Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Truckery

 

The Old Offender


Keen-eyed readers, all four of you, might remember that the Compound's motor pool took a serious hit when a 2018 F150 went badly wrong on its way to Dallas for Thanksgiving. No joke, the malfeasant rig juddered and quaked on I35's fast lane into the 'sprawl. Pull off the road, LSP, park up at a sketchy Motel 6 and... the 5.0L V8 beast wouldn't restart.

Long story short, the Waxahachie Ford House wanted to charge a whopping Merry Christmas 16k to swap out a busted long block. Huh. No. Tow the broken offender back to base and hand it over to local mechs. They duly turned up and ran a diagnostic, hoping that 1. There was an easily fixable problem, like a bad fuel pump control module, or 2. The old engine was salvageable.


Wretched Malfeasant - There's a Story Here

No to 1 and 2. A rocker had busted and fallen into the body of the engine, the timing chain had snapped and catastrophic failure ensued. Not unlike the Church of England, when you think on it. Solution? Pull out the old engine via tractor and chains, drop a new/used one in. And that's exactly what happened.

Everything back together, we took the truck for a test drive through the sylvan boulevards of pleasantly sunny rural Texas and, lo and behold, the beast purred along with its newly installed engine, which came from a vehicle with 77k on the clock. So it's a young engine, let's see how it pans out in the New Year.


Skulduggery

Ah, but LSP, I hear you think, trenchantly, what happened to the RAPTOR? Good question, and here's the answer. If this year of our Lord, 2025 A.D., comes in golden, then a jolly old Raptor's on the cards and a Sergeant can have the refurbed One Fiddy. That's one timeline, we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Cheers,

LSP

13 comments:

Seamus1962 said...

I love the front loader being used as a pulley/winch - I have used these to lift buddies up (two at a time) to bypass the ladder and work on a roof. That was a Bobcat though. Glad your ride is up and running - I want a pickup truck!

drjim said...

Well Done, Sir! Kudos to your local mechanics for getting it back on the road.

LSP said...

Right handy, Seamus, and these boys worked like champs. Most impressed. Pick ups? Hey, rock on, I've enjoyed mine and it seems you need one for yourself!

LSP said...

What good guys, drjim, most impressed.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

You have wheels again. Any good ideas why the rocker arm failed?

drjim said...

Seems to be a common problem.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=ford+v8+rocker+arm+failures&ia=web

Ed Bonderenka said...

Congratulations. I know the feeling of gratefulness for the return of one's F150.

LSP said...

Maybe a knucklehead ran it out without oil, WSF? But I know nothing.

LSP said...

An issue, drjim. Thx for the link.

LSP said...

Feels good, Ed.

Wild, wild west said...

A happy new year, indeed.

Anonymous said...

Crusty Old TV Tech here. Congrats Parson, good ole boy redneck ingenuity will always prevail! Front end loader makes a dandy engine hoist. I'll bet the failure was noisy, timing system failure followed by the sweet kiss of piston to valve. As Eric with I Do Cars would say, there was Malice in the Combustion Palace indeed. Always better to repair an older vehicle than to buy new nowadays, if at all practical.

Beans said...

My nephew spent most of his time as a USAF construction unit airman, during the Okobungo era, either sitting on his duff, taking whatever classes he could, playing Airsoft in the Vehicle Maintenance Area or actually pulling maintenance on their and other people's personal vehicles in their Vehicle Maintenance Area because their unit had absofriginlutely no money to actually use the actual construction vehicles that were located in said Vehicle Maintenance Area.

Even the base command sergeant had his wife's wheels fixed by the airmen of said construction unit, because the kids were that good and all that wonderful equipment was just lying around.

Funny, Nephew gets out, joins FLNATGUARD and is immediately sent to Iraq, twice, and to Puerto Rico and throughout the US wherever the NATGUARD ended up sending him. And he was far more worried in the PR than in Iraq, mainly because they could shoot back in Iraq but not in the PR.