gear79, Neph's not going to say. Must be oil alley or similiar. Only kidding Neph, please no thunder.
No thunder Mort I work for Purcell Western States Tire. It's been a good outfit to work for although the particular shop I work at is about 150 years old and has seen better days but I just prefer to say it has "character" On another note I did a single loose tire that was brought in yesterday and the guy was replacing a 355/85R16 (37/14.00) Toyo Open Country with a new one. $350 for one of those stupid tires and the guys truck probably only gets 6 mpg trying to turn four of those damn things. I thought I was going to suck a nut trying to get that monster onto the tire machine. Some people think the damnedest things look cool......................
but at least he was stylin !!! better to look cool and hip, then be conservative with gas !! btw, thanks neph for gettin back 2 me if i am ever in the area, i will look you up
well, i will let you know, sooner or later we are gonna go to vega, so we will be passing thru your neck of the woods anyway. got a nice cold front passin thru right now, dropped our temps to the low 70's right no, way better then 100+ here. tonight gonna get down to the 50's i guess when i do, i can call or sumfin !
where you at anyway gstar?? you near neph i take it? btw, liked the reply you made a while back (cant remember where exactly) it was about you changing your name and post count did not matter, and you wanted to be known for helping, not status.. loved it. lord knows we have quite a few 'members' in here posting away to get a status mark next to their name. but thats off topic and he a thread for it anyway. now back on topic.... got this guy in here with a 04 F150, wants dual exhaust, talking all kinds of shit that he does all this himself, has been doing it for years and such, telling me about back pressure and such, but when i go to tell him the benifits of dual exhaust, he has this glazed over look in his eyes like he is lost. then he tells me he has calculated his horsepower gains and fuel savings already..... which by the way i asked him if he wanted a job, due to his skills and knowledge, he looked at me and laughed, knowing full and well i was being sarcastic. anyway, he declined, (like i'd give him one anyway) just as then he went off saying now he wanted a true dual exhasut on his pick up, i told him i was a 4x4 and the room for true dual exhaust was not there.... he said, oh its easy, you split the pipe off the catalytic convertor and run it this way....... when i took him under the truck, he was amazed at how little room was under there.... he said nothing more, but, oh well.... i dont want it now!!
this guy comes in today with a 99 BMW 740 series, catalytic convertor has become loose in case and rattling, wants a quote to fix it. well, we called BMW just to see how much, it comes as the whole assembly, $1,800 dollars our cost.... needless to say, he asked for an alternative repair, i told him i could weld on an aftermarket cat (2x) for about 500 bucks out the door, he said it was too expensive, yet he's driving this $75k car, at least had a $5k stereo system installed and $6k worth of chrome spinners and tires.......... my guess, all his money went to all that fancy a55 flash and crap and has no money to maintain his expensive euro car.... my motto [bold]WANNA PLAY..........................GOTTA PAY[/bold]
ok guys why do my Platium AC plugs only last about 50,000 miles when they say there good for 100.000 miles. everyone says NEVER use a different brand than AC ,its a 1998 ZR-2 Blazer with the 4.3 Vortec kick ass engine BTW and has 157000 on it
have you seen your plugs yourself? do you do you own tune ups? if someone replaced them for you, i'd ask to look at them myself.. have you seen them.?? are they double platinum tipped? when you say you go thru the @ 50k........ were they melted down??
no i dont do my own tune ups yes i have seem them they arent double platium just the AC plugs and yes the back two are melted down some just seems like there good for about 50000 but thats probably normal huh
i was working on a holden ute a few years working very close behind the left wheel on the left hand side and it was up on a hydralic jack about 5ft in the air.i working a bolt loose and i turn around and my boss is standing there welding about an inch away from the petrol tank i started to creep away slowly and he looked at me and told me not to go away the cars not gonna blow up and dont worry i wont catch on fire.i dont know if the guy was stoned or just dumb but flames that close to the petrol tank arn't very safe.
@ aabbccdd the dual platinums are good for more or less 100k miles, i have seen some that are around 80k miles, but the owner was a lead foot, so they were worn more then normal. but the plugs you have should normally last about 60k under normal driving conditions. since you have that vortec, do you know if its CFI injection or MPI injection? the CFI injection models were known for having bad spider packs and leaking fuel internally. (expensive repair too) if the back 2 are burning more then the rest (#'s 5&6) i would suspect one of two things......... either you are running premium fuel or you have a bad spider pack..... but not limited to a few bad plug wires (cross arcing) or the plugs may be too cold for that model. but without looking at it for myself or running a cylinder balance test, its hard to diagnose over the net......
it is CFI injection ,bad spider pack? and i dont burn premium and iam pretty sure the plug wires are ok thanks much for the info. gear i will have it checked out seems like i have had some lost of power as of late. but i had the catalytic converter changed out a while back that seemed to help for a while. i was told the truck wouldnt run right if i replaced it with a straight pipe ,is that correct info.?
well being that its a 98 model and OBD II compliant, it will set a check engine light with out the cat in place. if the plug wires are original, i'd definately replace them at the mileage you have (i assume over 100k miles or near) checked fuel filter lately? scanned for any fault codes? is the end of the tail pipe black with soot? poke a finger in there to see? then taste it, should taste like chicken............. j/k air filter clogged? bad pcv valve? the CFI injection models were notoriuos for having a bad spider pack (which houses all your fuel injectors) next thing would be a weak fuel pump..... if you have the know how, check it. should be well over 50 psi (i am not sure the exact spec off the top of my head, but its 50 psi or higher.......... (lack of power possibly....) but there are many many factors that can reduce power.
i just wanted to 'bump' this thread to the top, see if any more stories are available, its slow here at work, and nothing really has come into the shop. i will add a story though, see if it tickles anyone's mind. i have a 2000 dodge intrepid 2.7 V-6, came in with a knock after about 30 minutes at idle. well, there is a history of failed engines on this unit due to 'lack of maintenance' customer does not do their oil changes regularly and wind up with problems. to make a long story short, i checked oil level, then went to a direct reading of oil pressure, was 60psi at initial start up and slowly dropped to 10 psi after about 30 minutes, then the 'knocking' was apparent. i shut the engine off, read a few articles, knowing personally the history dodge/chrysler has had with these engines with oiling problems. i sold the customer an oil pump, which by no means is an easy job. 1400 dollars later, the engine is running, 100 psi in oil pressure and did not drop till after 45 minutes of running, which is normal. the oil heats up, thins out, then drops a bit. well, 10 minutes later, the 'knock' returns, then the engine shuts off. i restart, oil pressure at 90 psi, then drops.... then it once again, shuts off. this time, it was serious. the engine had locked up. well, now the customer is furious, and wants a full refund. luckily, it was documented and signed by the customer, internal engine damage unknown at time of problem and/or repair. as it is, the car still sits here, 1 week later, and no payment. we will soon come to resolving this issue with the customer, but we also may end up owning this car. i dont know what locked the engine, but i assume the crankshaft has some warpage in it, thus locking up, but also creating the knocking when hot. its got 91k miles on it, good condition, but a locked engine. just to add fuel to the fire, the dealership (which is where we got the oil pump from) they had 12 in stock. chrysler knows of this problem, and is a problem that they have tried to fix. this enging runs 6 grand alone, and no one will sell you a used engine with a warranty, cuz they know too......... just wanted to vent some steam, i had a 1 hour long argument with the customer yesterday, now he has 'his' lawyer involved and the opinions of other mechanics (whom which have not seen, nor diagnosed his car) but in my defense, i told him....."no respectable technician will just jump in and say yes, its the mechanics fault" i printed him up over 30 pages of problems with these engines to him, from a data base that we use to help us diagnose hard to find/fix problems from all over the world. he kinda mellowed out after that, but is still ticked off....... we will see what happens today..
Man, I'm so glad I don't have to deal with customers! We had a good one last week. We've been going through andless string of bonehead tennagers at the shop and one in particular has to be the dumbest of them all. In his first week he left the oil out of a Grand Cherokee then pulled it out for a test drive. Thank God the engine didn't seize but I imagine he shaved the life expectancy of that engine way down with that stunt. As if that wasn't enough of a wake up call to pull his head out of ass, last week he was doing a LOF on a brand new '05 Explorer and managed to crack the valve cover because he left the big metal tipped oil gun nozzle shoved down into the valve cover when he started the truck after filling it. The real bitch of it was he didn't say anything about it and the customer had smoke billowing out of the thing as they were driving away. The little prick always tries to blame someone else when he screws something up. I'm nearly at the end of my rope dealing with all these bonehead teenagers they hire. If they aren't royally screwing up customers vehicles (and they do it regularly) they're calling in sick all the time. One would think the management of my shop would get a clue that we won't have many customers if this crap keeps happening and I'm not going to be a very happy camper if I don't get some help that not only shows up every day but also knows what the hell they're doing.
i got a JOb for you neph, i need a good tech at my shop. i got a newbie here, and he cant even lift a friggen car....... pisses me off. i can start you out at about ........... well, we can discuss that !! hehe !!
