Troubleshooting Hints
Reading Jake’s recent blog post, “A Come Back Story,” reminded me of an important lesson I learned back in 1996.
I had just retired from the Navy. Having not been in a repair shop for 20 years, I needed to catch up a bit. So I stayed close to a 30-year experienced diesel tech named Henry. He was assigned to repair an F150 PowerStroke diesel with a “no-start” condition.
Rather than use the required Ford troubleshooting form, he just started inspecting the truck based on his 30 years of experience. After three full days of troubleshooting with no success, he reached under the truck and hit the diesel fuel tank, only to find it was empty and out of fuel.
He had worked three days, for which he was paid .3 tenths of an hour. Had he used the Ford form he would have seen item “4” for “Sufficient Clean Fuel.” He would have made his time and then moved on to next truck repair. You can bet I made sure I had that form handy when needed.
The lesson was that even the most experienced technicians can benefit from checking diagnostic resources. TruckSeries fault code diagnostics include valuable links to procedures designed to assist diagnostic procedures and should not be overlooked. Many times a fault code is just a symptom of another related issue. Following procedures included in links may quickly take care of the issue. So, always take a moment to look as they contain important diagnostic hints, procedures and may even avoid a costly part replacement that didn’t fix the code. Save yourself some time and check them out – see an example below. Good luck!
