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I started out as a Chevy guy and morphed to what ever is priced so I can fix it, drive a year or so and still make a bit of a profit .
The only thing that always held true was if you want it to last forever use a Ford 9 inch. Why are we using a modern (make as cheap as we can) diff?
Just wondering.[quote=”Flintiron” post=167232]Trippy. My name is also Matt and recently joined on here after months of watching videos. As you can tell by my signature where I listed my vehicles, I’m into Fords. Not on purpose at first, the Ranger was given to me, and the Expedition was bought after I found out how truly bad the Venture was; an engineer that helped with the engine development of that 3.4 gave me some bad news that they knew about all along.
I found myself doing much more wrenching myself after I’ve had quite the hassle with a shop near here, because it’s hard finding a good Ford mechanic in bow tie land. Got told the Expedition needed a $1,800 timing chain job, when it needed new cats, new ignition coils, and list of little things. That was trippy by itself. One shop told me timing chain, one shop couldn’t find anything because the truck ran perfect every time it went near that shop*, and a third shop didn’t really want to deal with, but told me to take care of the cat code first. Then so on clearing codes after that. The Ranger is amazing. Other than a coolant leak I can’t fix myself, I’ve fixed so much on it. Runs perfect with over 250k miles. I even fixed the ignition problem from the last mechanic putting parts for the regular 3.0, when it’s the vulcan (hybrid). Had to check the VIN for that.
*there were no codes when I first started taking it to the shops. It had a really bad misfire that didn’t code till after I replaced the cats.[/quote]
I’ll assume you are young but that is little excuse for running down anything you don’t drive. I have a 3.4 that I only bought because it was sooo cheap I could not resist, it now has almost a half a million Klicks ( yes I’m Canadian but winter in AZ.) and I’m ashamed to admit it has had only barely minimum maintenance . all things have problems, my Lariat had a 5.4 that blew out three plugs, They say that’s common) but after doing the stainless inserts it was a champion for another 200,000K. Remember what you like has no bearing on how good it is.
I may be out of line here as I have never worked for a dealer, always worked out of my own shop after working all day at a non auto related job.
Have you ever thought of work on the side until the shop picks up? Before I retired I charged time and a half what I was making at my day job and was still only about a third of the dealer price. Just a thought.