Fredsvt

Keith, Can you refresh one who isn't fully versed? I read the front page and I thought the DEF is water and Urea, which is then converted to Ammonia in the SCR cat which separates the nitrogen and oxygen to eliminate the NOx. Please enlighten me. Thanks

Yes, the Duramax makes a sound similar, I've heard a few. I've also heard a few that idle near as loud as a 7.3. The Cummins also has a tap/clatter/rap but not all do it.

Even the indies were seeing this. I've done 4 axles prior to the recall from April to mid June. The dealer we use had 6 in stock at any time. Not so sure now. They were cheap enough.

Run Forrest, RUN! I'd guess your UCD already sold it to someone rather than wholesaling it? I believe the only thing that will properly talk to it and provide info you can trust is a Tech2. That car is just about the worst piece of shit since the Catera. It has the Catera engine in it if its a V6. Hope the timing belt is recent, haven't seen one yet that makes it to the scheduled interval, they dry rot and snap. Or the cheap plastic pulleys disintegrate. And you need a ton of special set up tools to do them.

One of her drivers got pulled over by the NJ state police today. They gave him a ticket for no front plate. It flew off a long while ago. I can't believe that's all they got. Jeez. I could get it for about 100 things without really looking! All are parts we've changed repeatedly, but her Mexican workers keep on knocking them all off. Anything plastic or glass and breakable, well, you can guess.

It looks it, doesn't it? Believe it or not, it runs and drives better than so many others that look fine. It's one of the ones that's been under a white light its whole life, for the abuse its seen, so little non-driver induced problems have happened to it.

Here's one for a chuckle. Very early '99, lady calls and says its smoking badly, has no power and they "think" its low on oil. (it was full) Get it in, hmm, idles pretty good, no smoke. Rev it and it runs like a gas engine with bad plug wires. I open drain on filter housing to dump some in a bucket, hmmm what's that smell.... Gasoline. A full tank's worth too. The truck was driven from Pennsylvania to our shop, about a 45 minute run or about an eighth of a tank. Call customer, say to her that the idiots at the fuel station filled it wrong. She said, "that was me" Oh... well, we have to drain it, filter, etc and see if it lives. Then she says, at the same time I filled my 2006 Dodge Cummins, common rail with the same fuel. UGH. It's dead at her horse farm. The Ford seems to have lived, it has Alliants in it (350k), so I hope the coated barrels did their job. At 414,000 it's not worth putting another set into. I added 3 pics of this beast to my photos, I need to figure out how to put them in posts. This was about a year ago, it's exponentially worse now. There's not a straight panel on this truck.

It seems this particular limo company just loves to buy shit that comes from places that any sane person wouldn't touch with a 100' pole. Of course, they bought two of these deeeluxxe shitboxes and the company proceeded to go out of business. They have to source certain parts via Brazil, Belize and Venezuela where most of the components came from. Only the DT parts are easy to get, sort of. International laughs anytime you ask for parts for these particular chassis. I can't even begin to go into how it wouldn't pass NJDOT due to undersized brakes and undersized brake chambers. What a nightmare that was.

I've never seen one without the ebp system. Sometimes I wish they didn't have it. Now that they're getting old, the damn actuator pistons are pouring oil all over when it gets cold. Makes a huge mess.

No joke, nearly 3 days to get the mess out of it. 2 to put it all back together. Separated by a weeks wait for the parts to show up from the limo company. It's gone NEVER to return, or so we hope.

How do they make it fwd only? I'm guessing that poor transfer case is being put under some awful stress. Along with the whole front end, it must steer oh so well. I wonder if it's built in some guy's backyard, like the Tridents I see. He had a small barn on his Georgia property to build them, it couldn't hold the bus, so he did them on the dirt in his yard with a rented crane to drop the body on the frame. Of course, now that I've seen that thing, one will show up on our doorstep on Monday, I'm sure.

Can you post pictures of this nightmare of a bus? I thought the backyard Trident front/mid engine IH buses were a disaster. Imagine a DT466 sitting in the passenger compartment and the driver climbs over it to get into the seat. To replace the engine fan, which gets destroyed every time the half assed auxiliary a/c compressor tosses its belt, you have to remove the front end, rad and a whole mess of home made junk. Minimum 5 full days to do it.

You can plug in a '01 up PCM it'll run, but the wiring for the IMH isn't there, you'll have a permanent code stored in it for it every time it's scanned. I've had to put in a couple when customers have put in Suncoast transmissions, as they want you to use the '01 PCM with a particular tear tag, as it has shift and converter strategy that they prefer to work with their units. Things you'll need to put on the truck, the bigger turbo, the up pipes and inlet Y are different, as they are longer and slightly more rearward than the early '99s. The outlet manifold off the turbo needs to be replaced as the '99 is too small both where it mates to the turbo but also where it goes into the intake boxes. If I recall the intake boxes are much larger on the later motors vs the early '99. I prefer the older upper hose so that you don't have to remove the damn thing to do the belt. On the newer trucks it's the hose for dual alternator trucks.

Hey Keith The last oil pan I did on a 2003 7.3 needed the following replaced due to rust: All P/S lines Trans cooler lines and radiator as the fittings were rotted all the way to the plastic tank. Fuel supply lines AND flex lines that were frozen to the supply lines. Engine mounts, nuts rusted to studs and snapped. 2 exhaust manifolds and all bolts, rotted horrible. 2 up pipes, bolts and the inlet adapter as it broke when taking out the bolts for the up pipe flanges. Every CT hose clamp was changed too. This particular truck has never seen a plow or even winter usage, it sits a lot as the guy uses only to pull a utility trailer. He lives about 2 blocks from the ocean It had 75k on it last fall when I did it. You can imagine what it cost, and the guy just wrote the check, no problem. Is it me, or do the newer vehicles, not just Fords seem to rot like hell, in places that I don't ever remember seeing rot. The outer bodies look great, but in certain places they're awful.

I was watching BBC America world news, and they were talking about an expedition to Antarctica. Here's a place that does some neat mods to E vans amongst other things. I've never seen one with 6x6 conversion and such long travel suspension. And it's a 7.3, and it dumped it's belt tensioner on the trip to the south pole. http://www.icecool.is/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27 I followed the link to the article. http://www.4x4offroads.com/south-pole-expedition-getting-there.html

The 2.8 I4 and 3.5 I5 suffer from the same issues as the 4.2 I6 do. Did you clear the codes prior to starting, these will disable the injector if it detects a cat damaging misfire and won't re-enable it until codes are cleared. Been there with a Trailblazer with a bad coil. Bright white plugs are a normal thing to see on these. You should check compression, and running compression. They have nasty issues with burned valves, dropped or bad guides. And bad heads. If you have to take it apart, be very careful to rattle all the head bolts with an air hammer or use a good dead blow hammer and a nice solid punch. Otherwise the head bolts snap off in the block or head making removal a joy. There's also a timing chain holding tool so you don't have to remove the front cover. If you choose to remove the front cover, it can be much easier to pull the motor.

I thought about it when he said "one finger" Exactly WHERE did she put that ONE finger???

Try and explain that to thick headed people. I've experienced this on my own car in the rain, with nearly bald tires on the rear compared to some tread in the front. Once you get to a certain speed in a fwd car, the rear just picks right up off the ground, and it starts to move around. I can see the average texter, hair styler, makeup putter oner, and newspaper reader go spinning off the road in such an instance. I always put deeper treaded tires on the rear of a fwd car. AWD or automatic AWD I always recommend 4. Subarus and some Jeeps will smoke the center coupling if either end has tires with more than 1/4" difference in rolling diameter.

Hi Jim I see it all the time. I'm in a different situation since I'm not at a dealership. But, I'm one who wants to know how a system works, why it does what it does and wants to test it before condemning anything. I've seen differences in diagnostic strategies from mfr to mfr, many Honda diags are "replace with a known good part" and see what happens. That gets real expensive very quickly. Something I'm not comfortable doing. I work for a boss and with a co-worker that willingly toss parts, sometimes it works, many times it doesn't. My input is rarely accepted or even listened to, so I just walk away. I'll take my check at the end of the week and I try to keep the customers I brought with me to this place happy. How long it's going to continue is another story. I'm getting so discouraged, as I seem to be falling behind, and see so little future ahead of me. I pretty much know I'll work till I die, doing what, maybe tossing burgers, who knows? Since I'm not of the correct grouping, I can't just sit on my ass and collect...... and that's a whole huge other story... Be glad you live in Canada, a place I should have relocated to a while ago, a much saner and intelligent place than here, at least from my point of view, however cloudy it may be right now.

It may be NASA's goal but not the goal of our gov't. The NASA administrator's primary job now, besides sitting on his ass all day, as they've canceled everything and taken all his money away, is to act as an envoy to the Islamic world to make them aware of how happy "WE" are about their contributions to science and technology. This was a direct order from Osama himself. The next gen of rockets are done, the Mars missions are done and the moon missions are done by order of Osama.

A view from the indy side: I have access to Ford's service information, any help I could want from our Ford store that sells us the parts. But, since I don't have an IDS, I am ill equipped to mess with a 6.0 much less a 6.4. Where I work recommends taking those trucks to Ford for driveability work, or engine work whether in warranty or not. These engines can literally bankrupt a customer if incorrect diagnosis or someone who's not experienced with them attempts repairs with no or "some" information. I've told the owner, I'd gladly (I know a glutton for punishment) work on them, should we properly tool up for them. When someone's experienced with the 6.0/6.4 and it's not in warranty, and the customer understands that they can cost a fortune to repair, then it can be a money making proposition. Am I wrong in what I wrote?

I've seen only 1 with a cracked head, but it was a 4.6 in a Grand Marquis. When I was at the limo company, it had a cracked right head. Initial cold start, misfire, slight steam, it would stop misfiring, then do the over-temp, stat snap open and be fine until next cold start. I think it was in cyl 3 on that one, you could pull the plug pump it with pressure and next morning have the cyl full of coolant. Luckily it never hydrolocked. That car only had about 30k on it, and had a head put on it. Was fine for the next 750k afterward.

Daily driver 1 is '04 Accord coupe V6 6 speed. Toy, if you want to call it that, is '99 SVT Lightning. Other daily driver more than likely will be a 2011 Ford Edge Sport IF they ever ship the damn things!

Its also up on fordvehicles.com, it's pricey when tarted up. It's a Flex under the skin from what I've read. Some Land Rover, esp with the AWD setup. Still like the Edge Sport tho. Wish they'd ship them already.

But, don't forget about the guys who'll chip it and think they can run with 1000 lb/ft or more and think it'll live.....