Jim Warman

Flashback to the early to mid 80s. New gasoline additives were being formulated that were "electronic fuel injector friendly". A familiar sight had the delivery driver donning a respirator, goggles, gloves and an apron to add the contents of a one gallon metal container to several thousand liters of gasoline. IIRC, static electricity was one of the reasons given for not mixing the contents of the can at the loading terminal. (Don't shoot me - I am simply the messenger). Gasolines that were familiar to carburettor mechanics contained a great deal of waxes (olefins) that would condense on fuel injector pintles and nozzles, affecting their performance. Back then, selling a fuel injector cleaning was a viable, productive and profitable service. Today, only the wallet flushers continue this process. I cannot imagine what other effects these additives may have had (even in the minute doses we saw) on what we considered as "state of the art" back then. IIRC, most fuel tanks were galvanized with little else in the way of protective coatings. Having said that, the world has no shortage of lawyers looking for "payday". Give them a sucker to fleece... <cough>, I meant victim to champion, and the justice system can squander whatever funds are seen as fit in the pursuit of easy gain. What is the difference between a lawyer and a catfish???? Not having seen much in the way of fuel tank delamination (even though I recall some sort of corporate message(s) regarding delamination and what may or may not have been added to the tank. The two instances I recall deal with gas powered vehicles. There are at least two sides to every story...

One would consider that the operative part of "brake clean" is "brake"... and from there, wonder why "they" would ever consider making "electrical contact cleaner" if we should consider brake cleaner to be "everything cleaner". We have an apprentice that uses nitrile gloves often when he is working with chemicals ... and then spray his hands off with brake clean rather than washing them properly... Has the world gone fucking nuts?

And HERE ls what parts go into one of these

I know of a couple of Phillipino "businessmen" who make very good money importing these workers. These poor imported bastards wind up owing their soul to their sponsors who charge dearly for their services, billet some of these folks like cordwood and generally take advantage of them any way they can. I'm pretty sure that a Philipinos worst enemy is another Philipino. Sad.

That might be a good time to retire..... actually, I recently had the oil rails off this thing and, other than having to lay on my big, old man belly, it wasn't all that bad.... Considering I'm not flat rate.

While you brought up the subject, Mike.... My pet HandiBus is a Corbiel coach on a cutaway E450 chassis. Since day one, the driver has complained about no heat in the winter. I've driven it each time and it has been pretty darned good - not earth shattering or tropical, but comfortable for folks dressed for an Alberta winter. And here comes the "gotcha". The bus is equipped with an auxillary coolant heater as well as an inline coolant pump. Recently, I repaired a couple of coolant leaks on this bus and appeared to be having trouble purging the cooling system of air. I turned on the inline pump and what heat I was getting disappeared. To make a long story short, the pump was installed backwards into the system (it had the factory stub lines) and turning the pump on would stop coolant flow through the entire heater system (two rear heater cores in parallel with each other but in series with the front heater). A double whammy... the driver couldn't equate turning the pump on with reduced heater output... and I didn't bother turning the pump on because I didn't feel the need to.....

My son always has that code in memory on his truck... at first he said he doesn't drive that fast.... If you had a VDR, you could set it up to trigger a recording at a preset VSS and capture gear commanded and engine rpm.... Just sayin'...

Leon - haven't seen any failures like you describe (yet) though I have seen a couple of rocker arms missing the ball off the end - as I recall, these were camshaft failures and I'm "assuming" that these were beaten to death due to valve train dynamics. Compared to some of the valve springs I'm used to with our roller cam RB Dodges, the 6.4 valve springs seem a little anemic. I do like your chart revisiting engine basics - something most of us tend to overlook at some point in time or another yet can be useful when forming opinions. The power balance function in IDS can be "too accurate" at times. In years gone by, we would short a cylinder and watch rpm drop. We'd do this for every cylinder and compare the results. Our dwell/tach would smooth the readings. Now, since IDS reads the speed of each tooth on the tone ring, we have the opportunity to get into trouble. And for this I offer broadcast message 4376 as it applies to the 6.2 gas engine. "4376 - 6.2L POWER BALANCE LOSS OF RPM CONTRIBUTION ON CYLINDERS 4 AND 7. SOME 6.2L EQUIPPED VEHICLES MAY SHOW A LOSS OF RPM CONTRIBUTION ON BOTH CYLINDER NUMBER 4 AND 7 WHILE PERFORMING THE INTEGRATED DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEM (IDS) POWER BALANCE TEST. IF NO MISFIRES ARE FELT AND NO DIAGNOSTIC TROUBLE CODES (DTC) OR MODE 6 MISFIRE COUNTS ARE PRESENT TO SUPPORT A MISFIRE ON THESE 2 CYLINDERS, THE CONDITION IS NORMAL OF ENGINE DYNAMICS AND HOW POWER BALANCE INTERPRETS THIS INFORMATION. THIS CONDITION DOES NOT AFFECT THE FUNCTION OR DURABILITY OF THE VEHICLE, CONTINUE WITH NORMAL POWERTRAIN CONTROL/EMISSIONS DIAGNOSIS (PC/ED) DIAGNOSTICS AND TESTING." Just to interject some reality... at 2000 rpm, a crankshaft rotates over 33 times per second.... A piston goes from top dead centre to bottom centre in just over 15 milliseconds. The piston accelerates from 0 feet per second (crankshaft dwell at TDC) to whatever when the crank throw is at 90 degrees (hey, remember I'm a high school drop out!!!) and back to 0 fps at BDC in that time. Add in engine harmonics and I'm left wondering if I should be scratching my head or my nuts....

Never even considered the idea.... In all honesty, I can't see this as being a product with supportable demand. If 2WDs are the norm in your area AND price is a serious concern, is there a reason you aren't considering a used knuckle?

I feel your pain...... T'was about 1970 and I sprang for a "then brand new technology" four track tape player (I think my very first tape was Strawberry Alarm Clocks "Incense And Peppermints" album). Not even two years later, that was in a box in the back of the closet and a shiny new eight track player was hanging under the dash. fast forward a few years and hanging something under the dash was no longer fashionable... Now I have a new stereo that plays cassette tapes...... whoops, now it's a CD player... oh, my - now it's an MP3 player... OMG, now it has a connection for my wifes iPod.... holee sheeit - now it takes my thumb drive..... Electronics is a cash cow..... not long ago, I finally got rid of the last of my BetaMax tapes. Think "planned obsolescence". They know that you wont give them all of your money in one shot.... they have the patience to wait for it..... Doesn't it bother anyone to drive a car with "Micro$oft" on the dashboard after having two blue screens of death and three "internet exploder is not respondings" by the time they finish their morning coffee? Even back in the 90s, we would suggest that "if it is on your desk, it is obsolete". Sorry, bro.

Several years ago, I had a fancy shmancy MAC meter - not sure who it was actually built by but the thing was absolute crap... lasted long enough to get off warranty. Today I have a cheap meter from The Source (used to be radio shack here in Canada). With the semi spendy MAC leads and probes, it is actually a decent tool. No duty cycle or frequencies... but with the scan tools we have today, not a deal breaker. Handy hint..... if you need to test a duty cycled module output and it's associated wiring (say a VDFfan clutch, cannister vent solenoid, vapour management valve - you get the picture), disconnect the load and substitute your test light... use your scan tool to manipulate the duty cycle while watching your test light

Should be pretty straight forward.... simply connect the red lead to the switched side of the circuit (usually the ground side of the load) and the black lead to a good ground. Select the duty cycle position and read the meter. I would boink around Flukes site.... they used to have all kinds of instructional stuff to help guys get the most out of their meters (don't get me started on underused meter capabilities).

Good luck... this sounds like something a guy might "marry".

I often (quite wrongly) lose patience with civilians that aren't well versed in "machine shit". I don't think I have any special knowledge, knowledge that isn't anything more than simple logic, but it is stuff most people don't know all the same. Never assume that "the little things" were checked. Part of my job is fixing things that have been "fixed" several times already. I'm not "good"... I'm "fussy". Having said that.... dowel pins is yet one more consideration.

Never done one either.... t'is better to have evacuated the AC and not need to than to have a full system and say "oh, phuque". We don't work on Lincolns much but we had one a couple of weeks back with two PS pumps - one for a hydraulic fan????

I'm seeing that it is folly to not use both OASIS AND the WSMs. There's a TSB (I think for Edge and something else) that has you reflash a module for a steering pull... a broadcasty mesage about initializing Focus windshield wipers and the goofy shit goes on. Even back in the early ought-oughts, super duty wheel nut torque was a moving target for a while. I would think that they should make info easier to access rather than forcing us to drill down through drop-down after drop-down in the WSMs. In Fords defense, it is nice that they list pertinent data, such as bolt torque or subnotes and clearances/gaps, all in the repair steps.

The new format... I'm underwhelmed. Used to be you could get to the header you wanted in a couple of mouse clicks... Now it seems like you are drilling down through layer after layer.... only to discover what you want is in another list. Change for the sake of change?

Timing cover is going to be a must for close inspection... I've seen a few of these badly scored. Of course the motor has to come out to replace it.

One of the big problems (Ford addressed it with the 6.7's EGR system) was ITECs propensity for putting the EGR valve at the cold end of the system. With a little EGR flow at idle (for any reason at all)and we get to see "wet stacking" of a sort. Check the hour meters of the trucks that have them - we often see things like a truck at 127,000 kms with over 6,000 hours or even as high as 8,000 hours in some cases. I call this the "bought the wrong fucking truck" syndrome. FWIW, and I hope I don't make any enemies over this ( well, not many. anyway), I'm not really sure anyone that makes a habit of defeating emissions controls should call himself "professional". Any customer that asks me to lie or cheat for him isn't much of a customer.

So far I haven't had any repeat offenders.... not that we have time to fix them, anyway - currently booking 2+ weeks.

This is only 550s so far (I believe programming is different) and it happens when they are warm - not at low idle but only when they idle up to about 950ish.

Use the "Jim Warman applied psychology method" when posting and you wont be bothered by those pesky idiotic posts any more... honest.

Slave Lake is hurtin' for techs bad, Chris. It wouldn't surprise me to see us using a "head hunter"... but Big Lakes Dodge has a huge new shop open, Cambodian Tire will hire you if you have a pulse... Just yesterday our SM was showing some civilian our alignment machine (not sure where I fit in there since this has been "my" bay for ten years). Here is a page from one of our local rags..... We don't have an ad for techs locally because it just hasn't produced applicants enough to be worthwhile. I'm not sure what a "cleanng supervisor" does... we do have two peple in the wash bay at this writing. Notice the Slave Valley Motors ad... we are about to find out if I'm going back to that shop or not since they are offering more for a pad slapper than I am getting paid (not by much, but it is the principal of the thing).

Kieth.. something I have come to accept as one of the universes basic laws.... "my car still moves, therefore it is only a little bit broken.... you will not see it until it will not move". If the consumer can still get to his destination, there is no need to spend money (the key ingredient) - surely the car might be unpleasant to drive - but.... If it still moves, it ain't all the way broken. Many years ago, I was at a social function and was speaking with a university professor... I mentioned I was a mechanic and he mentioned that his car was giving trouble- what should he do? Facetiously I suggested taking it to a garage.... and he thought that this was an idea worth exploring.... my idea of "cause and effect" might be different from someone elses. The consumer is unwary... uneducated in the things we see every day. (By this, I do not mean ALL consumers). Brakes feel funny? We'll worry about that when the noise gets too loud or the car wont stop. I hope you can see where this will go. When it comes to a motor vehicle, I have my own ideas about what is safe and what isn't.... some motorists have a grasp on the concept... many don't.

Dwayne.. I've seen with my own eyes - salespeople demonstrating a new vehicle to the customer at delivery... Many things are happening here and they might involve "good" or "bad" customers and "good" or "bad" salesweasels. "Bad" salesweasels are found everywhere.. much like bad techs, politicians, doctors and cooks I'm sure that we have all heard the adage "you can lead a horse to water....". Time and time again, you can show a customer how to switch a display between F and C. There is nothing in the world that can ensure that he or she will remember it. Showing anyone how to do something doesn't mean they will remember it. I spend a lot of time trying to show young techs how to perform a proper volt drop test... This is something they can convert into increased earnings. But the concept is lost on all but a few. FWIW, modern entertainment systems do a pretty good job in the memorizing department. When we replace a battery, we should endeavour to reset things that might be obvious... at the very least... AT THE VERY LEAST we should add a disclaimer to our RO that the battery has been disconnected and that (in Fordspeak) various visible and drivability concerns might exist. If you are to rail against a service advisor, these people are civilians and can only learn from our instruction and example. If your DVD player is flashing 12:00/12:00/12:00 because of a power outage... the power outage is inconvenent... but you didn't pay for it. If a customer pays for anything that requires the battery to be disconnected, the least we can do is reset his clock or any other obvious functions... and if we can't find it in our efforts to do that, at least include a note that says "some functions might need to be reset". If we return his or her vehicle to them and stuff is different... it can be confusing to some. I wont throw the word "retard" around... but it is important to realize that not all of us are born with the same analytical skills.... (this is why some people believe in some religion or another and why some people are skeptical). The owners manual is the worlds most expensive unread book.... has been for as long as I've been around. In a nutshell? If you feel you are above showing someone the RIGHT way to do something, don't worry, there will always be another person willing and able to show them the WRONG way to do it. Oh, by the way... my MAC 1/4 inch air ratchet fell on the floor and broke in half... My salesman never said that might happen..... Is one of us a retard?