Jim Warman

I'm too avid when it comes to tools, as well... I used to suffer from buying "sets" when all I needed was one or two somethings (they were on "sale" - OK?.... besides, it warms the cockles of my heart to send some toolmonger to Mexico in the winter /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/puke.gif ). Of course the "extras" usually get donated to my son or close friends or kept at home..... Add that I am somewhat of a woodworker, at times (meaning add a tablesaw, 3 or four routers, jigsaw, scrollsaw, bandsaw, "dremel" tool, umpteen sanders and Lord knows what else - not to mention hand tools galore, not the bargain store ones, either). I can boast that I own about 32 tape measures.... and can often have to search for one to use. And I'm too lazy to bring some things home from work..... so now we need two of a lot of things some guys don't have one of.... I often mention my loving brides shoe and purse collection..... thankfully, she hasn't thought to mention some of my vices... A lot of my old goodies predate some of the modern equivalents... My "headlight" tester is a 4001 seal beam purchased new.... You can never be too thin - too rich or have too many tools....

A somewhat guarded so far, so good... Unsure if the customer has fled the area for Xmas or not... I'll be a bit more sure after new years....

Mark... we have a new engine on the way... beer just ain't gonna cut it.... /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/poke.gif

I found that, too... let's hope the truck works better than the WBT...

I better check into that... nothing heard on my end so far (but then Tuesday is another day). Merry Xmas, Keith.... My boy is all grown up and I miss watching kids on Christmas morning....

is now available in the WBT.... Merry Xmas...

Jim Rogers replied to a post of mine in the electrical forumand that got me to thinking.... (not a good thing, sometimes). I have one ugly little tool that noe of the guys in our shop ever thought of but they have come to covet mine and have given it the name of "Jims brick" - starting at one end, there are two clips that fit on to the battery posts (IIRC $1.98 here in Canada) attached to about 30 feet or so of wire (one conductor red, the other black - about $10 at what used to be Radio Shack). At the other end, a scrap of 2X4 with a fuse holder and two posts - one B+ and the other B-. Wherever I go on the vehicle, I have a known good ground and a known good power. Like most, I also have an old sealed beam headlight with two wires for load testing a circuit.... current plans call for replacing this with something I can adjust the load on to some degree and to add an audible tone for those times where one cannot see the light. A third device sees limited use but has helped... it is a variable resistor substitution box that my dear old Dad made in basic training with the Royal Canadian Signal Corps - in about 1942. Other goodies.... my "amps amplifier"... A simple coil of wire taped and terminated so it can be inserted into a circuit. The wire should be looped 10 times - clamp your amps probe around it and divide the meter reading by 10. Great for getting a fine reading on low current draw circuits. Don't forget that the VMM comes with amps probes.... Years ago, I would take a two prong round TS flasher and substitute it for a fuse. Good for looking for shorts in lighting systems. Not sure how this will work now that wire gauge is selected more "carefully" by the manufacturer. Used to be 14 ga was "small".... now it's "big". If you don't have an amps probe and are a little worried about blowing the fuse in your DMM, get a one ohm resistor (10 watts or better) and put that in series into your circuit. Measure the voltage drop across the resistor and multiply that by 1 (pretty simple, huh?) to get current flow in the circuit. Hope these ideas give some food for thought.... Have a merry Xmas.

In this case, FPC (as well as FPM) are part of the FPDM "network".... While I am likely going to start load testing these types of circuits in the future, we need to remember that these circuits are designed for reference voltage at very low current levels. That half volt reading I go should have been my big hook but on went the blinders and the 1 volt allowance took me past something I knew I should have looked closer at (FWIW, we see many concerns involving C3137 and I had separated that and inspected for corrosion before I even set out on the PPT). What is interesting in this case is the vast difference in readings between a "dry" harness and a "wet" harness. . Not unexpected, in retrospect, given the type of failure... but something, I'm sure, that few of us have considered. I had driven the unit the previous day and verified the customer concern.... the truck sat in the shop overnight and I proceded with testing the next day *without verifying that the concern still existed*.... Likewise, my "pet" Excursion with the parasitic draw.... There is always 900 millivolts on that one wire but the truck needs to be cold for it to have an effect.... Bring it in the shop and my PD is always 40 milliamps. However, if I freeze my can off testing it outside, I can watch it spike up to 4 amps and then watch it drop to about 170 milliamps (presumably, the 4 amps warms the alternator which "turns it off" and the cycle repeats). Still a third case.... an 06 Expedition.... left the customer high and dry twice. On a cold start, the alternator would not charge. Of course the heated seats, heater going full blast, rear defogger and all the lights (dawn is about 8AM or so at this time of year) would overtax the battery. Get it into the shop and it charges like a champ (aside from a P0622 in memory). PPTs showed nothing wrong (even checking for spread pins) but I proved it out by apply a heat gun to the alternator (yes, dammit - outside at -30C) and having it start charging almost immediately (or as soon as the PCM turned it on). We have progressed to the point where replacing some high end audio units has become a PMI procedure... we ain't mechanics any more.... Not only do we have to decide what kind of a test is going to be appropriate but we are at the point where we may need to decide when and where we will conduct the test. I have two that I might never have found the concerns on had I not decided to get cold and another that wouldn't have come back as long as the harness stayed dry.... As it stands, this is the sort of stuff we should all be discussing... what we've seen, what we've had to do to test our system in order to find a concern with it.... Even if someone elses situation is nothing more than food for thought. Merry Xmas, all.....

Something to consider is the weather..... I have egg all over my face and I can't help it.... 04 F150.... runs bad and stalls.... CEL is "on". P0190, P0191 and P1235. PC/ED tells us to disregard the first two if we have a P1235... no problem - we start at KB23ish. This has us checking the FPC circuit between the PCM and the FPDM. We start with the continuity test which returned zero ohms on the line in question (did I mention that the connector pin layout at the FPDM is 2 - 3 - 1 - 6 - 4 - 5? Nice going, Ford). Next step is to check for a short to power.... I had .5 volts - I thought this tasted bad but the PC/ED states anything under 1 volt is good. Unplug C3137 (on the frame rail under the drivers door and I got no volts.... I'm worried, but the PC/ED is leading me by the nose, I'm hooked on trouble). A couple more test steps and we get 7 volts returning from the FPDM - spec is 4.5 to 5.5. Replaced the FPDM, all is well and release the truck (to the wash bay). The customer isn't gone for more than a couple of hours and he's back on the doorstep. P1235 and runs like crap. Repeat PPT and we have 4K ohms on the FPC circuit. Disconnect C3137 and measure from there to the FPDM - 4K.... just for sh*ts and giggles, I touched the other connectors in the top row of that connector.... and got readings between 2K and 5K on all of them to the one pin at the FPDM. The only difference is that now the harness is wet inside the low point in front of the rear spring..... The harness is undamaged on the outside but opening it up shows some insulation concerns for no apparent reason.... The FPC circuit was hanging by a strand with black wire from nearly one end to the other. Once again, I have had it driven home that we should decide in our own minds what the PC/ED wants us to test and treat our results as we see fit rather than "listening" to some of the arbitrary numbers that the PC/ED throws at us. In this case, the truck had sat inside overnight, allowing the harness to dry out.... this skewed my test results as far as I can see. In my mind, I saw a half volt as being too much, but, hey... the PC/ED says that's good to go.... In a similar case, I have an Excursion that has the batteries go dead after 4 or 5 days.... The ICM is sending 900 millivolts to the alternator on the indicator wire and this will turn the alternator on randomly. A new cluster is on the way for that and a new 14405 harness for the 04. Rule of thumb... (and I should have known better) - look at what the PC/ED wants you to check and act appropriately... both in test methods and in expected results.... The PC/ED is a guide (often, a poor one) and we need to second guess the engineers nearly every step of the way. Have a safe and merry Xmas....

Dave, there is a surge protector kinda thing you can get to clamp across the battery terminals... I got one many years ago for the MIG welder I had at the time... Used it faithfully for a long tme but now I prefer to simply unhook both battery cables and pay close attention to my ground placement. A carefully placed vise grip or chain grip will have us ground directly on our parent metal and our workpiece can be safely welded to it.

I understand that you are asking if we can use Mercon "Special Price" in older apps???? At first nod, I'd have to say no.... There was a message (TSB, I recall) regarding Merc 5 but there is nowhere that Ma Ford has OK'd SP in other apps not listed in the WSMs.... For some reason, though, I get the feeling I have read that SP is being used in another trans besides the 5R110. If in dount. consult the WSM AND OASIS.... Recently, there was a broadcast message about an error in the WSM for some lube spec.... (friggin' old guy memory working overtime...).

Haven't seen one that extreme yet, but I can say it isn't unimagineable. All of our network busses are nothing more that a big antenna.... It isn't rare to see shielded circuits and all the "old style" wheel speed sensors are twisted pair wiring (a sure sign thst stray RF can be a concern). Since about 04 or 05, Ford has moved to a different sensor - one is dubbed active and the other passive - I can't for the life of me remember which is which. I do know that the PPTs for the new style has changed drastically. The new style is, AFAIK, not subject to the concerns of RF interference.

We've seen about 3 that I can recall in the last couple or so years.... I am unsure if the concern is from electrical noise in the system or because of stray RF. Seems to me the techs could feel a bit of a skip in the engine just before the ABS light went on.... HTH

Three of us requested for Edmonton... no class schedule up as yet. Hopefully, it might be early enough for my loving bride to take advantage of those after Xmas sales.... Like any true Canadian, she endeavours to spend 10% more than I earn. For anything else, I stress the same team approach the boss does.... even to the point of using it against him.... Every dealership has this "us against them" attitude as one department competes with the other to be the big producer... That crap is counterproductive and can even hurt customer relations.... and customers is what it's all about....

Anthony.... did I mention that you go a long way to making a guy feel confident with his choice???? Good catch on the pump shaft seal, though.... It's the tough ones that make a guy feel good...

Of course it wouldn't be right if we didn't forget something.... I missed on changing the range of ICP_DES.... Anyway, I've adjusted some of the displays ranges to improve the detail of the scan lines. Had the truck in this afternoon and changed the IPR... now we wait....

Lew, the 12 hour days are pretty much by choice for me... My techs don't work anywhere near that many hours... rarely 50 in a week even. I have two diesel Master techs and both of them will earn 6 digits this year... We don't sell flushes and we refuse to rape our customers.... we do our damnedest to guarranty FIRTFT. These guys work what extra hours they want... usually only enough for them to book 100 hours in two weeks (100 hours is the break point for their $2/hr bonus). With a healthy mix of retail work, gain time is pretty good for these guys. I clock between 100 and 120 hours in two weeks.... Just my OT "bill" is nearly $2000 a month. My duties include fixing the "stinkers" (actually one of the rewards of the position), "fixing" staff, expanding my product knowledge (making me more valuable), playing with our toys to learn all of their capabilities and passing the knowledge along... After over 30 years, I had to move back to a dealer to find my dream job... But I didn't get here on my good looks, alone.. I did (and I still do) spend a lot of my own time expanding my product knowledge, honing my skills and perfecting my craft. It is exactly what I already had, that put me in this position to begin with. There is no reason for any of us to "run with the pack"... we don't have to limit ourselves this way. We owe it to ourselves to be the best we possibly can at what delivers our daily bread... And now that I've hi-jacked my own thread... give me a few minutes and we'll get that revised screen shot up.

The first thing I would do would be to PM Bruce Amacker (I hope I spelled that right, Bruce). He's a technical trainer by trade and I've seen his name on many of the same forums I sully the landscape on and I think the guy is a straight shooter...

What would be, how do the young'uns say it, "totally awesome".... or "rad".... or whatever... Anyway, what would be great would be the ability to upload our entire recording and play it back (anyone ever use WDS in desktop mode? - still loaded on my PC at home)... that way, nothing would be lost to chance... A plus is that you can continue to re-arrange the PIDs and change some of the data display parameters. I could have had my time set in a better spot.... At the time of the event, ICP bottomed out at .24volts... but once the engine stalled, ICP looks to "bump" a wee bit. I mentioned pulse width because I think that it could have given us a little insight into how much oil was being "lost" to injector "on" time. Plus, we would be able to tell at which point the PCM decided that trying to do anything more just wasn't worth the effort. I changed the FICM_SYNC to a graph (from it's usual "yes/no" box at the top) and placed it at the top simply to draw the eye to the time frame. This is the first chance I've had to really stare at the data hard and, like Keith and Lew, I have a hunch on the IPR... but seeing that little whoopee in the ICP (after it bottoms out), I want to look closer (it's probably 'normal' but momma said "Forrest, ya allus gotta hedge yor bets"). Today was just one more 12 hour zoo in a chain of 12 hour zoo's so I'll try to go in early(er) tomorrow and change some of the display parameters to add some detail to what we are looking at. I haven't had the chance to install my FTP software on my "pet" IDS or my laptop so the earliest I can get it into my little corner of heaven will be lunch time MST. I was hoping for a little more traffic on something like this.... 17 views and few responses.... Learning to use our toys well and learning how to read just what it is that they are trying so desperately to tell us will make us very valuable to someone, somewhere. Learning how to use our toys properly will earn us a living... a better living, than we would ordinarily have.... This is important stuff - knowing it will separate you from the rest of the pack. Contrary to what it says above my avatar (which is a very good likeness, but I do have more hair than that), I ain't no freakin' genius.... I just take my chosen career seriously... seriously enough to make more money than most university graduates (this is not a boast.... if I can do it - anyone can). Sorry for the lecture.... but look at it this way.... we have an identifiable concern - hard to reproduce, so far, yes... but you can get all the info you need with your VDR and one little stab of your customers thumb (our VDR is out on another "unfixable" crusade). Speaking of VDRs, we are starting a waiting list of customers with "unfixables" lining up for us to send them on their way with our marvelous little black box. Interesting side note.... simply installing the device fixes more than half of these "mystery" concerns. It's your future... you can change it.

This is an 05 or 06ish F350 that will intermittently stall if the driver starts to pull away but then "bobbles" and lets up on the throttle... refires immediately and otherwise drives like a dream. I just grabbed the defualt PIDs in datalogger not realizing that FUELPW wasn't one of them... I haven't had enough time to look at this real hard, but this is some of the stuff that is catching my eye early. FWIW, IIRC any PIDs not shown here didn't change through the event.... Needless to say, there are no codes.

Mike, I can clearly remember the day.... waaayyyy back in nineteen fifty and six.... my Dad came home with this big wood box on spindly legs.... It had a dark window in one side.... I asked him what this thing was and he said "television".... "Neat", sez I.... "What's a television...?". I can remember when my Mum want back to England to visit her family (she was a "War Bride")... it took the better part of two days on a piston engined airliner. Anyway, my point is that technology is going to grow and we have to grow with it. Most of the guys I went to school with aren't on the bench any more.... unable to keep up with technology, they have mostly gone on to other endeavours. It seems like one day I was happily polarizing a generator (I can explain that for anyone that wants to know) or adjusting the choke break on a 2GC... and the next, I'm looking for a bad connector putting 2/10ths of a volt on the wrong wire - using a laptop computer (hell, we didn't even have digital watches until my teen years were gone) to fix a car... What will be the life span of the 6.4 and it's marvelous new systems? What will we see as small diesels make inroads into other product lines (how long before we have an offshoot of the Escape - a diesel/hybrid)... For nearly 40 years, it's been one learning curve after another... it's getting faster and it's not going to let up any time soon. Personally, I think the challenge is invigorating...

While I miss my feeler gauges and dwell meter.... <SIGH> - the price of progress.

A simple way to check for EGR flow on a gas engine is to feel the valve.... with no flow, the valve should be the same temp as the intake manifold....

Following some of the threads in the 6.4 forum, I see most feel the same as I do.... what on earth will we see next? I have no idea of the age or experiences of most reading this, but I am constantly reminded of my own path to that place I bow exist..... When I first started my apprenticeship, the alternator and front wheel discs were the big, new breakthroughs in technology.... The idea of buying a rebuilt generator or rebuilt starter or what-have-you was alien.... if you needed an armature or field coils or bushings... you went to the parts counter and got them. Every shop had a growler and everyone knew how to use it. But those dang alternators... what were they thinking? And we learned and went on.... Soon, we saw electronic ignitions.... we used to fix a lot of running problems with new points and condenser.... these dang ignitions... what were they thinking? And we learned and went on.... Then came those early and crude EGR systems.... we fought back, for the most part. We didn't need to understand them if we simply disabled them... What were they thinking? And a lot of us took a big step backwards.... Feedback carbs..... electronic fuel injection.... the changes in technology are in high gear.... coming fast and coming often... What were they thinking? And a lot of us got lost in the dust.... Change... complexity... new technology... none of these are new - and we all know it. Customer demand for toys (theater dimming lights, heated seats, nav systems, DVDs).... our need for improved fuel mileage and reduced emissions.... our need to reduce our reliance on other non-renewable resources.... All of these (and more) are driving this snowballing rush to technical overload.... But we will all move forward.... that we are here, in this place, shows we a re a cut above the guy in the next stall... we have the desire to be good at what we do and the realization that we need to know about what we work on.... Until they perfect the "flux capacitor" and reduce the price on the turboencabulator (anyone get to see that one?), we are stuck with technology run amok.... I wish everyone a happy and safe Christmas, a prosperous new year and suggest that we all breathe a sigh of relief that the 6.4 isn't as complicated as it "could" have been.... Here's a version of turboencabulator I haven't seen before. http://www.zerosign.net/index.php/2006/09/22/226/ Here's the original one that I saw... http://www.moparaction.com/extra/media/A604.wmv

Whoooeeee... I missed the part about the leakdown... ("flatrate reading" again). Change tune to "running compression test"....