Techmerc’s Fix it Blog

Ok so I have been busy and unable to post as of late but I have been working on the engine. After getting some good bolts to mount the engine on the stand with I continued teardown. Let’s go through a few things to do. Remove the wire harness from the engine, pull the turbo pedestal, pull the valve covers, remove upper valve train and injectors (keep everything organized as to how it came out), and then begin head removal. Each head has 18 bolts both inside the valve cover and out. The bolts should be removed in a particular order to prevent head warpage. I won’t go into the exact order, but work in pairs from the outside of the head towards the inside. Once the bolts are removed the heads can be removed and are best handled with a crane or two people, they are heavy. My heads were quite hard to remove and were easier to remove once the engine was rotated with the head pointing straight up. After the heads were removed, we tore out the lifters and organized them with their appropriate valve train parts. Then we removed the high pressure oil pump, it’s resevoir, the harmonic balanced, the low pressure oil pump, and the front timing cover. Keep in mind that the front cover and oil pan are held on with a spread on rubberized gasket material that will require prying. Do not get impatient, you don’t want to bend anything. After the timing cover I did rotate the engine and remove the oil pan. This is messy and will spill a lot of oil, use oil absorbent, or cheap kitty litter will work too (same stuff practically). After the oil pan was off we finished removing the oil pickup tube. One end was attached to the front timing cover, the other to a bracket on a main bearing cap. Then we began to remove the pistons using a 17MM 12 point socket to loosen the connecting rod caps, which have 12pt nuts. Somewhere in here we also removed a few valves out of the heads. During this all this we found that the valves on the passenger side have eroded and lost their margins at the mating surfaces which has also damaged the valve seats. We pulled the two dead pistons and realized they had missing rings and significant damage to both. There may be some connecting rod bearing damage as well but I haven’t determined that completely yet. We also found ring bits in the oil pickup tube. We suspect this is the original failure of the engine and consequently it began to take the hydraulic lifters with it. Several of them appear to be clogged and are not moving. This means they were not passing oil to the rockers and valves on top of not moving properly. We believe this has a significant role to play in the valve train damage. Stay tuned, more to come. Enjoy the pictures.

Engine powerwashed with harness and valve covers removed.

Passenger head with injectors, glow plugs, and upper valve train removed

Well there's your problem

That's not just streaking, that's cylinder damage.

Badly focused shot of #5 and #7 positions on the head, notice the valves are recessed too much

Top of #5 piston

Num 5 piston from the side, missing rings and chunks of metal

Engine on stand, working on lower end

Intake seats for #5 and #7

Picture of valve face for #5 intake, that's not good.

Powerbuilt 648433 Piston Ring Compressor

Powerbuilt 648432 OH Valve Spring Compressor

Valve Lapping Stick-Small Dia.

Tags: Automotive // 1 Comment »

So after leaving the engine fairly well stripped from our last encounter we follow up with a few things. First thing’s first, remove the starter, which is three bolts, the upper one is easier to reach across the top of the cross member with a long extension. Then we remove the Torque converter inspection cover and unbolt the converter from the engine. I used a large ratchet on the harmonic balancer to turn the engine over to reach all the bolts. Next thing is to unbolt the 6 main bolts from the transmission to the engine. This will require an obscene amount of socket extensions and wobble joints. I then noticed I had left my block heater intact and that it would hang. However I also noticed the cable was in real bad shape, like it had been chewed on by animals, so I just finished cutting the cable and I will repair it later. Next thing is to unbolt the engine from the frame and begin the lifting procedure. Now initially we unbolted the mounts from the frame cross member and tried to lift with a load leveler. I won’t go into to details but this is not the best way. The load leveler won’t clear the cowl and the bolts that go into the cross member are too long to pull all the way out when you lift. So we corrected that by using a steel bar between the lifting points on the engine with the engine hoist latched on between the two and chained to either lifting point for stability. The engine mounts are actually two pieces which will unbolt in half, allowing the need for less clearance. After clearing a few minor obstacles we were able to lift the motor out. Now there is video of this, but not all of it, just the climax. What you don’t see is a set of obstacles we had to overcome that would have made us poster children for “Why women live longer than men”. This engine depending on how it’s dressed has been quoted at weighing anywhere from 900lbs to 1100lbs, and we had way too many issues for our comfort. For one, the bar we used to lift the engine bent and almost broke on us. It was thicker than 1/2 solid steel yet developed a stress fracture at the lifting point.  Also our temporary pad of asphalt didn’t work well and we had problems trying to make the hoist work on boards we laid across the pad.  So lesson learned, give this thing some respect. Once the engine is free from the bay, remove the flywheel bolts and the transmission adapter plate. Now lesson learned here is that your tranny bolts are not usable on the stand, they are too loose, hence the jack on the front of the engine in the picture. It was Sunday and the fastener stores were close, it will hold till Monday when I can make the change.

Wilmar W41023 6 Ton Heavy Duty Jack Stands

Diesel: General Motors and Ford (Haynes Repair Manual)

18in. x 18in. Absorbent Pad Soaks up Oil, Gas, Battery Acids and More!

Tags: Automotive, Ham Radio and Homebrew Electronics // 1 Comment »

Just removed the Condenser

A few more bolts on the support bars and brackets along with clamp removal and unscrewing some flare fittings and my transmission cooler and power steering cooler (lowest) are loose and draining.

Tranny cooler gone, PS cooler next

Next thing’s next, the intercooler. First remove the trim pieces from around the intercooler and upper radiator support area. The intercooler bolts to the upper radiator support on each side, so remove the bolt on each side and the pipes from the turbo and to the intake wye, then six bolts on each side of the support. On top of that you will need to remove your upper radiator mounts and set them aside. Then the support must be removed with some “slight persuasion” but it wasn’t too hard. Intercooler will follow that since nothing is holding it into place

Support and Intercooler removed

Next layer….radiator. As your can see from the above pictures the cooling system was draining for a while to avoid excessive splashing in the drain pans. Remove the hose clamps and reservoir, then the two bolts on top to disconnect the shroud. The shroud slides in at the bottom, so it can be left in the bay. Lift the radiator out once the shroud is off, then take the shroud. I also removed my batteries from the trays at this point along with the drive belt.

Radiator and resevoir removed

Next came my first significant problem. Time to remove the fan. Now normally I would just use an open end wrench to remove the pulley and fan all at once, but not this time. This time I had a bolt stick and round out on the fan pulley. So I just went ahead and removed the water pump with a ratchet and wobble joint. Normally the pump can be left on while you pull the motor as I understand it.

Water Pump Removed

With the water pump removed, time to clean out the small stuff. Remove the AC lines from the compressor, accumulator, and evaporator using standard ratchets and quick disconnect tools for Ford lines. Pull the plug on the main motor harness over the drivers valve cover. We tried to remove the power steering pump but were unable to get the pulley off, so we unplugged the alternator and removed the four screws holding that bracket onto the engine and set it aside. Then a few more screws took the compressor bracket including the idler and tensioner pulleys. then we disconnected the fuel system at the bottom of the motor. Somewhere in here we loosened all the pipe clamps and pulled the intake wye, put rags in the head intake plenums then proceeded to the turbo. Three pipe clamps, two bolts, and an actuating arm clip later, and out came the turbo with minimum prying to loosen it of it’s pedestal. Remove the ground wires at the bottom of the engine, they are secured at the bottom on either side of the harmonic balancer. Remove wires that will obviously hang as you pull the motor, and clear the way of other obstacles.

Removing Brackets and Ancillaries

Below is a picture of the turbo pedestal after the turbo is removed. There is an actuator for an Exhaust Back Pressure Valve behind the pedestal and it’s arm hooks to the turbo. It is held in place with a small clip that pulls free with your fingers, feel for it.

Turbo Removed

This is a close up of the fuel lines and where they connect to the motor. The lines are rigid along the frame then change to a set of flex lines before connecting to the rigid lines on the motor. These use the ford quick Disconnect fittings, but were more stubborn. The springs in these connectors weren’t normal coil springs, but leaf springs that run axially with the hose. They were pretty difficult in my case.

Fuel line disconnected

After getting all this done, we went ahead and removed the oil filter and drained the oil. We will leave the starter, motor mounts, and removal from transmission until later when we do finally pull the motor. The oil filter and starter must be removed to clear the frame cross member.

Blitz USA 11838 15 Qt. Plastic Drain Pan

Stanley 92-716 SAE and MM Combination Wrench Set, 22-Piece

Designers Edge L-14SLED Home Light Two-Light 1000-Watt Halogen Work Light with Tripod

Tags: Automotive // 1 Comment »

Well all, I’ve been busy and haven’t been able to get to post on my blog much. I lost my regular job and have been busy scrounging for money and employment. After helping my mother remodel her bathroom part-time for the past month or two, I have accepted a job offer and am awaiting the rubber stamp brigade to hit my paperwork. With a new job on the horizon I decided it was time to get serious with the 1999 Powerstroke diesel I have. It’s time to rebuild it. Now keep in mind, this isn’t a small block V8 gas engine. This is an engine used in commercial truck chassis. My particular Powerstroke is the 7.3L model, meaning it’s true identity is……International T444E. That’s right, Ford’s diesels are made by International. This thing is big and heavy, and runs different compared to the gas engines that so many are use to working on.

Now I’ve had this vehicle for a while, but have been tied up in a title battle with it, and learning as well. After getting a laptop based code scanner, and using an infrared thermometer, I figured out that the engine had problems with the passenger side cylinder bank, and specifically number 5 cylinder. So after getting a compression gauge that would fit my engine (the cheap ones won’t do it, they fit the pre-Powerstroke ford diesels), I got even more depressed. Cylinder 5 has no compression at all, and cylinder 7 has pressure that is below spec. Time to tear it down.

In preparation for the tear down, I had to purchase the necessary equipment and prep my site. Buying the equipment was easy. But my site prep was a little more difficult. I’m using my back patio as the work area, but had to make sure my engine crane that I purchased could be pulled back and rotated out of position for engine removal. It would clear the truck body, but the truck had to be parked at the edge of the patio. This means I now had no surface to roll the forward casters of the crane on, just the dirt. This wasn’t going to work, so time to make a pad of some sort. I decided that a good pad made of asphalt would work and would be easy enough to put down, and easier to dig back up when I wanted to repair the yard. I just went down to my nearest home improvement box store and bought 5 bags of what is called “cold patch”. This stuff is asphalt in a bag and is used to patch roads and driveways. Just pour it out, tamp it down, and let it set up, it will harden. So after digging out the square of space I wanted for a pad, I then poured in, smoothed out, and tamped down the asphalt into the newly dug up section of yard next to my patio. I finished this last night, then decided to setup the rest of my work area.

Having done a compression test I had to put the truck back together enough to move it. After that I then pulled the truck up into position and parked it. Now I also planned for a little more comfortable of a work site than previous endeavors. This meant I wanted to help control the West Texas wind this winter. So up with the shelter it was. A tarp stretched from the overhang of the house and tensioned to the headache rack with bungees made a nice shelter. Especially a tarp big enough to be draped down one side of the truck as a wind block. Next it was time to start tear down.

I had some help from a friend this night and I decided to start my tear down with some help. First, off with the hood. Next the bumper, then we took grill. After that came the marker lamp assemblies, headlamp bezels, then the header piece that the headlights were mounted to. Headlights were left on this piece to preserve headlamp aiming. Along with a trim piece here and there we left the tear down at that point to return to on the next visit. Stay tuned for progress.

Finishing site prep, getting ready for teardown

After site prep, we started teardown

Joes All Purpose Hand Cleaner 15 oz. squeeze tube Best Stuff in the world, and it smells great.

Advanced Tool Design Model ATD-7485 2 Ton Folding Mobile Engine Crane

Stanley 92-824 Black Chrome and Laser Etched Socket Set, 69-Piece

Tags: Automotive // 2 Comments »

At my job I have recently started taking on the responsibility of running the local asterisk box for the semi-startup tech company I work for. Previously they had outsourced the task because they lacked anyone experienced in UNIX enough to carry out the task within my particular office. The company offers Windows based solutions, but have an occasional Linux box running around, such as Asterisk boxes, or VMware virtual servers at our datacenters. Our local Asterisk box runs on CentOS 5.1 with a 23 channel PRI inbound and VOIP phones on our desks. We have several VOIP trunks connecting other systems and users, such as contractors and executives that work from home. I dove into the task not knowing anything about Asterisk, but have learned enough about the setup to modify dialplans and add users. So I decided to build my own from scratch to further my learning. Now being a Fedora user one might expect this to be based on an RPM install. I decided not to go that way. I have future plans for this system that might be non-standard so I felt justified that a good ol fashioned tar ball installation would be best. So let’s start with the basics to give you an idea of how easy it can be to build your own phone system.

First let’s download everything. I used the latest 1.4 stable release of Asterisk. You will need LIBPRI, ZAPTEL, and ASTERISK for a basic loadout. I also opted for ASTERISK-ADDONS just to see what they were. This is about as basic of an install as any other Linux program where you download the source. First download everything and then unpack it with the trusty tar -xvzf command. Now let’s build a phone system. Please keep in mind this was built on my Fedora 7 Desktop/Server double duty machine and everything was run as root user so your mileage may vary.

Change directory to the Libpri directory and issue the following commands.
make clean
make
make install
See it was easy, assuming you didn’t get any compiler errors. Did I mention the Asterisk website?

Next step is to cd over to the Zaptel directory. Before installing the Zaptel modules you will need to satisfy some dependencies for your system. On a Redhat derived system such as my install of Fedora, the big ones you will need are kernel-devel and kernel-headers. Easily accomplished with yum or whatever package manager your distro uses. The first command you run should help you figure out what your lacking all together and even tell you the command to resolve the dependencies. Here we go….
./install_prereq test
Told me I was missing some devel files for USB devices and gave me the following command to fix it.
yum install -y libusb-devel
After yum installed the required libraries I ran the command again to double check.
./install_prereq test
Everything looked good, lets install.
./configure
I ran the following command just to checkout what was going to be built and installed, but canceled off.
make menuconfig
make
make install
And that’s it for Zaptel. It’s installed, now let’s move on to Asterisk.

Ok so cd over to the Asterisk directory. During the installation there is a menu that allows you to check the options that will be installed and the dependencies lacking for anything special. If you know that you want to install a specific feature, use this menu to help you figure out the correct software to install in order to satisfy your dependencies. Also if you have problems compiling a specific portion of the system, you may be able to de-select it in this menu and try the compile again, as long as you know you won’t need it. I did this on a codec that failed to compile, and I have never used it at work, so I just removed it from the install. I did make sure to choose the Ulaw/Alaw and GSM codecs along with all the sound files for my language and codecs chosen. Let’s get started.
./configure
make menuselect
make
make install
The above command will begin downloading everything you need that wasn’t included such as sound files.
make samples
This command was optional, but should provide a base line of configuration files for us to work with in building our system.

If you go ahead and build the addons, they are a simple compile.
./configure
make
make install
make samples

Now you should be able to start the Asterisk server in the foreground with the following command.
asterisk -vvc

See that was easy. You should now have the Asterisk console staring you in the face. Just issue the help command to get an idea of what can be done from the console.

Now a lot of you may ask why in the world would you want to build a phone system unless you do it for a living. So here are some reasons.

1. You want to connect it with the one at work allowing you some work from home days.
2. It allows you more control over the phone calls coming into your house, allowing you to dodge telemarketers or control the calling habits of your children.
3. It allows you to put something else on your resume.
4. With providers like BroadVoice you can have a VOIP account to the real world, real cheap, with left over hardware, and not have to worry about a contract or specialty adapter boxes.
5. How cool would it be to have an extension in each room of the house, or have voicemail for each family member.
6. Conference calls with the family anyone? That’s right Asterisk has builtin conference bridge functionality.

These are just a few reasons you may want to look into Asterisk even as a hobbyist. Now if this is professional, keep this in mind. My company maintains a very brand name VOIP system for a client. This system has not been updated to work on new OS’s and is a patch together of at least 2-3 products to get the functionality needed. Asterisk is free when it comes to licensing, actively maintained. centrally managed, and flexible as hell. Just remeber the philosophy behind the Asterisk community, “It’s just software”. This is meant to reflect the lack of limitations. Being open source, if you can write it, it will do it.

Grandstream GXP-2000 SIP VoIP Phone Dual RJ45 VoIP

Grandstream BudgeTone 200 - VoIP phone - SIP

Asterisk: The Future of Telephony

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