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RE: New B & W WD trailer hitch
I must be missing something. I don't see anything about that hitch that would make me want to change from standard torsion bars. I have been hooking up torsion bars for 50 years and haven't had much trouble out of them.
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Groover
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11/05/22 05:54pm |
Towing
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
We found a long block on the shelf at Fraser. It is on the pricey side but it seems to be the best route to getting the truck fixed and it comes with a 5 year unconditional warrantee.
I wish that I could answer some of the questions that about damage that people are asking but all I can tell you for certain is that the mechanic told us that it was good to go but obviously wasn't. I do know that at some point a piston hit some valves, a camshaft was broken, the head was machined flat, the passenger side camshaft position sensor is not working even though it has been replaced at least once, probably more, the engine is blowing oil out the tailpipe and the vacuum line to the turbo controller is hanging out in space. In addition the electric vacuum pump has been replaced and the running boards were crushed. What little the mechanic did share did not make a lot sense to me. I was glad just the get the truck back and get it home.
One thing that I have not mentioned is that the truck had started throwing error codes indicating timing chain stretch about a month earlier and my daughter wanted that fixed before towing her horses 1,300 miles in the upcoming move. This mechanic seemed to have good reviews, was close and available so she took the truck to him for that job. The truck ran well for about four to five thousand miles before things suddenly went bad. Was it something in the timing chain job and the electric vacuum pump failure was just a cover story? I have no way of knowing. What all was torn up and was all the debris removed? I don't know that either.
As I have stated earlier, I want the truck to be trouble free for the next 5 years and the long block seems to be the best way to get that assurance.
I am very disappointed with the communication from Ford and sincerely hope that someone from Ford reads this and decides to do something about it. Letting the truck sit on their lot for months without telling me or the dealer that no parts were coming is disgraceful.
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Groover
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11/04/22 06:12pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: All 2024 GM HDS get the 10 speed Allison.
If it was possible I would gladly swap out the genuine 6 speed Allison in my motorhome for the GM 10 speed. Even an 8 speed. I am not a GM guy but I am pretty sure that the GM transmission is up to snuff. And, the genuine Allison 1000 is only rated for 30,000lbs GCWR. That is what held back GM's tow ratings for several years.
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Groover
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11/03/22 05:24pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
I just talked with the dealer parts department and he said that Ford is not even trying provide parts for vehicles not under warrantee. However, he thinks that he has one from a big rebuilder (not Jasper) lined up and is trying to finalize the details.
The dealer is very put out with Ford in that they were billed for my engine in August and paid the bill. Over two months have gone by since they paid the bill and they just now found out that no motor is coming, no refund has been offered and Ford was happy letting all of that slide.
He also told me that he is having trouble getting parts for Chrysler products as well. He carries Chrysler products too.
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Groover
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11/03/22 01:07pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride set for Oct 26th !
I just hope that the Cybertruck is betting suited for towing than the electric trucks currently on the market. I was excited about getting an electric truck for my business until I started seeing tow test results.
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Groover
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11/03/22 11:43am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
FWIW, let me offer congrats to you and your daughter on her graduating med school! She's put in years of hard work most folks wouldn't have the backbone for even if they were lucky enough to have the brainpower. Five more years and she will have the key to the treasure chest!:)
Exactly. She will be a general surgeon and her husband will be an orthopedic surgeon. At that point they will have a lot more money than I do and the truck will be their problem. But so far they have only received 2 or three paychecks and those are not very impressive. She had to have a vehicle for her 35 mile commute (her husband goes the opposite direction for his residency so they bought in the middle) so they bought a much more efficient vehicle. With fuel prices going up the pickup many not get many miles on it before they graduate. All the same, there are things that economy cars just can't do so they really need the truck at times.
But, they will be working 80+ hour weeks for those 5 years so I want whatever they have to be reliable instead of another problem.
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Groover
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11/03/22 11:06am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
Add full coverage back on and two weeks later the truck turns up stolen? If you don't think they're going to do a full-court-press investigation on that, you are delusional.
After two seized lifters within 500 miles on my Chevy, when the fuel pickup line immediately started leaking the day I picked it up from the second, I was hoping for a wayward match, but I knew I'd end up in jail, so I got it fixed.
Yeah, always said criminals are dumb. 2 weeks and it's pretty obvious. Probably better to have an "accident", even then, you might want to wait a month or two.
Of course, I was speaking in general terms that for most people with a $20k truck that they can't replace with pocket change, keeping full coverage makes sense.
I can afford to replace it. But the reason I can is that I don't run out and buy a new vehicle every time there the old one has a hickup. I think that this one has several more years left in it. If I can get a long block and extend this one's life another 6 or 7 years that would be a lot less expensive than a new truck.
The dealer told me yesterday that they have escalated my case up the corporate ladder. They gave me the impression that the people they talked to were unaware of the shortage of spare parts and the difficulties it is causing customers. I am not so sure of that but I am pretty sure that automakers are required by law to have spare parts available for vehicles up to 10 years old and Ford may be in violation of that law. Since Ford told me that 83 people have been waiting longer than me this could be a ready made class action suit.
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Groover
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11/03/22 08:04am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
I dropped full coverage several years ago.
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Groover
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11/02/22 09:24pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
She took it to a local mechanic that seemed to have a good reputation but also he was the only one that would take the truck in quickly. The mechanic diagnosed the problem as a failed electric vacuum pump that had self destructed and some of the debris got sucked into the engine. The debris made a mess of the passenger side head. After working on it for about 2 weeks he told her that it was fixed and to take it away. It was far from fixed but did make to my house in Tennessee where I borrowed a truck with a gooseneck hitch to get her horses the rest of the way to Dayton.
So many questions:
#1. Did you physically see the damage to the head or even a picture?
#2. So what did the mechanic do? Recon the head? Get a junk yard one? Buy a new one from Ford?
#3. What does far from fixed mean? Is is low on power. Runs rough? Smokes? Knocks?
#4. Did you take it back to the first guy and tell him it runs bad?
#5. Was the turbo replaced? If not why not?
#6. Was any pistons replaced? If not why not?
A lot of this doesn't make much sense to me. I haven't heard of one instance that the vacuum pump blows up and kills the engine. Not saying it can't happen but it just seem sus to me.
Maybe after seeing the answers to the above questions I can give more help.
I will answer #4 first. The guy had worked on it for two weeks and missed about 6 promised completion times. The owner was on vacation and unreachable when the shop told us to come get the truck. It was running rough and smoking badly but they swore that it would all clear up in a few miles. Also, the running boards had been badly damaged. It looks like they did not get the lift properly positioned at least once. We were on a tight schedule to relocate and had already given up both the rental property and the horses's barn stalls.
It ran very rough, smoked, the turbos did not work, multiple error codes that wouldn't clear and a vacuum line was dangling from the top of the motor.
It is 900 miles back to San Antonio and I see no point in going back there anyway.
The passenger side head had been worked on and two valves replaced along with several other things but much of what we were told did not really make sense. We were able to recover a big chunk of the bill from the credit card company.
The dealer hasn't been excited about fixing someone else's mess and wanted to go with a long block. At the time that made sense to me but with the roadblocks we have run into I may not have a choice but to get someone to dive into the engine and try to fix it.
I have asked the dealer to at least run a compression test and start making alternate plans if the long block option appears to be dead.
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Groover
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11/02/22 11:35am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
I don't want to leave any stone unturned so I called Jasper. They declined to quote one.
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Groover
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11/02/22 11:04am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
Is the block damaged? Or are you dealing with parts changers? If the block is good, and you are looking at months more downtime might be best to rebuild, just replace damaged parts.
I am trying to get answers to that question. The promise of a three year warrantee honored at any Ford dealer was very attractive and at the time they told me that the long block would be delivered in 10 weeks.
The truck was valued at $20,000 at the time so the repair was going to be well worth the investment. Now I am not so sure.
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Groover
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11/02/22 08:13am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
With 130k on the clock, I’d be visiting a junkyard looking for an engine.
There are not many junk yards in my county and I am not about to buy one without seeing it first but I am about ready to start hunting one.
In another thread I saw a remark that Ford has 30,000 trucks sitting in lots waiting for computer chips. If they can afford to have that many engines tied up sitting in parking lots I would think that they could spare enough parts to get a few hundred customer trucks back on the road.
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Groover
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11/01/22 05:31pm |
Tow Vehicles
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Major Ecoboost repair, long delays
My daughter parked her 2013 F150 Ecoboost with about 140,000 miles on it back in mid-May. When she started it back up it would barely run and was very rough. To make a long story short it was parked at the location of her medical school graduation and after graduation she had about 7 weeks to move from San Antonio to Dayton Ohio for the 5 year residency period. That included buying a house and moving her stuff and her horses. The truck was required to move the gooseneck horse trailer.
She took it to a local mechanic that seemed to have a good reputation but also he was the only one that would take the truck in quickly. The mechanic diagnosed the problem as a failed electric vacuum pump that had self destructed and some of the debris got sucked into the engine. The debris made a mess of the passenger side head. After working on it for about 2 weeks he told her that it was fixed and to take it away. It was far from fixed but did make to my house in Tennessee where I borrowed a truck with a gooseneck hitch to get her horses the rest of the way to Dayton.
The truck has been sitting at the local Ford dealer ever since waiting on a factory reconditioned long block. I was first told the long block would be there in August which was by far the best delivery promise that I could find plus it would come with a 3 year Ford warrantee. In August the delivery promise got changed to October 27th and I was advised that I was the 104th customer in line. Well, I still don't have long block but I have moved up to the 84th customer in line. At that rate I expect to get the truck back around Christmas, 2023. The place that rebuilds engines for Ford says that they can't get parts and are only filling high priority orders. The dealer told me that mine is a high priority but even that obviously isn't helping.
I have heard that there are various impediments to making new vehicles but those seem to center around electronic items, not engines.
I am trying to figure out if I have any viable options. I found some taken out of wrecks on the internet but looked up reviews for those places and they were awful. I got the impression that less than one in four of the engines they shipped actually worked.
If anyone has any good ideas I would love to hear them. I do want to be able to have confidence in the truck after the repair since my daughter plans to drive it for the next 5 years. To me that is going to take a long block or better but I don't know where to find one with a reasonable delivery.
Oh yeah, the electric vacuum pump seems to be there in case you need to apply the brakes while the turbo charger has the intake manifold pressurized. So it connected to the manifold via the brake vacuum booster and debris can be sucked through. Apparently, failures of the electric pumps are not uncommon. The amount of damage that my daughter's truck suffered is. That is what the mechanic told us but based on some other issues that have come up I don't put a lot of stock in what that guy told us but the bottom line is that I still need a good engine.
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Groover
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11/01/22 04:23pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Comical EV article
They buy the EV to do what it can do and use their other vehicle for the rest.That's what I did. I'm kinda smart that way. :)
It is ridiculous to by a short range vehicle in Wyoming unless you are committed to staying near home. Also, if you are traveling Tesla still has the best charging network.
My Tesla would easily make the trip on one charge. And if it could not, there are three Superchargers along the route that would charge the car up in 15 to 20 minutes.
Even with the number of Superchargers there I would still be reluctant to travel to portions of Wyoming. The existing chargers are along the Interstate highways to help people get through the Wyoming, not to explore it.
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Groover
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10/20/22 08:11am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride set for Oct 26th !
DELIVERIES TO START DECEMBER 1ST!!!
Pepsi deliveries scheduled
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Groover
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10/06/22 07:51pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: 2023 Ford Super Duty Reveal
Disappointed they didn't bring PowerBoost to the SuperDuty this year, it's a feature I'd love to have in my next truck but I won't be buying another half ton, next truck will be a 1T SRW.
The F150 PowerBoost benefits are really limited to city driving and there's really no advantage with towing IMO.
I didn't watch the videos but saw an article a few days back (can't find the article now).
The new 6.8L is supposed to be 400hp and 450lb-ft. The 7.3 is 430hp and 475lb-ft...hardly seems worth the trouble to have both.
Has anyone heard a suggestion of what Ford's logic is?
While a modest turbo on either (assuming the block was built for it), would be great. Problem is if they put out a big block turbo for the super duty line, I would assume it would have at least 500-550hp and probably north of 550-600ft-lb of torque. With the turbo, you could dial back the RPM while still putting out lots of power. That would make it very competitive against the diesels.
It becomes a marketing problem. How do you talk buyers into the $10k upgrade for the diesel if a gas 6.8L turbo can go toe to toe with the diesel in the toughest conditions for say $3k?
I also don't understand the logic for two engines that are so close in rating. If I were guessing, I'd say that maybe the 6.8 is built to accommodate some sort of hybrid upgrade and the 7.3 is not.
As for the turbo big block, the answer is also MPG. In that a turbo BB would make the old 8.1l seem miserly. It would likely get less than 5 MPG towing. Which is why you haven't seen the 5.0 receive the "eco boost" treatment either......
"The F150 PowerBoost benefits are really limited to city driving and there's really no advantage with towing IMO."
I would love to see a test or at least an interview with a Ford engineer that informs us as to what the hybrid system actually does when towing. I know that when towing with my Tesla I still get all of the benefits of regeneration when towing. Surely Ford gets some.
"I also don't understand the logic for two engines that are so close in rating. If I were guessing, I'd say that maybe the 6.8 is built to accommodate some sort of hybrid upgrade and the 7.3 is not."
I have seen reports that the 7.3 is getting more power and torque so there will be more difference between the two motors.
"While a modest turbo on either (assuming the block was built for it), would be great."
You can get superchargers already for the 7.3 taking it past 700hp and they seem to be reliable. There are several videos on YouTube about them. As with any motor, hp takes fuel. Fuel economy only goes down the tubes if you use that hp but the tests seem to indicate that it isn't too bad.
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Groover
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09/29/22 08:46am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: New 2024 Chevy HD and Increased Dmax Power
I can't wait to see the prices. The GMC version is up $2K+ on the 2023 over the 2022 across the board which they hid most of in the option and package selection. By 2024 they'll be passing down the new corporate tax that kicks in on January 1st, because corporations do not pay taxes, the folks who buy their products do.
That is so true. It is amazing to me how many people don't understand that corporate taxes are basically hidden taxes that make it easier for foreign competition to take away our businesses.
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Groover
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09/27/22 02:09pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Alcohol Detection Systems in All New Vehicles
It makes more sense that most of their rules. I am tired of the excuse for seatbelt laws is that you need them because some other people drive stupidly.
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Groover
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09/24/22 12:10pm |
Around the Campfire
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RE: Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride set for Oct 26th !
What the ....?
Why do you even have to lie and distort to give excuses to these grossly incompetent and criminally negligent Texas leaders and electric company?
Those who died froze to death inside their homes for lack of power for heating.
Re-read you post then, if you mention your experience of being inconvenienced of a canceled game in the same breath of topic of people freezing to death, it is implied.
No argument that TX utility companies weren't prepared for a record cold spell of that magnitude and geographical breadth.
But think about what you're implying. First, you're implying intent to harm...ya pretty sure that wasn't the case.
Second, I can think of any number of natural disasters or weather extremes that kill people who are either not prepared or in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was no different.
Could those folks have been spared if the power didn't go out? Sure.
By the same token, everyone killed in a tornado could be spared if the govt builds a huge tornado shelter in every trailer park.
But wait, at some point for that to work, also requires everyone to GO to the shelter.
Same thing here, bud.
I understand that your view (and others) differs from mine and that general mindset that "nothing is MY fault" and "the Govt's responsibility is to take care of ME" is hard to overcome when you've literally become dependent on everything but yourself.
Another looks here?
First dismissing, now 246 deaths, to the inconvenience of your own canceled game. And now your diverting it to the false equivalence of tornado deaths.
Dude, these utilities and their incompetent and thoughtless leaders in Texas would just have leaned harder on them since decades earlier state's lack of preparedness for such storms in a report from U.S. federal regulators and Texas own Electric Reliability Council. Thus preventable.
What wrong with you?:h
Nobody in California has the right to claim that someone else's utility company is poorly run. Fix your own then show us how it is done.
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Groover
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09/24/22 06:52am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride set for Oct 26th !
Utah great salt lake has enough lithium for milions of EVs
https://youtu.be/l1LCFnoKKpU
Are they going to be able to use that? These days, if you try to plant a rose bush environmental radicals shut you down.
They probably won’t shut you down if it’s to make batteries. Well, at least if it’s batteries for electric vehicles that is!
The environmental radicals have been a plague to Tesla Berlin. To the point that battery manufacturing machines are being pulled out and sent to the US.
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Groover
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09/20/22 01:43pm |
Tow Vehicles
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