Jim Warman

I'm preparing to be a grandpa... a real one... Of course there's the three year renovation project I started 5 years ago... I don't spend enough time with my loving bride of nearly 40 years nor my motorcycle...

Going out on a shakey limb (and I'm not being judgemental 'cause God knows I do it, too) I'm going to opine that you - like the rest of us - assemble stuff with air wrenches? In all honesty... I think we do it too often... I think that unrealistic labour times force us to do it. On occasion, I visit friends that are aircraft mechanics... they don't use impact wrenches... Cool!! Yup... you got some nasty shit happening. Had something nearly similar not long ago. One head off a modular and a pebble managed to sneak into a cylinder on the opposite side. The apprentice doing the job was following the WSM step by step and we caught it (rather HE caught it) by following the WSMs advice to turn the motor two revolutions by hand and rechecking valve timing. Us old guys (yes, me included) are too good to need to do stuff like that. Our youngster taught me a lesson.... or at least made me rethink my ways. I like my tag line...

He should pray that the police find him before I do... I don't fight fair.. I fight to win. But I also have some 30-06 full metal jacket... (we call it "coyote load"). I disavow any knowledge of this post. Full metal who? Own guns?? I do not own any unregistered long guns... No.... Not me... Why do you always pick on redheads?

Just the other day..... y'see, my loving bride has been in Edmonton for a week for doctor tests and shit. In a great deal of discomfort, one evening (Crohns Disease can do this), she visited an emergency ward and called me on her cell phone.... "There's a guy here that knows you... you worked on his '67 Charger"... I am curious because my vintage car list is very fucking exclusive. There-upon, she hands this errrrmmmmm 'fellow' her cell phone. He babbles on for a bit... and I am trying to make him aware that I know nothing of him... or his "creampuff". But he strikes a nerve... "ever since you and them other guys at Fountain Tire put that 383 stuff on my 440....". Whoa!!! I have never worked at Fountain Tire... nor would I succumb to the urge to do such a thing. Bottom line... there is always the chance to have your rep sullied... To the subject at hand.... what part of "fraud" are people having trouble with? Could it be the part where honesty is important? Or could it be the other part, the one where honesty is important? The unfortunate part.... what CAN you do about it... (be honest and thoughtful about "CAN")... and what are you prepared or willing to do about it? Pardon me for sounding like a prick because there is no other way to sound... Being employed can be a lot like playing poker.... you can bluff - will they call? They can bluff... what happens if you call? At this point "right" and "wrong" aren't part of the detour you guys are on. Good luck... however it plays out.

In another thread, discussion turned to using the VDR... a stand alone "flight recorder" to the uninitiated. There are some valid complaints, pretty much all pointing to noon-productive recording sessions - but we see a lot of those or similar as we drive and drive and drive with the IDS connected (you guys ARE making recordings rather than trying to watch data live, right?) and fail to gather any useful info. A couple I have on the go right now. One involves several cars that seem to be doing the same thing but the subject vehicle is an 09 Edge with the 6F50 transaxle. This is a concern that I have yet been unable to reproduce, but has been experienced by several reliable sources. Owner concern is a "bump" on driveaway from a rolling stop or near rolling stop. There were many fruitless recordings as we searched for the PIDs I needed. Finally, I get a set of recordings that shows a spike in TRAN_RAT just about the time it seems that the problem occurs (about three seconds before the recording is triggered). TRAN_RAT takes a brief stroll from 4:1 and heads towards 1:1 (usually making it to around 1.4 give or take). Forgive me if I've already mentioned this one... The VSS graph shows nothing remarkable... but if we analyze it frame by frame just before and during the TRAN_RAT excursion, we see three VSS frames showing 317 mph... 650 mph... and 653 mph. The frames are not contiguous and (what is striking) they are in MPH when all the other readings are in kph. These transmissions are known for concerns with the OSS so, when I take it apart to look for the needle in a haystack that hotline wants me to find, I will replace the sensor "just because". Another involves an 06 6.0. After driving long distances the truck will start to miss on acceleration. Another one that we can't reproduce mostly because you can't predict when it will happen and we can't devote that kind of time to a road test. This man is a friend and runs a car in Quick Rod. The miss is actually EVERYTHING, including all the APPs, IPR, ICP, MAF, VGT... you name it surging... Somehow I missed VREF on the PID list but at least we now have a better idea of what we are looking for. Your chances of having a VDR session reveal nothing are there.... your chances of having an air management test or EGR system test reveal nothing are also there. Bottom line... if you don't look - you wont know.

I would have thought that at least a few guys would have jumped all over this... The number of times that IDS has rejected my request for a manual regen... the number of times I've either "had" to drive a customers truck properly as part of the "fix"... or had to suggest that the customer get off his ass and do something to mend his ways... or seen a flat rate tech grovelling for the time he wasted doing what the customer is supposed to do.. The aftermarket will always find "work arounds". They don't have to be "good", "acceptable" or "legal". Across the board... we see people that "have" to do things in one particular way being penalized by people that can get away with blue bloody murder (being the "government inspection guy", I get to see many inequities in the system). I wonder if this marvelous tool will apply the same conmstraints to a manual regen as the IDS... or will it say "damn the other shit... full speed ahead!!!".

Now, more than ever, someone NEEDS to be made (at the very least) aware of the situation. Allowing a fleet management company to dictate this kind of stuff without covering your ass every and any which way you can is leaving yourself open to "we just paid what they charged us for"... This looks like the beginning of a no win situation.... FWIW - it is perfectly acceptable to "fire" poor customers.

Keith has pretty much nailed it... NOT using the VDR because you MIGHT get useless recordings is like not gettiing a vaccine because you might not get that disease anyway. (I could go on and on, here - don't check the oil level because it might be OK...). What screws with a lot of techs is not knowing how to archive your recordings - this isn't really intuitive or knowing which PIDs to record... (start big and trim or add if you need - Rome wasn't built in a day). Yes... you can adjust recording length as well as the number of recordings to a point. Yes... choosing fewer or more PIDs affects the scan rate. Bruno... the VDR is about as much of the KISS principal as you can get. Our VDR hasn't been at home for more than a day for months. But to have a tool that can help and not use it?

I can't help but wonder if a VDR wouldn't be the better choice?

A lot of the other "stuff" I get has me working less and less on diesel... Just to add to what Keith has said, IIRC, the fuel trim numbers will read 0 off idle...

How to wind up with a bunch of pissed off drivers, yeah? For myself? I don't mind having someone looking over my shoulder... when they reach out and control my movements is when we can get a bit tense.

Exactly.... as responsible adults, we should operate any machine (a car, truck or bs IS a machine, yes?) errrrr, responsibly... like adults.... Now.... there are two sides to this coin (and it does drag us away from Steves post)... Why can't we depend on the school bus drivers? Why do we feel the need to monitor them with this close of a scrutiny? (Not that I'm against it... human nature has disappointed my on more than one occasion... they call ME "fussy") If we all acted as responsible adults... the world would cahnge.

There are a lot of people that feel some of this stuff is infringing on their freedoms... I have been chastised in the past for thinking "if you aren't doing anything wrong....". There was a great hue and cry when people first found out about the recording ability of the RCM... As far as the cops are concerned... we do need to have some oversight into who's minding the henhouse. The people running the school buses should have the same abilities... But I don't feel that limiting the powertrains abilities are in anyones best interests... In cab cameras? With the number of people I see texting or having a cellphone glued to the side of their head.... this might be a good idea even in personal vehicles... Modern man isn't exactly my idea of where I saw the human race going. This might help some...

Ebonics? Back in the day we would wonder what it would be like if James Earl Jones had said "Dis be CNN".

A few years back I had what everyone lovingly refers to as "the dog food truck"... I might recant that part of the tale some day... It was an intermittent no start and this is a truck that taught me the difference in odometer readings (blsnk, mileage or dashes). The year would be 2006ish and the truck was a 2000ish. Under the hood was a siamesed ground that was tucked into the harness... it had never been hooked up... it passed several load tests as I kept going back over the "obvious" causes. Had I used the case ground PID, I might have seen it sooner... I can only assume that the condition of the ground made my PCM voltage "dirty".

I'm a little shy of speed governors (we are talking about responsible adult drivers here, right?) and, if it were my call to make, I would recommend "stool pigeons" over something (limiting speed) that could get a driver into deeper trouble than he/she is already in. At least this way, they should still have a driver that they can descipline and a bunch of kids that can return to school for another day. If they are having a big problem with speeding drivers, they should contact the local authorities and voice their concerns.... "spare the rod and spoil the driver"... making sure the LEOs exact the penalty that is due. FWIW, I work on the idea that a locked door will only ever keep an honest man honest. It wont keep a dishonest man out.

"Quality is job none?". I don't see Ford as being the major problem in this instance. If you break a bolt, you fix it... thios is the kind of shit that happens "every day". This is why we are mechanics... To a very great degree... Ford isn't our enemy.... we are our own enemy and prove it day after day.

Mike.. before I'd allow myself to get trapped again, I'd make a few phone calls.... even if you have to nip a u-bolt off with the torch a couple of simple measurements are all that is required and they cold bend them these days. Worse comes to worse it is "four as per sample". The important thing is to find a shop locally that can get you out of a bind. Notwithstanding that custom bent u-bolts are traditionally cheaper than Fords offerings. If there is any semblance of "teamwork" around your store, this shouldn't be a big deal. If there is no "teamwork" around your store, why are you still there?

Before everyone jumps all over this....... Several years ago, Slave Lake was smack dab in the mddle of the worst forest fire season we'd seen in a long, long time. Our cars and houses and everything else were coated in a layer of ash... Even burnt twigs were carried aloft and delivered to our yards. That particular year wasn't remarkable. The year after that - and memory wants to drag in even the next year - we started seeing rough idle problems associated to contaminated MAF sensors. Even the best filter will allow dirt smaller than X microns to pass. Even the best regions will sometimes have dirt smaller than X microns... If we are to do one thing in our careers... keeping an open mind is likely amongst the top one things we need to do. Techs are most likely to be heard saying either "that never happens" or "I've never seen that happen before".

And it is some websites more than others that give IE8 and my computer hiccups. I can eat peanuts and drink milk.... some people can't do one or the other... some people can't do either. I have one friend that is colour blind to red and green.... I know other man who adds yellow to the mix... Your computer and my computer are likely as different as our bodies are from each other... My computer is allergic to "peanuts" and yours is lactose intolerant. Nothing in this life is perfect - though we may, on occasion, perceive it to be. To consider that the computer is more perfect than it's designer.... now there is a sci-fi movie script.

Are you the guy whose computer wouldn't run Mozilla? My computer runs fine... it doesn't play well with IE8. That doesn't make it a dog any more than your computers inability to play well with Mozilla makes it a dog...

Actually, I do blame technology... My first "real" computer was a nearly new 286 DX (this would be back about 93)... I splurged and bought a SX mobo for it and installed it... With 4 MB ram and a 40 Meg HDD, this thing was impressive... MS-DOS 6.22 had a user interface called "Dosshell" that allowed point and click navigation. While it couldn't multi-task, the code was "tight" - the operating system took less than 10 MB of disc space. And then came "bloatware". Suddenly the OS couldn't fit on 40 MB... Today, you spec a computer and by the time they finish "fixing" all the crappy parts of "the greatest operating system we ever made", you computer has slowed to a crawl as it fights, yet again, with sloppy code and spiralling hardware requirements. Micro$oft has proven time and again that the software will always be about two steps ahead of the hardware. As for multi-tasking? This simply allows us to make several mistakes simultaneously...

Google Chrome works well for me... though it doesn't play well with FMC. IE8 on my desktop, however...... Not so great. We used to think Windoze for Workgroups was lacking... the more advanced our computers get - the worse off we seem to be.

Just an addendum... IDS 67 has been available for a few days. Be aware that they recommend installing IDS 67 using Internet Explorer 8. Speaking of changing IDS versions... has anyone noticed that the DVDs seem to take a long time in coming?

"reliability and durability".... I read that with mixed emotions. 'Back in the day', we would see things that were "overbuilt". You could cook the piss out of the engine in the old mans Roadmaster, nail a curb hard with a front wheel or commit some other grievous error.... and nobody would be the wiser. Today, everything is "purpose built". You can run an engine hot, but overheating it will be devastating. Touch a curb and things will bend... Do anything outside the design envelope and it will cost you dearly. Some people will see this "do NOT drive it to destruction" edict as a lack of reliability. Personally, as long as you do not abuse a vehicle, I see them lasting longer than they ever did in years gone by.