noise."Mechanic: The Mystery of Fuse 13 · 1:29am Jul 28th, 2023
Alright, before we start
Wait, not yet—
Before we begin, I wanna apologize for being kind of radio silent here for the last couple weeks. I got a couple new books ready to sell at EFNW (more on that SoonTM) and I'm hard at work on stuff for Ponyville Ciderfest which should make it an amazing con for y'all!
Okay, now you can pick up your beverage of choice. 
Well, the title kind of gives it away, now doesn't it? If you remember the last one, this one was similar. It was even a Ford.
So you can picture it in your head, the vehicle in question was a 2000 Ford Ranger XLT with a 3.0 Flex-fuel V6 and automatic transmission.
Our General Service guy had already looked at it and had reported that it barely wanted to go forward. I pulled codes, and . . . well, it was a mixed bag.
P0176 Fuel Composition Sensor Fault (that determines how much ethanol is in the fuel)
P1747 [transmission] Pressure control solenoid fault
P0743 Torque convertor clutch circuit
P0750 Shift Solenoid A
P0755 Shift Solenoid B
P0760 Shift Solenoid C
P1754 Coast clutch control circuit failure
P1451 Evap vent control circuit
P0135 Oxygen Sensor Heater B1S1
P0141 Oxygen Sensor Heater B1S2
P0155 Oxygen Sensor Heater B2S1
P1406 EGR vacuum regulator control circuit
The ones marked in red involve the transmission; the rest are for the engine and associated systems. It's obvious why it won't shift right; all the solenoids that control its shifts are offline.
With a lot of codes like this and no idea what they might or might not have in common, I went to Identifix. You'll remember on the last one, it seemed unlikely to me that all the codes had set at the same time. However, that was a regular customer, he takes good care of his truck; this Ranger was not nice. Half the exhaust was broken off and held up with bailing wire (another half was missing; only the front half was still there). The suspension was shot on it, the ball joints (probably) scream in protest whenever they have to flex, and it reeks of mildew. The customer is also carrying around his rock collection in the back of the truck, at least 240 pounds of river rocks (110kg, 17 stone).
What I'm saying is this thing has not been maintained, and the check engine light might have been on for a long time. Maybe what finally pushed it over the edge was the nearly complete lack of power.
Of course, if you've read the title, you know what was wrong with this thing. Fuse 13 does a lot of heavy lifting—it powers the shift solenoids, torque convertor clutch, pressure control solenoid, the oxygen sensor heaters, the evap vent solenoid, the flex fuel sensor . . . and when I put in a fuse that wasn't burned out, it started up and ran great! Well, more or less; the mostly missing exhaust was a problem.
And it didn't run great for long; the fuse popped.
On one hoof, it's a shame it's not that easy a fix. On another hoof, when it's a burned out fuse and you replace it and things work but you don't know what went wrong, you know there's a chance it's gonna happen again. If the fuse pops pretty quick, well, there's a problem to be found.
Easiest way to start is a visual inspection. I know where most of the affected components are and I looked to see if there's anything obviously bad.
Nothing jumped out in the engine bay; when I lifted it up and looked underneath, I found this little guy:
That's the connector to the B1S2 Oxygen sensor, and the wire with blue insulation you see is powered by fuse 13. That rusty thing next to it was an exhaust heat shield, which is grounded, and was touching the bare wire when the exhaust vibrated.
It wasn't that difficult to fix the wires, and then I took it for a test drive, where everything went well until it didn't.
When I got to my halfway point, I turned around and really laid into the throttle, which is the way you set the barometric pressure reading on a Ford of this era. At first it had power, and then it didn't. The further it went, the less power it had, and I eventually coasted it for about half a mile (1km), then sat on the side of the road and called for a ride.
While I was waiting, one of our on-again-off-again customers stopped, asked if I needed help, and then bragged about his new truck, which he'd bought from someone I knew (joys of a small town). It was a pretty sweet truck, picture a late 90s Dodge Ram with a 70s Dodge stepside bed. I realize this seems odd, but it really worked.
A few minutes later, he drove off and I waited and waited until our general service guy showed up with a can of gas. Did I mention that the fuel gauge on this thing was currently reading below empty? Of course, I have no idea if the fuel gauge on this truck works—it's got a lot of problems.
Protip: if you're taking your car to the shop for a drivability problem, put fuel in it.
Adding gas didn't make it start (but it did make the fuel gauge go up, so maybe that does work after all), then the battery died. Luckily, our general service guy was prepared and had a jump pack in his car. That also didn't make it go, but it made it crank faster.
I got under it and banged on the fuel tank, right below the fuel pump, and that did get it started. And I drove back to the shop, triumphant.
In other words, a typical day . . . fix one problem and find another. I got pulled off that and onto other projects, so I don't know if it actually ran out of fuel (who knows if the fuel gauge actually works or is accurate?) or if the fuel pump's on its way out. Further testing is required.
Outro!
But wait, there's more!
Are y'all coming to Everfree Northwest? 'Cause if you are, you'll have a rare opportunity to purchase actual books that I've written. Or that other people have written, I suppose.
RBDash_47 is bound and determined to make this bigger and better than the Bronycon Bookstore. See his blog for more details (including a complete list of available titles), including a link to all available titles. I'll have five titles available: The Haunting, Rose and Sam, Sam and Rose, Fanfare for the Common Mare, and Destination Unknown. Two of them are available for the first time! Buy them all! I'll sign them!
Exclamation point!
Ah, yes. I remember that period when my truck wouldn't start until I climbed under it and whacked on the starter once or twice. Times. Not good time, but certainly times.
I know I said I would this year... but next year. I just got to get my passport and clear off my credit card... Which thanks to an offer from my bank now has half the interest rate it used to have. (Which means I can comfortably carry twice as much debt... yay?)
I get the procrastination —— ¡that is my CutieMark! ——but carrying around a RockCollection is … odd. ¿Did not it occur to him that the extra weight would be bad for the truck?
I remember a roommate that went under his car to find out "Why is it making that weird noise?" The entire exhaust system came down to Play Rough. It literally branded him in a line from his shoulder to below his hip. The muffler just missed killing Mr Johnson by an inch.
Luckily, he was wearing cotten. Synthetic fabrics melt & fuse to your skin, making Bad into Worse.
For some odd reason, he was grumpy for ever so long.
5739736
Probably meant to build something. A flood wall, a barbecue pit, whatever & just never got around to it.
Is that Twilight concerned about the MailPony delivering her mail, or that yet another MailPony is going to have to replaced by the Mail Office after delivering the weekly book parcel?
The person with 110kg of stone in the back of the truck with wires rubbed raw generally isn't really concerned about things like enough petrol to get the truck fixed.
Yes... the joy when there is a troubleshooting scenario where more than two lamps fail simultaneously and the guys reply "all the lamps are broken" as the most likely thing. That 'wait a minute, this is not right, let's check what is connected to all of these' is the difference between a good and a bad mechanic.
And that truck seems like a 'I need to brace myself before dealing with it' case.
Not much crazy stuff to reply with this time. Air system on the farm's truck with a feed mixer was acting up, drained gallons upon gallons of water from the air tanks... guess the air dryer wasn't keeping up. Need to rebuild some sheet metal in the combine after a missing rubber bushing made it try to disassemble itself. Oh, there's the bearing for a loader's front knuckle where the hub pivots. Don't recall if I mentioned it in my previous comment, but that was a mess. Not as bad as it could have been, I stopped before it really ruined the front axle or hub. Near as I can tell, the four bolts holding it in walked out over the last year and a half. Towed it into the shop by using a large tractor's 3-point hitch to lift the front end off the ground and had a guy in the loader drive it. Four-wheel steering, so he could keep the thing in line and swing it when I turned, as well as run the wheels under power so we didn't have to figure out how to uncouple the transmission and whatnot.
Cute bat pone pics! I also hope to see more of Sam and Rose in the future!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2017/11/20/1590830.gif
Source.
Congratulations, you're back to where you started!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2020/1/25/2256717.png
derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/9/11/2141733.png
derpicdn.net/img/view/2018/1/20/1637084.png
Source. Source. Source.