.... I'll creep out on a limb and say that there is a little sugar to be had but there isn't any of them that live in upscale housing or drives anything newish or dresses tin top quality duds....Comfortable, yes.... but they wont get rich at it. What would be nice is to see better wages for the service staff and mayhaps they could attract and keep some of the better ones. Techs, OTOH, are inundated with opportunities for factory training - a rate increase for each certification gained and a production bonus.... If an SLT leaves a guy a little flat, the shop "tops him up" as long as he isn't dogging it...

Well, he is only 19 and his taste for the finer things in life hasn't quite matured.... Hence, the overpriced "beer" that "needs" fruit in it to be palatable... When it comes to beer, I'm a Molsons man... eh? I AM Canadian /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif

Well, I was born a little bit before 1973.... Let's just say that I saw Expo 67 without being accompanied by a parent or guardian.... As far as astrology is concerned, I was born in early July... I guess that means I'm giving you guys a dose of the crabs....

I've always wondered what it would have been like to spend nearly all of ones life in one area.... In true army brat fashion, I've lived in (in no particular order) Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and now Alberta (Alberta being the longest at 40ish years...).

A Saskahoovian??? Well.... that explains a lot of it then /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/poke.gif Dang flatlanders, anyhow.... /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif

Hmmm... a new post about where we're from.... are you sure you're ready for this??? I mean REALLY sure? I have to ask... 'cause I've been everywhere, man, crossed the desert bare, man, breathed the..... Whoops, most of you guys are probably too young to remember that song... Seriously, I'm the youngest of two children... born to a "war bride", my sister (3 years my senior) was born in Canada... Unhappy with life on a small farm outside Pembroke, Ontario - my Dad scraped up enough money to purchase passage back to England on a passenger liner (tran-atlantic flights were only for the very rich) for my sister and Mum.... He had to stow away and was found out somewhere at sea and spent the rest of the voyage in the brig. I was born in Old Blighty... possibly about the time that your Dad was just a twinkle in Grandads eye... and, in 1953, my Dad re-enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army... as a career army brat, I saw this great country of ours from sea to shining sea and lived in a lot of places along the way.... The tales I could tell.....

For Bruce... I cheat - my camping spot is about 10 minutes from home.... May sound odd to some but I come home and use a full size shower... and I can sit outside quaffing an ale without having to look at all the things I should be doing.... For Dwayne... the important distinction between the filterminder on a gaspot and the filterminder on a diesel is AIR... Without a throttle plate, cylinder fill at idle on a diesel is going to be 100%.... no intake manifold vacuum = no intake induced restrictions on volumetric efficiency = no real reduction in airflow at idle... For the Focus... throttle plate closed, IAC modulating at some low duty cycle = very low intake air flow at idle... as we can witness by actually seeing intake manifold vacuum. If we take two identically sized engines - one compression ignition and one gas, the compression ignition engine will see the passage of much more air through it's bowels than the gas engine ever will.... This is not some stroke of genius... but it is one of those little factoids that we can overlook as we research "suck/squeeze/bang/blow"...

We have a preponderance of red clay in our region... In the dry months, traffic can pound this stuff into a dust as fine as any flour you have ever seen. It can hang in still air for what seems like hours and can spell the death of a 6.0 air filter element in as little as 10,000 kms. Some of our techs simply slip the clips on the front housing and look inside with a penlight - deciding then if further disassembly is warranted... My preference is to just dig right in.... It is possible to R&I the element in less than 4 or 5 minutes... looks a little brutal (but it is harmless if we don't get "rammy" at the wrong time) and always holds the promise of spilling a little blood... On re-assembly I give a quick, light spray of glass cleaner on the inner housing flange to let is slip into the gasket easier... and the glass cleaner is benign to rubber and evaporates leaving things dry. I have come across filters where inattention has left the bottom tabs on the clean side free of the slots - even with my meathooks, I can still just slip my hand around the bottom to reaffirm that I have things clipped together properly.

The filter minder cannot replace visual inspection... even when they do "work, the time between when the plunger starts to move and the filter is plugged solid is too short.... When they have moved is "too late" for my money... I really hate to step on any toes.... but it isn't the filter that is making you look bad.... failing to physically inspect it, however.... Anything and everything that we leave to "chance" is going to come back and haunt us.... Do I look at the filter minder???? Yep.... Do I take it as the "last word"??? Nope....

This is healthy... the disparate appearance of our wages is a noteworthy topic.... "Rig pigs" seem to earn pretty close to the same where-ever you go.... but some techs make 12/hour and others make 40/hr. For God's sake, don't view this as a call to unionize.... I sure wouldn't join... At the same time, I have to wonder what influences have caused this kind of galvanization in the trade regarding wages.... At the same time, and I am trying to tread very carefully here... we often see rewards for "certification" level but never for "experience" level. A couple of years ago, the tradesmans and qualifications branch caused us to lose a tech with more 7.3 knowledge and lore than many shops possess... this was a two way deal and I harbour no ill will to the tradesmans and qualifications branch for what happened... all the same, the tech that had to leave started with the IDI and grew from there... but refused to work towards journeyman status.... That kind of experience is damned near irreplaceable.,.. at the same time, we have a "fresh" journeyman that is earning senior tech wages.... he is young, impetuous, overlooks things, takes shortcuts that p*ss me off totally.... If we look back at some of my earlier threads... it is up to us to drag this trade into the realm of respectability.... it is then that we will earn the trust of our employers, our customers and achieve wage parity.... It is one thing to "feel" special.... but if we make sure we are, indeed "special", we can begin to act the part.... As for my boy... he is still floundering with his lifelong goals.... he has, at different times expressed a desire to be a millwright, an electrician and, lately an automotive tech. With this recent choice, he has the ability to earn more money than most universtiy graduates... Many of his other employment choices were no less dangerous than this one.... But why, in Gods name, should an unskilled labourer like a "rig pig" earn more money than some techs? Why do we see the odd staement like "I'm going to buy a truck and make some 'real' money"? It's an odd thing... understanding it might be a key to fixing it....

Lew.. I can understand your frustration. Part of the problem is a malaise that affects most dealerships. They develop an attitude that "we have them for the next three years".. totally ignoring the retail possibilities.... My guys suffer through the same poor SLTS that other techs experience but we have good "menu" times on retail stuff... We try to be fair to both customer and tech.... Our good techs get paid about 33% of the door rate with performance goodies figured in.... Now... is the concern DPs that don't care? Or department managers that have gone overboard in playing CYA?.. I'm "unique" at my dealership.... at various points, I piss everybody off.... I don't work for the service department, I barely work for the dealership.... I work for our customers and I make no excuses.... Disclaimer... there are times that you just can't please a customer.... you need to realize when these times are.... I carefully consider the guidelines that Ford has laid out, and I follow them but I also use "judgement" in applying them. I get caught short regularly.... My victories outweigh my failures... if I see I'm getting in over my head (as far as customer relations are concerned), I don't hesitate to involve the DP... I know my limits.... In this modern age, techs tend to forget that it is ALL about the customer... ME becomes too important and we lose sight of our purpose in life... No... we can't please everyone.... but it is important to know who we NEED to please, how we can reduce the displeaure of others and the importance of discovering those we may never please.... I try to shield my guys from any politics... they aren't here for that. It's complex.. and would take many volumes to detail.... I spent many years self-employed so I have a "leg up" on shmoozing... If you worked for the wrong boss... that's between you and he.... For my part... if my boss doesn't like "MY" way of doing things, he can get rid of me in a heartbeat. There's been a few times I nearly expected it. Sounds pretty "big", doesn't it????? If you know, in your heart, that you are right... there is no worry.... If you have confidence in your knowledge and abilities, there is another job begging us to fill it.... choose carefully.

In the past, both here and on another venue, I have posted long winded and harshly on tech wages, expectations and "willingness to provide....." (for want of a better term). My son, an only child spoiled rotten from day one, at the ripe old age of 19 has decided (finally) to make a detour in his career path... He was on his way to becoming a wireline technician (oil patch stuff) but hit a peed bump. His employer promised to keep him "busy"... which they did... But they kept him busy in the shop... and all that gets a man is his "gaurranty" with none of the "field" pay. Tough to make house payments and have a few bucks left over for a few Coronas and a lime.... So... the boy is heading out tomorrow to be a "rig pig"... A roughneck on a service rig - something like this . He starts at something like $24/hour.... the days are long and hard (like a lot of us don't know about that). Think about that $24/hour.... As professionals, any of us should be able to command at least that much... and more. What is the difference? "Rig pigs" are expected to be rig pigs.... We, on the other hand, need to act like trained, educated professionals.... Any time we see another tech putting on a "rig pig" act.... doing things that shouldn't be done... failing to perform adequate diagnosis... failing to verify the concern... failing to verify the repair... we become "rig pigs" ourselves. Most of us here seem to be happy with our lot in life (though Dwayne gave us a bit of a start)... and appear to have won respect and "position" in our chosen paths.... and, mostly, all we need to do is to do our jobs well... In my shop, I am often accused of trying to "assign blame" for things gone bad.... that might be the way I come across sometimes. As a fire department instructor, I learned a technique called "fail forward"... identify the problem... acknowledge the problem... fix the problem.... Most of the time, the "perp" doesn't even realize he's done something amiss.... Like a chef.... don't feed your customer something you wouldn't eat yourself.... Thank you for listening to me and Mr Seagram.... /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/poke.gif On edit.... $24/hour.... that's $22.78 'Murican.... On another venue I see guys lusting for $17ish/hour.... In the 60s we took drugs to make the world look wierd.... now, we take drugs to make the world look "normal"...

Tony, we are at the point where we question any "significant" difference in temps.... Sidebar.... I replaced the radiator on an 06ish F150 in the last week or so.... USA stock and the DP needed the truck out sooner.... I "stole" the rad out of an 07 new unit.... Since the rad was new and the truck was new, I could assume that the coolant was new so - the coolant I captured form the donor truck went into the repaired truck... And it plugged the screen in my coolant funnel - several times. This can't be right - until I remembered that the factory puts stop leak in cooling systems.... Could this be where some of our oil cooler restriction concerns are originating? Bruce... think of this... Satan himself could be a fat old redhead that rides a Harley!!!!! Bwahahahaha

For all our Canadian techs... a happy and safe Canada Day today!!! And for our 'Murican cousins.... an equally happy and safe (if somewhat early) Independence Day on the 4th.... Let the celebrations begin.