IT’S BACK! - Happy to have our truck back and just thought I’d include a picture on a less than perfect day. No blue sky, highs only 60F and windy....what else! Had to share in the weather bitchin’ with all you winter weary Canadians back home!
As Dave said, he wanted to bore you with the details about the truck problems and the repairs made so if you’re interested....read on! If not, don’t!
It started with a small oil leak which turned out to be a seal broken on the high pressure oil pump that drives the fuel injectors. The Mechanic and Ford, recommended replacing the pump's sensor and it's controller as a matter of routine maintenance, which we did. At the same time I had them change the oil and switched to a high end synthetic. That trip in cost about $1075 and the truck seemed to run fine around town and during the 1/2 hour drive back to our RV Park.
The next day it started fine, I took a short trip, shut it off and had a real hard time getting it started after it had sat for about 10 minutes, but it did start and then ran rough for a while. Same thing happened over the next couple days, so I took it back in. They hooked it up to the computer and saw that every fuel injector read as bad .... a few would be normal but all at once is never the case. The mechanic had seen similar stuff and it was caused by air bubbles in the oil, specifically when recently switched to a synthetic oil, so they changed the oil back to the normal non synthetic stuff. That made it run like a charm and all the injectors now showed as good.
The next day it would not start at all. Hence the tow truck pic in the last web site update. They had It there for a week and could only get it running by changing the oil and forcing it to start with ether sprayed in the air intake, then the next day it wouldn't start again. When it was running everything looked good on the computer diagnostics with no sign of any problems at all, and it restarted easily as long as it was warm, but if let sit for 3-4 hours, back to the no start.
The mechanic did some more research, and checked with three different Ford technicians, but was getting different answers from everyone. One of the suggestions was that there is a metal coupling in the oil line after the pressure sensor that commonly blows after work on or around the oil pump. This would explain why the oil pressure seemed fine (the coupling is after the pressure sensor), but it was not getting fuel to the injectors. I gave the go-ahead to give that a try (like I had a choice?)
It turns out that and that they had to take all the turbo stuff off to get at it. Then the bolts for the turbo stuff broke off and they had to extract them (very tricky). Once they got to the coupling, sure enough the O-ring was blown right out of it.
While they were digging into all this they retested the oil pump's controller which they had replaced on the first visit and found that it was bad ..... they replaced that again. (not sure if it was bad from the start or if it went bad when the o-ring blew).
While they had it all apart they noticed that the wiring for the Fuel Injection Control Module, FICM, (different than the controller for the oil pump) was frayed and that it had likely been fried, so on Ford's recommendation once again, they replaced it as well (quoted $700... no labour because they already had every thing torn apart).
Once they got it all back together they had to tow it to the Ford dealer because the FICMs come unprogrammed and only Ford can do them. Ford took 2 days to do this 20 minute fix.
Once all this was done it seems that all the issues, including those I've been encountering off and on since last July, (mainly running rough when cold, and white smoke at a cold start) have been resolved. (From Aug through Jan I went to 3 different shops explaining that I thought these issues were related to an issue with the FICM, hmmmmm )
In any case it is running really well now and they treated us really well price wise. They figured they put well over 20 hours labour into it and they changed the oil a few times. In the end they charged for less than 8 hours labour, $500 for the FICM, and no charge for the oil changes or the tow over to Ford. Came to $1700 all taxes in .... I could not argue with that. It pays to be a patient Canadian some times. Every one here at the RV Park was saying they would have been in there yelling and screaming after the first week.