Text messages
B: Want to go have some wings?
Og: Sure. Have to change the oil in the trucks.
pause, maybe 7 minutes.
B: Let me know when you’re done.
Og: I’m done. Just cleaning up now
B: You serviced both trucks in a couple minutes?
Og: Who do you think I am? Aamco?
I have done a four-wheel brake job on the Exploder in 11 minutes. When you do something often enough you get good at it. Every vehicle I own and most of them I work on, I write some basic info on the front of the radiator yoke- oilpan wrench size, filter size, engine oil capacity, filter wrench size, spark plug gap, etc. So when I open the hoodl I take exactly the correct tools under the car with me, and I’m done in no time. Dro the filter in the pan, clean the seat, put the (pre-oiled) new filter on, tighten. Pull the drainplug, burn my fingers with hot oil, wait for the oil to drain, wipe the plug gasket and pan surface and reinstall plug. Stand up, put tools away, pour in 5 qts oil. Done. Helps that the Ogwife’s truck uses the same filter and same oil pan wrench. yeah, two in seven minutes.
It takes me 7 min to get the truck in the shop. I do like the notes under the hood, thats a time saver for sure.
You and the good doc?
Heck, it takes them at least 10 minutes to do mine, and they have a pit, pigtail hoses pumping from a tank, and they do dozens of cars daily. Go figure.
Then again, you just want to get the lousy job done, and they’re farting around on the clock. They’re there regardless, get me out slow or quick.
Off topic, but I’m having some difficulty with my Mazda B2500 (same as a Ranger 4-cyl).
It now will not start on the first cold start (under 30 degrees F). It will usually start on the second try, but this AM, I fired it up at 28 degrees on the second start, ran it for two minutes, shut it off, and it would not start at all until it had sat in the sun and warmed up for a few hours, then it started fine.
This is some computer/sensor loop crap. I’ve read about the “closed loop” vs. the “open loop” in the starting of the engine, and it seems that the closed loop is not running correctly.
Now, that loop starts at the coolant temp sensor, runs to the Thermal Switch, thence to the MAF which has to give the OK to start the fuel pump and check for fuel rail pressure, then regulate it until the two minutes passes for the closed loop, and it changes to the open loop.
Whaddaya think, Og? Is this worth messin’ with or should I surrender to OBD2 and take it in for the usual reaming of my hoohoo and wallet?
The other problem is that I can’t diagnose it except at the crack of a cold dawn, and we are running out of those from now on.
Of course, this had to happen after I just bought an expensive revolver, too.
I guess I would need a fuel pressure gage to couple to the Schraeder Valve on the rail, and I haven’t shopped for one of those yet.
A fuel pressure gauge is about a ten to twenty buck item, and it is well worth the cost.
The OBD issue is easy to resolve: If you can duplicate the condition, disconnect the battery for a few minutes, if it runs again after, the system or a sensor is bad.
I have an Innova OBD scantool, and it cost me $39 on ebay. Saves a lot of wallet rgering.
The most time-consuming and difficult part of my oil change is putting the new filter on.
Some asshole at Ford decided having the filter on the left side, partway down, and at a downward angle was a good idea, which means you’re holding the thing in place and turning it while adjusting angles to try to get the threads to catch…
I ever meet the jackass, he’s dead.
Son’s on the other hand, it’s vertical at the left rear: unscrews, no spill, new one goes straight on.
Hehehe… sounds familiar. The first time I had to swap out a starter on a ’74 Dodge Dart, it took me the better part of a day. I couldn’t find a way to get the top bolt undone, no socket extender in my toolkit was long enough.
However, if you tack-weld a socket onto a long piece of hex stock that extends past the starter body, you can get a box wrench on the hex-bar easily!
That car went through starters like I go through bottles of Maker’s Mark. The 6th time I swapped out that starter, it took about 10 minutes in the parking lot of a Texaco, and I was lying in 3″ of water due to a torrential downpour that was occurring at the moment.
El: That’s impressive. I’ve replaced a starter while lying in a puddle, but it wasn’t that deep.
This weekend’s project, in fact, is new starter contacts in the Toyota.
Evidently those Nippon-Denso starters last forever, but you gotta replace the contacts, evidently every 14 years or so.
Update on the Mazda B2500: did the Haynes Manual test on the ECT, it came out within limits in all respects (resistance cold and hot, HREF volts cold and hot). It hasn’t been below 30 here in a week to test and see if there’s still an issue. BTW, only the emissions system throws codes in OBD2, turning on the Check Engine light, and the Closed Loop isn’t part of it. I have a code reader tool, and nothing shows up. Maybe it would if I read it out during the no-start condition, but then, I need a much more advanced tool tool ($700) to download all the history in the PCM. Haynes talks about doing the key-on-key-off test to get codes, but unless I’m wrong, that capability ended with 95s.
According to several sources, all I have to do is get the ECT over 30 degrees, and the engine starts in Open Loop, which seems to be OK.
Since the sensor tests OK, I’m betting that I have a fault in the way the PCM interprets the Closed Loop data as my primary concern.
My final solution here is to carry my Survival Cat heater. A few minutes with it radiating it’s small 300-BTU infrared heat at the ECT should be all it takes to get the car running if I do have to drive it in cold weather again.