All this happened today …
Heh heh. A trip to the hardware store for you to replenish the junk drawer. I’m cutting trees, pulling up my glued down floor on concrete in the shop, and demoing sheet rock. Must have left the window open and got wet. I’ll trade. I’ll likely be at this till fall.
My son had coolant pouring out between tranny bell housing and engine on his 01 Explorer. He put it in my garage. I got home from work and he was under his truck with the exhaust system and tranny sitting on the floor. He was under his vehicle looking for freeze plugs on the back of the engine. There was none, and he realized all for nothing. Next day I got home from work, he had the upper intake off and seen coolant puddled underneath it. By now he’s getting frustrated to say the least. I took my pressure tester and applied pressure to coolant system and found the leak from the thermostat housing that was spraying coolant directly between intakes, travelling to rear of engine to bell housing. He got it all back together and when he went to plug an O2 sensor in the connector was bolted between engine and tranny. He separated tranny to remove connector and torque converter got misaligned. Re removed exhaust and tranny enough to fix. Now it is all good. Sad part is that I have a pressure tester and dye in the garage. Good part is that he learned a valuable lesson in diagnostics, and experience. He calls it the hardest thermostat replacement in history.
Friday the thirteenth fell on a Monday this month.
Heh heh. I used to consider the 13th lucky but not anymore. We’ve all been there though but don’t speak so freely of it-speaking for me anyway. Sometimes though we never do get it back together and just buy a new one.
I had the high temperature warning light come on on my 1971 Ford Maverick. I was 50 miles from home. I pulled into a Dodge agency where I had purchased the car five years earlier. The service department diagnosed the problem as a leaking freeze plug. They said the transmission would have to be pulled to replace the plug. They filled the radiator up, gave me a gallon.jug of water in case I needed to add water and sent me on.my way at no charge.
I took it to my trusted mechanic when I got home and he made the same diagnosis. When he dropped the transmission, he found that the problem wasn’t the freeze plug but a leaking heater core. On Mavericks.with factory air conditioning, it apparently was easy to misdiagnose the problem.
I wanted to.pay the mechanic part of the labor charge for removing and replacing the transmission, but he wouldn’t accept the money. It hurt his pride that he had misdiagnosed the problem.
That must be the last of the good guys.
Seriously, there is a large tendency to assume a catastrophe. I always search for the simple, cheap solution first. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. When you see water or coolant dripping it’s never clear where it’s coming from, so start with what you can check easily before you start to disassemble the entire drivetrain.
Good thing our junk drawers don’t have automatic updates or we’d always have to wait 25 minutes to find something. What would they name it, The Windows Drawer? We could have icons on our benchtop.
Thank you, Pogo.