DamageINC

Sometime this year I plan on picking up a "Tablet" laptop PC, it'll be the cats-!@#!?$! with the IDS software installed. The nice thing about the Tablet PC is that the screen folds flat and actually becomes touch-screen at that point. So it'll be like a much lighter, faster, more capable WDS without having to use a mouse or those annoying little fingerpads. Dave

Took the thoughts right out of my skull. Dave

Our leniancy with mods has a lot to do with the customers reputation as a customer at the dealership. Obviously, some dude with an '03/04 Cobra rolls in with a 2.4 Kenne Bell sitting up top pushing 22psi and his powertrain warranty is out the window. Even lightly pulley'd Lightnings and Cobras don't really get too much help from us, if they're good customers we might give them that one "freebie" depending on what it is. But we've got no reason to tell some dude with a Mustang, especially a good customer, that we can't warranty his drivetrain because he's got a few bolt-on's and a tune. With our diesel customers, it's a little harder to tell how far they've been pushing it because you can have 2 6.0's that look IDENTICAL underhood and one might be making another 120+hp and 250tq than the other. Once again... it comes down to the customer. And good customers are much more likely to come back to us for business and ESPECIALLY new trucks if we help them out once with their personal ride. As opposed to some schlep who got booted from the last 2 dealers he visited because they didn't want to fix a modded truck. Dave

Excellent! We are a relatively mod-friendly dealer, and would be considered very "forgiving" when it comes to mods. But we absolutely DO NOT tolerate a customer lying to us about mods to a vehicle. If I question the stock-ness of something, and they tell me it's never been tuned or sprayed or anything like that, and I find out that they lied to me - they can go and eat themselves. I ask these questions to keep the customer happy, not to screw them over. If they don't want to be honest with me, then they'll end up either paying for the repair or hoping that another dealership doesn't notice what they've done to it. Dave

This one was expensive.... About 4 years ago, one of our techs (who is seriously one of the sharpest people you'll ever meet) had a VERY low mileage Explorer Sport with a high speed vibration. Removes the front driveshaft, still there, swaps out the rear driveshaft with another truck from the lot - still there... more driving gives us the impression that it's coming from the front. So, de decides to remove the left fromt halfshaft and drive it around like that, just to see if it goes away. The truck came back on the hook with the entire left front wheel missing. Brake hose was torn off and just dangling. No rotor, no hub, the front bumper was destroyed and half the left front fender was ground completely off. In his defense, there were a lot of people who were giving input to the truck and not one (including myself) ever considered that driving around without a halfshaft would be a problem. It never really occured to anyone that you NEED that halfshaft in the vehicle, because the hub uses the halfshaft nut to maintain it's position within the bearing. Without the shaft, there was no nut, so at about 50mph on a local highway, the hub walked itself out of the bearing, with the rotor, caliper, and wheel attached. The wheel bounced across the oncoming lane and ended up next to a golf course. Naturally, the guy driving it went right for the brake pedal, which accomplished nothing because the caliper was torn completely off. It just skidded to a stop, using the left from portion of the truck as a brake pad. Dave

See, I thought that maybe by the impeller spinning too slow, it could possibly act like an intake restriction and *maybe* create a low MAP reading at idle. But, the compressor side of the turbo, even NOT spinning, really is still a relatively free-flowing design and it really would be surprising to me if that was the actual cause of the MAP readings. Perhaps a slowly rotating impeller is actually worse than a stationary one??? Dave

This is exactly what's going through my head too, I don't quite see how a small exhaust LEAK is going to bring manifold pressures DOWN. The next time I encounter any small pre-turbo exhaust leaks, I'll check my MAP at idle just for grins. Dave

I'm pretty unsure what to think o fthe whole situation, except that I'm not too comfy with the idea of havin ga 6.4 around for 1 or 2 model years and then learning that the Ford/Navistar thing is done. Then it's something brand-spankin' new all over again with whatever other company they decide to deal with. But... that's just speculation too. I do know that although Navistar is a relatively large company, they're still just a dog turd in the lawn of what is Ford Motor Company. As "dire" as the media likes making Ford out to be, the reality of it is that they are still one of the largest and most successful companies on the face of the planet. Navistar could use Ford's business much more than Ford needs theirs, when you consider that 70% of Ford's Super-Duty sales have a diesel in them. IF something does actually cause a split between the two, Ford will NEED to find someone else. Quickly, too. They're already using Cat engines in the 650/750's so I suppose it's possible to see a Cat motor in the Light-duty trucks. And I guarantee that would cause a retarded amount of *good* attention in Ford's direction seeing as virtually everyone on the face of the earth knows about Caterpillar. Nothing I can do but sit back and watch.. if things go south quick enough, that 6.4 class I'm taking in 2 weeks will be about as useful as a box of Trojans in the hands of the Pope. Dave

Wow - I'm glad you got it all figured out. I would have loved to suggest something but everyone else here already beat me to any ideas I'd had, lol. Either way, it'd be interesting to see a pic of this. How big would you say the hole was???? Dave

And, apparently, Cetane already beat me to this. So... umm.... yeah. Sorry 'bout that. Dave

I don't know if anyone here may have heard, but apparently Ford is suing Navistar for warranty costs on their engines. Apparently, under contract, Navistar is supposed to reimburse FoMoCo a certain percentage of warranty costs on their engines. And apparently, there has been no reimbursement. After some poking and prodding, Ford decided it was necessary to pull out the Lawsuit Stick. Supposedly, Navistar has determined that Ford is coming after them, and according to Ford, Navistar is "retaliating" with "unexplained" increases in the cost of the new 6.4. If this is actually in a contract-agreement, and Navistar is NOT living up to it, I imagine Navistar is going to be shelling out a few bucks. Which, they should. Either way, this has "Oh !@#!?$!" written all over it. Dave

Today, we had a lack of power concern that we'd normally have gone right to the EGR valve for. But the tech working on it decided to do the new IDS EGR test, and it passed perfectly. Nothing out-of-line, it was a perfect pass. Normal diagnostics led to a Turbo. So he put one in. And the problem remained. Right away he peels the EGR valve out and sure enough, the upper port on the valve is clogged 100% solid with carbon and a good portion of the lower port is clogged too. The valve opens and closes perfectly when commanded but that valve was still completely bunk. It's getting a thorough cleaning and will be tossed in tomorrow. That EGR test is cool, but it's certainly not foolproof, and on a 6.0 F-series I'd be much more inclined to just pull out the valve for a visual inspection, rather than solely rely on the test to tell me if there's a problem. On an E-van.... yeah gimme the test all day /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif Dave

Ok, I'm not bashing hotline or anything. I tend to lean on them a lot and for the most part they're very helpful for me.. BUT... We've all had those calls where you got something completely retarded from a hotline engineer in response. My personal favorite was about a 5.0 Explorer I had with oil pressure issues. I called in asking if there were any updated part numbers or known problems that I might head toward checking out before I get into any intrusive testing. The guy on the phone, word for word said... "Well, ok... low oil pressure... How many miles??" I say "About 115,000".. "Hmm... ok, well with that many miles, I think it's not out of line to start looking into things like maybe the piston rings." And he was completely serious. Dave

Haha yeah, first time I ever did head gaskets on a 5.4 I made that mistake. I had all the accessories bolted up too, and had just positioned the intake in place. I went back to my box to get the intake bolts and saw the wheel just sitting there, laughing at me. Anyway.. Ok so we had these oil-caddy's that you'd evacuate by manually shutting a couple ball valves and then pressurizing the tank with shop air. Then you'd crack open a valve on the drain hose and it'd pump the oil out of the caddy with the air in the caddy now. So, I apparently didn't shut the top valve all the way. It was actually only about half. Grab the air hose, plug it in - had a geyser of oil (and 2 filters) that sprayed all over the ceiling in the shop, all over the walls, 3 cars, my toolbox, friends box, me, friend, I swear there was oil from this mess over half the shop, it was an incredible mess. I spent 3 hours afterward with a pressure washer trying to clean this all up. This was almost exactly 3 years ago and there are STILL small drips of oil coming from HVAC ducting that I wasn't able to rinse off. Dave

I suppose more insurance is never a bad thing, but I've just been lifting these things by the pinch welds for as long as I can remember, and I've never had one that was even remotely wobbly. The worst ones were the 2-door single cab trucks with the really short body, but even they were rock solid without any kind of extra tie-downs. Dave

*runs off to WBT* Dave

Haha, I think it's because they're usually on carpet, and when you step on it, even though it's flat, it "rolls" into the carpet and by the time you've got all your weight on that foot, the Lego block is practically standing vertical. (It's always the thick rectangular ones with 8 bumps on them). And then you become not-so-vertical. As for my New years - well, It was great. Although there was enough male nudity from a couple friends that I'd probably get banned if I went into details. Dave

Haha those are pretty mint little contraptions.. the closest thing I have to homemade tools are a 7/8 wrench that I cut in half to bust loose O2's and a slew of homemade fuel-line disconnect tools (because my actual ones keep getting lost.) As for taking pics of your ugly little tool... umm... yeah. Dave

Yeah we've seen plenty of fuel tank de-laminations, they can prove to cause very intermittent concerns. This is a whole different scenario, but kind of applies - once I had a '98 Explorer 5.0 come in with a LEGIT intermittent low-oil pressure problem. It wasn't the gauge on the dash, I could drive it around with a manual gauge attached and every now and then the oil pressure would just tank for a few seconds, the engine would start making noise, and then it'd come back and everything's mint. I was able to get it to act up by hammering on it actually... the oil pressure was always fine at idle, but once you'd get it above 3,000 rpm, it seems to get the problem to come back more prequently. Turns out, the customer NEVER used to change his oil even close to on time, until another vehicle he owned needed an engine. After that, he started changing his oil very frequently. All the sludge that built up in the pan & crankcase started coming loose now that he'd been keeping fresh oil in it, and at higher rpm's, the pickup would suck so hard that it would pull the sludge into the screen and virtually block off all oil to the pump. I recommended an engine to the guy, but he just wanted a pump and pickup. I showed him the scoring on his crank & main bearings and he didn't care. It came back 3 weeks later with a rod hanging out of the pan. Dave

Haha, make sure you get footage of this stuff and post it on the homepage. Save the really hairy stuff for when times get tough and then charge us on "per view" basis. (And I know all about the legos on the feet - I am gonna have to say that Matchbox cars in general, and ESPECIALLY Micro Machines are the most painful though.) Dave

Haha just wishing everyone here a good '07 - be safe this weekend for Gods sake!!! May the next 12 months bring you wealth and happiness. OR at least a 6.4 that you're proud to say Ford puts in it's trucks. Dave

Yep, we had one with like 120k miles on it that looked just like the stuff in the pics above. I ended up putting an engine in it, along with a new EGR cooler and Radiator. That was a big ticket. Dave

The only section I was actually interested to look at in the '08 Super-Duty new-model training course, the Cab-Removal section - also happens to be the one section of the course that doesn't work. Real excited about that one. Dave

Yeah, I've personally "made the rounds" to all the honkees up in the sales department, and basically they are all very well aware that with any 6.4-equipped truck they sell, they *NEED* to make sure that the customer knows that cab-removal is going to be a somewhat "common" procedure and that any kind of acessory racks they install that hang over the cab, must be easily removable and somewhat clean when dropped off for service. Otherwise, they will end up paying the extra labor time required to remove whatever it is that's in the way of the cab. Dave

I've seen Ignition coils cause all sorts of funky problems and this really isn't a big shocker - I'm glad to see that they fixed the problem. To be honest, we've seen numerous problems lately with the clusters on the Super Duty's (although I think they've all been '05+ models) and the last one I had was traced back to having something welded onto the body/frame of the truck. Need to make sure that the cluster is unplugged when welding anything to these things /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif Dave