MECHANIC: F350 · 5:30am Feb 9th, 2023
Alrighty, kids, I've got a fun one for y'all today. Like, y'all know how some authors—even me, when I remember—do state of the author blogs for particular months? Mine would be mostly working on this one, specific truck.
But first, you know what to do:
The truck in question is one of these:
Source
It's a 1997 crew cab dually with a 7.3L Powerstroke diesel, automatic transmission, 300,000-some miles on the odometer (483,000 km), and it doesn't run. The owner has been working on it, and has determined that it needs a PCM (powertrain control module), which he bought, but we need to program.
By we, I mean I, since my manager doesn't know the Ford tool well.
I'm about to bore you with a bunch of jargon. There'll be a little bit up front, and then a big pile of it, so maybe take another sip of your drink.
Fords of this era often need some specific configuration as the new module is programmed. The ideal way to do it is get the data from the old PCM and then use that to program the new one. If one of the problems with the old PCM is that it won't communicate, you can also use the tags on the PCM (the part number, the programming number, etc.) in order to program the new one.
You can also use the tear tag number . . . Ford realized that techs might not want to pull the PCM out of its holder to read numbers off it, so they put a sticker on the doorframe that has a four-digit code indicating the PCM's configuration.
If you haven't got that, the worst case is that you have to go into one of Ford's online tools and then manually enter the hex codes for the options it has or doesn't.
Also on Fords of this era, the Ford scan tool (the IDS) needs to see the PCM to identify what kind of vehicle it's looking at. If it can't see that, you have to enter the PCM part number or programming number so that the IDS knows what it's trying to talk to.
The customer doesn't have the old PCM (he already sent it back for the core charge*) and the truck has been rattle-canned black, covering the tear tag.
As you can guess, I'm already imagining a fun time.
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*Core charges are assessed for parts which can be rebuilt/remanufactured or have other value for other reasons. An example would be an automotive battery; typically in the US if you buy one, you're charged a $15.00 fee if you don't give them the old battery.
The IDS of course can't ID the vehicle and gets very angry several times, and then all of a sudden it somehow figures out what it's attached to and at that point everything goes smoothly. Nothing needs to be configured in any special way, and this being an older PCM (1997, remember?) it's not very smart and doesn't do very much. It doesn't even run the fuel injectors (we'll get to that).
Now, just programming the PCM isn't the only thing I need to do. I also have to install it (easy on these) and then start the truck and verify everything is working as it should. And that's when things start going rapidly south.
It doesn't start.
And, unfortunately, here's where I've got to drop a whole bunch of jargon on you.
Diesel engine work by compression ignition. What that means is that the piston squeezing the air and the residual heat of the cylinder ignites the fuel with no need for a spark plug. Because it's injecting the fuel under compression, fuel pressures in diesel engines need to be higher than they are in gasoline engines—if we go back some decades, gasoline was sucked in by engine vacuum, and early fuel injection systems had 15psi or similarly low numbers. You could make an old gas engine go by dribbling gas out of a hose into the intake, but that won't cut it for a diesel.
There are various ways of getting the pressures needed, and we're gonna split it into three parts on this Ford. The fuel itself is drawn from the tank by the low-pressure stage of a two-stage mechanical fuel pump. From there, it goes into the fuel bowl which has a fuel filter, water separator, and fuel heater. From there, it goes into the high-pressure side of the two-stage pump—I don't remember how much pressure that makes. After it leaves the high-pressure pump, it goes into fuel rails and ultimately the injectors. Any unused fuel is returned via flexible rubber hoses to a control manifold on the fuel bowl; some of it gets sent back to the fuel tank, and some of it goes into the fuel bowl through a process of magic.
I don't know if I've talked about fuel injectors before. On most cars, they're simple solenoids which are powered from a fuse and controlled by the PCM grounding them for a specific amount of time. They run on the same nominal 12vDC the rest of the car's electrical system uses.
That won't cut it for diesel injectors. You remember how I said before that the PCM on this wasn't smart enough to run them? It's got a separate module (the injector driver module or IDM) which runs the injectors, and it also steps up the voltage to 115V.
Now, 115 volts sounds like a lot (it's ten times as much as everything else on the engine gets), but that's not enough to actually put fuel into the cylinders. Something needs to give the fuel a big push, and what this engine uses is oil. After all, it's already got a lot of it for lubrication and cooling purposes.
So what they did is put a second oil pump on this thing. The normal one might give you 80psi or something; the high-pressure pump is a gear-driven beast capable of producing 3000psi of oil pressure, and that is enough push to get fuel into the cylinders. The engine WILL NOT START with less than 500psi of oil pressure.
For the high-pressure oil system, the low-pressure system delivers oil to a sump on the top of the engine, where the high-pressure oil pump (HPOP) pressurizes it, regulated by the duty-controlled ICP solenoid (I think that stands for 'injector control pressure', but don't remember for sure). It's monitored by a 5V sensor. Two flexible hoses take the oil from the HPOP to each cylinder head, where it goes through internal passages to the injectors; once they're done with it, it splashes into the valvetrain with all the other oil and the cycle begins anew.
Now that you've made it all the way through that, you've earned two cute pony pictures:
Source
That's a whole lot of components to check. And that brings us to the second part of this blog—we've talked about blue car theory before, now we're gonna talk about the shotgun approach.
Basically, if you shoot enough parts at the thing, you'll fix it eventually. And that's what the customer tried before bringing it to us. It got a new fuel pump, new fuel bowl, new ICP solenoid, new high-pressure sensor, supposedly had new injectors (spoiler: it didn't), might or might not have had a new-to-it HPOP and when he'd run out of other components to replace, he decided the PCM must be it and when that didn't fix it, it became my problem.
Y'all might have noticed that he forgot to replace the injector driver module. It wasn't bad, but he overlooked that one when he was shotgunning away.
You can bet that the first thing I checked was if it was getting the 500psi of oil pressure it needed to start, and it wasn't. The first and easiest thing to check is the oil sump—is there oil in it? Yes, there was.
Electrical tests on the ICP solenoid were next; it passed. The PCM could control it, and voltage drop tests gave the expected results based on the PCM's command.
An injector buzz test was the next thing to do. The IDM dry-fires all the injectors for two seconds, then each one individually for two seconds each, and you can hear a loud buzz as it does it. It'll also set codes if something is wrong.
Number four doesn't sound as good as the rest, but they all buzzed when they should have and no codes appeared, so the injectors probably can work.
(Mind you, I already know that they don't have enough oil pressure to work, but I'm getting the easy stuff out of the way while the scan tool is hooked up.)
I should tell you here that the PCM tells the IDM when to fire the injectors, and if the IDM doesn't see a signal from the PCM, it won't fire them—we did check that with an oscilloscope, and got a good pattern with a good voltage on the right timeframe for a cranking engine.
There are a few reasons that the HPOP can't make the oil pressure needed. The pump's bad, the ICP can't control it, or there are internal leaks. The ICP normally doesn't let the HPOP build pressure, and then it's duty-cycled to get the pressure it wants. Startup is normally 50-65% duty cycle, which is being commanded, and as I said above, it's working electrically.
Blocking one side of the engine to isolate it gives me better pressure, but still not enough to make it fire on one side. The HPOP can make about 150psi with everything connected, and close to 300psi with the right bank blocked off.
We don't have a proper test tool for high pressure, so we build one. It's kind of sketch, but it works if you don't mind minor oil leaks, and cover your face when the engine is cranked.
If everything is disconnected from the HPOP, it should deadhead between 2000 and 3000psi. In the test, it can't even make 200, and this is a result. Either the HPOP (which might be new to this truck) is bad, or the n.e.w. ICP is a Never Ever Worked component. We know it works electrically, but does it work mechanically?
It does not. It's not capable of the heat.*
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*That's a shop in-joke; many years ago a customer brought a car in and said it 'was not capable of the heat,' meaning that the heater didn't work, and now we sometimes use it as a casual description for 'we don't know what the customer complaint is,' or 'the part doesn't do what it should.'
I'm just gonna touch on torque specs for a minute. Usually bigger bolts means more torque (tighten it tighter). Anybody who has used the 199 piece Craftsman Mechanic's Tool SetTM knows that the 1/4" ratchet is short and cute and all the sockets for it are smol; the 1/2" ratchet is big and so are the sockets.
Sometimes sensors have big hexes 'cause you've got to get electronics and a connector in there. A wheel lug nut on this truck is 7/8" (22mm) and is torqued to 165 foot-pounds; the ICP has a 1 1/8 hex (29mm) and should be torqued to 35 foot-pounds. The proud owner of this truck torqued it to however tight he could get it with the ratchet or wrench he had.
When I tried to remove it, it came apart, and I had to extract the delicate valve from the HPOP.
Did I mention that this is a $400 component? And it's screwed into a $1500 aluminum component.
And that $1500 is part-only; I don't know how many hours of labor it takes to change a HPOP.
Luckily for both the customer, who doesn't have to buy a HPOP (and me, who doesn't have to install one), the new ICP fixes it, and now it can make enough pressure to blow up our janky test adapter. Nobody got hurt.
Everything is put back together, and the truck won't start.
You see, while the HPOP can make all the pressure it wants, it's still leaking out somewhere.
Did I mention that this thing has left a giant lake of oil and diesel fuel on the floor? Because it has.
After building a less-janky test adapter, we do a leakdown test on the left bank. Y'all may remember a while back where I showed a picture or video of a Dodge Caravan where we put smoke in one cylinder and it came out a different one? Same basic idea; put a bunch of pressurized air into the cylinder head, and then listen to where it's bubbling out. That's the leak.
Now, you might imagine that if you've got oil up to 3000psi feeding these injectors, there's got to be some way of keeping it in, and there is. Multiple O-rings and a metal backing washer does the job, until of course those O-rings give up. Heat cycles and lots of pressure limits their life, but that's okay 'cause replacement O-rings are cheap.
We heard air bubbling out around both the #8 and #6 injectors, and a few sprays with soapy water confirmed that they had massive O-ring leaks.
I don't have a picture of #8 (it was the worst), but here's #s 2, 4, and 6:
The metal backing ring is split—it has to be so it can be installed. You can see on the middle one how that weak spot allowed both O-rings to fail, and you can also see on the injectors bracketing it that they've started to buckle where the ring is split. On #8, that channel was blown clear through.
Which brings us to the conclusion of this sad saga. I of course don't know how much the customer spent on all the parts he replaced before I looked at the truck; the only one I know for sure is the ICP solenoid—that's $400 and he paid for that twice, 'cause he broke the one he installed. I'd guess that overall, before I touched anything on the truck, he'd spent between $1000 and $2000 in parts shotgunned at this engine.
My professional guess at what he actually needed to fix this engine was $69 worth of O-rings.
Nice.
We're gonna put the lessons to be learned here, before we get to the end of the blog post.
I can't fault the guy for trying to fix it himself. After all, most of us mechanics learned our trade by trying to fix our own cars ourselves and were either good at it or had spent too much money on tools already to go into a different trade. And I certainly didn't always get it right when I was a learning.
Just the same, he would have saved a lot of money by having a professional shop diagnose it. Maybe it'd have cost him a few hundred dollars, but that's cheaper than one ICP solenoid, let alone two.
Some years ago, when I got my roof redone, some people asked me why I didn't do it myself. Because I'm not a carpenter, and YouTube can only teach me so much. I could a contractor who knows what he's doing and it'd get done faster, correctly, and he would also fix other problems he found as he went (and he did; he had to fix some rafter ends). If somebody fell off the roof, it wouldn't be me and it wouldn't increase my insurance premiums.
Knowing your limitations is a good thing.
Earlier, I said that we never checked the right bank for oil leaks. After pulling #8 and seeing how blown out the O-rings were, that was justification for doing them all.
I put it all back together, figuring that I could check on the scan tool what the oil pressure was as I cranked the engine. Regrettably, I didn't actually pay as much attention as I should have, because after a few seconds of cranking, the old girl rumbled to life and then produced a big cloud of oil smoke which filled the shop, despite the exhaust hose I had attached to it.
I shut it down right away, before it could smoke us out of the shop, did some final buttoning-up, then I backed it out into the parking lot where we could let it idle for a while to warm up and basically see what happened.
It would also give us a chance to see just how bad the oil leaks we hadn't found yet were, and if I'd fixed all the fuel leaks.
Now, y'all have been here with me a time or two and you can tell by the scroll bar that this thing is still going, and you're all on the edge of your seats to find out what went wrong next.
The truck made two puddles in the parking lot. The small one was the oil puddle. Which you'd think was good news; old mechanic wisdom is that if you have a high-mileage 7.3 that isn't dripping oil, that's because there isn't any oil in it to leak. Unfortunately, it wasn't dripping from the engine, but rather the exhaust pipe.
Maybe that's residual oil that got in the cylinders from pulling the injectors, the only way to know would be let it run long enough to clear it out and see what happens.
But I couldn't.
As I was cleaning up the shop where it had leaked all the oil and putting away my tools, I occasionally checked on it, and noticed that it wasn't just dripping fuel, it was fountaining it. One of the fuel return hoses (which I mentioned way back in the beginning of this) finally failed, and not only was it spraying diesel fuel out at an alarming rate, it was spraying it right on the turbocharger, which is about the hottest part of this engine.
Diesel fuel doesn't ignite all that well; it's not volatile like gasoline. That having been said, you spray diesel at something really hot like a turbo, and there's a good chance you'll have a fire.
Which brings us to the next installment of this sad saga. One of the other problems this truck has, and which hasn't yet been diagnosed, is when you turn the key off, the engine doesn't stop running right away.
I haven't delved into that issue yet, although I knew about it because the first time I started it and ran it, it also didn't shut off when I turned the key off. You see, since it's got a mechanical fuel pump, as long as the engine's turning it's building fuel pressure. And since it's got a mechanical HPOP, as long as the engine is turning it's building oil pressure. And since it's not spark ignition, as long as it injects fuel into the cylinders, it'll keep running.
The first time, after I got over my initial surprise, I was grabbing for the fuse panel diagram. I thought that if I pulled the fuse for the IDM it'd shut off . . . but it quit before I had to.
This time, it's I don't know how close to self-immolation.
For a truck that's been a disaster from start to where we are now, it actually decides to shut itself off before I have to brave the fuel spray and potential fire to get to the fuse box and yank the IDM fuse. Did I mention that fuse is under the hood? Near where the fuel is spraying?
Like, not right next to it, but uncomfortably close.
Anyway, that brings us to where we are now. It's back in the shop—pushed in, because even though it runs with a massive fuel leak from a return line, I don't feel like taking chances on that. When I get my new return lines, I'll have a second crack at diagnosing why it won't shut off on command, and also finding out how serious the oil dripping out of the exhaust is.
If things go very, very wrong, I might still be working on this thing in March.
I might be wishing it had self-immolated. Only time will tell!
Yeah, those 1997 computers were really old. That was before the zero was added to the programming, so they only have ones. And you have to buy custom electrons for the CPU, big fat ones that move almost slow enough to see with the naked eye, not the ittty bitty ones that modern computers use.
Holy shit this is the biggest blog post ive ever read! Hope you get it workin
Unless the shop also uses the shotgun approach, then you spend too much for parts and labor.
I wish I knew how to find a shop like yours. The last two shops I've used both had great reviews online and from people I know, but ended up being expensive, incompetent disasters for me.
Ah, an old Ford 7.3 and cute pony pics, what a satisfying end to my day.
Nice. I got a white 1997 obs 7.3 350 dually too with a workbed. Haven't had nearly as much trouble as that tho.
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I'm a Baby Boomer. My grandfather was a carny grifter who saved up & post WW2 opened his own car repair garage. His version of the lord's prayer was "Give us this day our daily stranger." They would grind your bones to make their bread.
They would rebuild parts & install them as new. Install offbrand parts & charge for brand name, claim they installed parts they never did. (According to my father, you want to make them give you the parts they claim they pulled -and the box the replacement part came in. Caveat Emptor.)
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I'd point out you can get parts for a 25 year old car. There are laws compelling auto companies to sell them + info on how to install/fix them. Try getting parts for a 25 year old computer.
That's an easy mistake to make, I mean, if it's too loose it'll just fall off, and if I can tighten it more it's too loose, right?
At least leaking is easy to test:
Q1: Is there giant puddle of oil on the floor from the truck?
A1: Yes! Obviously something wasn't tightened enough!
The car is just eager to get moving again.
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Big business these days. https://www.amiga-shop.net/en/
That run on reminds of old stories, it used to be called dieseling because there was nothing stopping the fuel getting through, it had pooled up somewhere?
Frank Whittle had the problem with his first jet engines, they were just spraying the fuel in, and it wasnt burning as fast as they thought, so a pool buiilt up in the bottom of the combustion ring and left the engine running out of control till it finally ran out.
theres also youTubes of runaway diesel engines? In D8 or something?
Ah, joy. Glad you avoided unplanned rapid flaming disassembly.
At least the work was in a shop! Yesterday, I had the dubious joy of dealing with a certain Case IH 340 Magnum where a coworker had gotten a 5600 gallon liquid manure spreader stuck with two wheels dropped into where a drainage line was installed last fall (fortunately, the spreader is empty)... just as the tractor ran out of fuel.
He didn't know that the fuel gauge on that machine lies. Likely one of the sending units in the fuel tank(s) is bad, as the gauge still read half full.
So... the only way to get to the tractor was through a puddle of the previous pass of, shall we say, 'organic fertilizer'. I managed to not get the pickup truck with the fuel tank stuck. Twice! The first time to fuel the tractor. The second time... because I forgot to bring an assortment of wrenches to bleed the air out of the fuel lines.
The less said about the recovery attempts, the better. Snapped chains, and the spreader is still in the field, though the tractor was disconnected from it and driven back. Tow straps/tow ropes > chains. Even if bulkier and not as easy to clean.
And, new problems on an old machine! An early 90's Ford 9000 with a cow feed mixer on the back had started dying randomly-ish after running for an hour a few weeks ago. Good filter, good fuel lines from the tank (one replaced, the other checked by way of plugging one end, dunking in a bucket, and applying shop air pressure to the other end). Topped up the coolant tank in case of Murphy switch shenanigans there. I haven't been able to force the thing to fail... which means I don't know the cause of failure. Bad fuel shutoff solenoid? The batteries just replaced due to them freezing with low charge last week? Which, come to think of it, implies I need to check the alternator output. A problem, but probably not the problem.
Unfortunately, the priority of the machine just dropped because the new (to us) truck just arrived with the fresh-from-factory mixer mounted. '06 Western Star truck, feed mixer works nicely after testing. The mixer on the older truck is... worn out. Work will need to be done, so it can be used as a spare. The other spare truck has much, much smaller capacity to where batches of feed need to be split up, making things take much longer to do. That one also has issues-- it needs exhaust work done, the shaft that drives the mixer that attaches to the transmission keeps coming loose, and lines to deliver grease from fittings to bearings need replacement (late night emergency repairs mumble months ago, oxy-acetyline torch, and grease-filled plastic tubes. Fortunately, no catastrophic fires or injuries).
All the above is why a competent mechanic (as opposed to myself) is worth so much!
...I used to be annoyed that typing was my only real skill. I'm not anymore.
Something interesting happened just a few minutes ago: I crossed paths with my '04 Chevy S-10's previous owner. He recognized it and we had a nice discussion about it.
This sounds like this morning's debacle.
2015 Freightliner with a coolant leak... at the DEF tank.
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Grampa Simpson, is that you?
I usually don't understand most of your mechanic posts but I enjoy the pony pics. In the classroom one, my favorite is the bat pony balancing a pencil on her nose.
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You realize there were two versions of those 7.3's. I'd either take an '01 PS or an "ancient" 6.9 if I could justify a diesel these days. (Or just plop a Ford 300 in and be done with it
Back in my army days, I was a diesel truck mechanic. One morning we were reassembling an old M911 tank transporter truck after installing a new (refurbished) engine. These old beasties had air actuated throttle levers on the governor box. (Detroit Diesel 8V92T circa 1970s) There's 2 hoses attached to the actuator. One of them is supplied by the main air brake air tank, the other comes off a regulator connected to the accelerator pedal inside the cab. There is nothing to indicate which hose belongs where.
Engine starts up and runs just fine. Then it starts building air brake pressure. Our morning became exciting for a minute until someone jammed a repair manual against the intake side of the turbo.
* Sargent: "OK! Now that everybody's awake, it's time to start cleaning up for lunch."
Fun times.
5712884 Oh, I had the full Grandpa Simpson treatment this week. Got to take a company vehicle for a trip to a nearby county to do some work. A *new* 2022 Ford F-150 with no king-cab, cheapest thing you can get out of Ford since our group is cheaper than I am. The damned thing still had more buttons than a piano, a freaking ten button control panel *on the steering wheel* that displayed on a tiny little video monitor in the middle of the dash that I swear is going to be the cause of more accidents than anything because it implies you are going to be looking down into the dashboard while programming whatever weird things it did. The cussed thing drove like a lumber truck with stiff shocks that transmitted every single pebble on the road and made up some of its own, the steering (I swear) was some sort of dynamic speed-dependent crank the wheel nonsense that had me spinning the steering wheel like a Boston whaler in a storm to park, and the 10-speed automatic transmission... Let's just say some Ford engineers need to be staked out on anthills. There will be no end of volunteers to bring ants.
At least I managed to find "a" station on the radio. When Biscuit gets one of these in the shop after a few years, I expect half the electronics to have blown themselves to plasma with replacement parts costing more than a new truck.
"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur." - Red Adair
This blog ties into your story, "Twilight Gets Worms"':
- MLP: FiM
- Dark
- Comedy
- Slice of Life
Chipotle, an upscale Taco Bell that might come with a side of worms, as Twilight discovers. Luckily, there's medicine to fix that. Unluckily, well. . .Many antivaxxers are not paranoid schizophrenics, but wusses afraid of needles. For these wusses, we have pneumatic injectors based on DieselInjectors. ¿Would not blasting vaccine through the skin be much more painful than a small needle? ¡Yres indeed!:
The wound these left looks like a wound from a BB shot from an AirRifle pressed against the skin. ¡But that is not all!:
¡Blood and skin splattered back onto the injector! The next wuss would get the blood and skin injected. This spread disease.
¡The things wusses do to avoid needles!
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You've been in one of those computers before, haven't you?
In all seriousness, odds are if it was the computer on a 97 Ford, it was probably designed in the early 90s. I just did some looking, and depending on which data lines this thing used, it communicated with the scan tool at a blazing fast 10.4kbits/s.
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It more or less did and then the guy took it before I could finish diagnosing a couple of its other problems.
On the one hand, it isn't all the way fixed. On the other, it's currently not my problem, and I don't have to look at it anymore.
5712803
Some shops are like that. We strive not to be.
You just gotta keep looking, and then when you find one, stick with them. But it can be a challenge, depending on where you are. And it probably won't be the cheapest or fastest shop, either.
5712808
I posted an ASMR video of it running:
(for some values of ASMR)
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From what I understand, it broke, sat for several years, was sold as is, and then after the new owner had shotgunned all the parts he could at it (not all of them correctly or needed), then we got it.
I also have the feeling that it was near the end of its life as far as the previous owner was concerned, so he hadn't been keeping up on maintenance. As long as it keeps running, no need to fix anything, right?
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The bigger the town, the easier it is to get away with that. But sooner or later you get caught, and nowadays there's a chance you'll be facing down a lawsuit if you do that too much or too blatantly.
Yeah, both of those are known scams. I agree, Here in Michigan, we're required to give you your old parts if you want them; we even have to keep them for 72 hours after the vehicle is picked up. The exceptions are for hazardous materials (i.e., we're not gonna give you a baggie of oil we drained from your engine) and items which have a core charge--but you're entitled to inspect items that have a core charge, if you want.
Unless you ask ahead of time, you won't get the boxes, just 'cause I'm not gonna clutter up the shop with a stack of parts boxes in case somebody wants them. A lot of good-quality parts have their brand name printed or stamped on them (depending on what it is), and an experienced tech can usually tell the difference between a good part and a cheap one.
Heck, sometimes Joe Average can, too.
If it's expensive and it's a shop you don't trust, get a second opinion. Just be aware that most mechanics want to see the car, not just take your word for what's wrong with it. What should be a simple repair can be complicated by many factors; for example I might say that a front suspension job on a truck sounds expensive, then see the truck and how the customer welded a plow mount to the frame, right in the way of the bolts I have to take out . . . .
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I think that the federal mandate is 7 years after the last date of manufacture, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Obviously for popular stuff there's going to be a much longer period of time in which it is commonly available, but on the other hand if your car was built by a company that no longer exists, you might be outta luck.
There are some parts you can get for a 25 year old computer, but they are a lot harder to get and you might be getting them used or New Old Stock. Same holds true for a lot of appliances--but again, it depends on how popular they were, and how much demand there is for repair parts.
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That's a theory, I guess. I've seen it applied too many times . . .
As a professional, I know when the torque specification is critical, and when it's merely a guideline.
You're not entirely wrong. One thing about those old diesels was that they'd run practically forever, so it's just trying to do that because that's all it knows how to do.
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Yeah, 'cause the fuel pump was mechanical, so it would keep pumping as long as the engine was running. The carb was also mechanical, so as long as it was sucking air in, it'd provide fuel. IIRC< usually carbon buildup in worn engines got hot enough to ignite the incoming fuel, and the car would keep running (badly) for seconds or minutes.
We used to own a station wagon that dieseled bad enough I'd usually leave it in gear when I shut it off to stall the engine.
Yeah, and there's a number of ways in which that happens. Unless you've got something really, really stout to put over the air intake, it's gonna keep running until it blows up--some of them will start sucking oil in and burn that, until they run out of oil. I think some older designs could runaway fast enough to tear themselves apart (the technical term, according to an engineer, is 'dynamically disassemble')
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I'll be honest, a small part of me is sad, because it was outside, and if it had blown up or burned itself down, that would have meant I didn't have to fix it anymore. Plus it would have been a cool fire.
Yeah, that is something I prefer. I've done my share of work on gravel or in mud, and I'd rather not . . . at least I have a choice in the matter.
One of my trucks was like that. When I first got it, 1/8 tank was empty. By the end of its life, 1/4 tank was empty . . . for that and other reasons, I prefer filling my fuel tank when the gauge is about halfway, and also use the trip odometer each time I fuel.
Isn't farming glamorous?
derpicdn.net/img/2014/3/12/573265/large.jpg
Make sure you're using stuff that's strong enough! I'm sure you are, but I recently saw a YouTube video after a fatal accident where recovery equipment broke and fired a good-sized chunk of steel through the windshield of one of the trucks involved.
Dude, those are the worst. Since it's captive to your farm, there might be some circuits you can wire light bulbs to so when it fails you can tell by what's lit if it's working or not.
Heh, we never run out of work 'cause cars keep breaking. At least they're not ours, mostly. Although I do have a few cars of my own waiting for repairs; luckily, I don't need any of them right now, so they can wait until I want to work on them.
Dude, yeah. Or one that's really good at keeping equipment working one way or another, which is probably okay for a farm.
Heh, one of our regulars had an older Chevy pickup (early to mid 90s) which he fixed when he could. The exhaust fell off, so he repaired it with some spare food-grade stainless steel milk pipe that was laying around in the dairy barn. That was probably the most valuable part of the whole truck.
5712833
It's a good skill to have.
I couldn't make it as a typist. I'm fast, but not accurate.
5712839
Huh, that is interesting.
Closest I came was when I was trying to unload a Grand Marquis I'd gotten cheap, driven for a few years, and then parked when it broke. I mentioned it to a parts guy at a Ford dealership we do business with, and he said 'that's my ex-wife's car.'
I told him that if that were true, he had to take it, and he did.
5712857
I'm not up on the heavy-duty trucks; I'm assuming they use the coolant to keep the DEF from freezing?
Light-duty trucks just have electric heaters in the tank, which has its own issues. I know a little about the systems, but I've never had to fix one so far.
5712926
Lets be honest, if it weren't for the pony pics I'd have a much smaller audience reading these.
That is a good one :heart; That pic has lots and lots of little details in it.
5712935
I prefer the newer iteration, I'm more familiar with that one. But the old one isn't a bad engine AFAIK. I have very little experience on the 6.9, however way back when, I was moving and specifically requested an International with one of those from U-Haul. The counterperson was surprised, nobody wanted those trucks.
I knew it couldn't accelerate worth a damn, but it would just sip fuel no matter how much of a load it had. Contrast with the Kodiak I was forced to take when I moved back to Michigan from Indiana--Chevy big block, okay acceleration and it took over a hundred gallons of fuel to drive seven hours.
I do kinda miss the ones that were built for fuel economy instead of stupid big torque numbers. Last time it ran, my 6.2 Suburban got 21mpg.
I'm not a Ford guy, but that was a great motor. Can't go wrong with a straight-six. I had a C-10 with a worn-out 250, and that engine wouldn't quit, and it would haul whatever you put behind it.
5712960
I did that kind of thing with an old carbureted Chevy 350. Wasn't paying attention, put the return spring on the wrong way so the only throttle setting was full throttle.
To add to the fun, the underhood electrical system was . . . bad, so I had wired the ignition coil direct to the battery, and it had a mechanical oil pressure gauge, but the gauge was out because I was working under the dash.
It fired up, went to its redline, started spraying oil all over the cab, and of course when I shut off the key there was no change, so I had to lean over the engine and the very sketchy flex-fan to clip the power wire off the coil. Very exciting and very messy, do not recommend.
5713069
At least Ford could make their 10-speed work with cheap $10/quart ATF. Dodge requires $60/quart fluid which I assume is refined by magical pixies only under a full moon and contains actual gold flakes in it.
I'll be honest, the automakers tend to build really robust electronics. I rarely have to replace expensive electronic modules (so far) due to internal failures. Admittedly, my blog posts might suggest otherwise, but that's just 'cause those are the fun ones; the more mundane stuff isn't worth writing a blog about.
To give you an idea how robust they can be . . . years ago, we had a mid- to late 90s Chevy Express van in for an engine computer failure. What had happened was the brake master cylinder leaked brake fluid onto it for long enough to partially dissolve the case, exposing the innards to the elements.
That wasn't what killed it.
It worked like that for who knows how long, until the cooling system sprang a leak, and filled the computer with coolant (hot or cold, depending on how long the engine had been running). Like, when I took the PCM out, I poured coolant (and brake fluid) out of it.
And despite all that, it still worked well enough that we drove the van into the shop.
This (fuel pump driver module) is a common failure on F-150s:
troublecodes.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Ford-Fuel-Pump-Control-Module.jpg
As bad as it looks, it was still working the day before the truck came to the shop . . . and I've seen worse and probably have a picture of worse, but was too lazy to go looking
5713342
That's not wrong. At least the pro usually gets it right on the first try, and needs the minimal amount of parts and labor to fix it.
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5713360
As I recall, they were using some form of autoinjector for mass vaxxing back in the Polio days . . . I'd have to ask my dad about that, he remembers.
We have been warned in multiple mechanic classes and I'm sure repair instructions that high-pressure diesel injection systems (now about 20,000 psi) can happily inject diesel fuel subcutaneously and while I don't know exactly what the effects of that would be, I am reasonably sure that is not a good thing. Also there's the fact that they are getting into waterjet cutting pressures, and we all know from YouTube what those can do.
5713906
Got it in one. They also have electric line heaters. And a metric butt load of problems. Some of them are our the mobile tech... most are the tech.
Forget 'shotgun method', break out the MG-42. He'll throw parts until something sticks, or it's suddenly a new truck.
5713916
It could be because they used these JetInjectors back then. Rather than a fine painless needle, they painfully blasted vaccine through the skin, causing bruising and leaving an open wound, because wusses are afraid of needles:
JetInjectors
5713903
As you do, yep.
Got the spreader out, partly involving digging around the trapped wheels with a backhoe. Then the backhoe needed a rescue after I used it to help push while the tractor pulled... and couldn't *quite* 'walk' it out using the crane, as the wheels kept sliding back.
Great idea on the diagnostic lights... I hope to be able to actually make time to make it work! I feel like a repairpony in Ponyville.
The new-to-us truck just had an idler pulley eat its bearings yesterday-- considering it's a 2006 model, not surprised.
And, finally getting a 2001 or so Chevy with rusted brake lines fixed and out of the shop today. When you replace one line, start bleeding it and another brake line blows...
... and a PTO shaft on a different manure spreader keeps coming apart where there's an overrun clutch (so when you slow the tractor engine down, the inertia of the machine doesn't try to keep the tractor running faster). I just need two flat springs, a big snap-ring, and a pair of little bits of metal cut just so. An initial check with the dealership has just the entire clutch for $$$$. To their credit, they'll call around today and see if they can dig up the pieces I need for a reasonable price.
I have one of the bits of metal, key stock, grinders, and rising annoyance at a recalcitrant piece of machinery...
(also my default on repairs like this is to make it identical to how it was before it broke. Glad I took pictures before I tore it down for a different repair)
5713917
Heh, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. What was the old saying, lift up the radiator cap and drive a new car under it?
5713923
Yeah, that was probably the thing.
I don't know if it was because of people's fear of needles, or just a fast way to vaccinate a lot of people against polio. I think that was one of those cases where speed was an important factor.
There might also have been less worry about accidentally giving someone else a disease, since that might not have been as well understood back then. I'm honestly not sure when it became obvious that giving somebody infected blood might be an issue, for example. I know that some people got blood transfusions with HIV back in the 80s, and I think that there were other diseases that sometimes got unemotionally transmitted that way.
5713956
Reminds me of a couple times back when I drove wrecker when two were required for an extraction--one to pull the stuck vehicle out, and then the other one to pull the first wrecker out. Sometimes that just happens; one time I even planned for it.
We did that just recently on a Buick Rendevous with a very intermittent no start. The thought was that it might be the fuel pump, so we wired up a light bulb to the fuel pump circuit and gave it back to the customer; if it doesn't start and the light isn't on, we know what's wrong with it.
(and it's very intermittent; we had it for like six months and there was only one time it didn't start, then before we could get any good test equipment on it, it started.)
So probably too late to be useful information to you, but you can buy line kits for those trucks from GM. It's under $200, I think, and it's got all the lines pre-bent and everything, everything except the rear axle lines. Truck-specific, so you have to order by VIN. Usually the rear line goes first, and then something in that bundle of four than runs under the cab. It's kind of a pain to install the pre-bent lines, but it's also a pain to make your own and get them routed where they are supposed to be.
Huh, that's a piece of equipment I never considered, but it makes sense. Sometimes finding those fiddly little bits is impossible; we've more than once been forced to order a whole repair kit to get the one or two parts we actually need.
Yeah, I've gotten better and better at taking pictures. Back when I learned that trick from a hot rod magazine, there weren't digital cameras, and I couldn't afford to spend that kind of money on film, so I never really got into the habit. Now with cell phones, there's no reason not to take zillions of pictures. Heck, just yesterday I had to disassemble most of a door on a Ford, and I actually remembered to take a picture in case I forgot where all the wires went.
As a result, for some of these blogs I do have pictures of parts of the vehicle in question . . . but usually they're not anything that would be a good photo for a blog post, y'know?
5714058
People knew about bloodborn diseases like hepatitis, syphilis, malaria, et cetera, but they did not realize that JetInjectors blasted blood and skin from person-to-person. As for AIDS in the 1980s, they did not yet have a test for HIV yet. They noticed that gay homosexuals had an high-rate of AIDS and banned them from giving blood, but still took blood from lesbian homosexuals. This is because sexual behavior is driven by hormones:
The sexual atraction is caused from brainstructure. The form we feel our bodies should have is another independent brainstructure. Sexual behavior is hormonedriven:
High levels of testosterone causes people to want lots of random sex. Disease transmission among straight heterosexual men is constrained because straight heterosexual women are picky, and even if a man is her type, she wants sex infrequently. Gay homosexuals in the 1970s (before they worried about AIDS), had sex with thousands of other gay homosexuals annually. In the Early 1980s, HIV spread like wildfire in the GayHomosexualCommunity and caused a pandemic of AIDS. since tests for HIV did not yet exist, the government banned blooddonations from gay homosexuals. Since we now can test for HIV, the government lets gay homosexuals donate blood again.
Since lesbian homosexuals are choosy and have sex very infrequently because of their low-levels of testosterone, and they do not make semen (semen is extremely high in HIV, in infected individuals), their blood was safer than the blood of straight heterosexuals, whether either women or men.
5714060
The first line was a custom bend. After that, we got a line kit which indeed has all the correct lengths, bends, and ends.
Alas, got pulled off replacing lines to do some other things. Such is life. Hope we get it done before an emergency happens that requires the shop...
5714057
That was indeed the old saying. I did that with many a truck. I had the same lev-r-vent cap until I got my Ram... that needs a new fuel rail pressure sensor.
Surprisingly it's cheaper to replace the fuel rail, and it has a new sensor and bypass valve.