Can Oil and Gas Ruin Your Engine? How Can You Fix That?

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Here is the Under the Hood Show podcast.

This is Under the Hood.

Welcome to the Under the Hood Show. We are glad to have you with us. Russ Evans is

here to answer your automotive questions.

Thanks for joining us under the hood.

So is Shannon Nordstrom.

Welcome, hoodies. Thanks for tuning in so we can help you tune up.

I'm Chris Carter here to answer your calls at 866-594-4150. We've got calls coming in

from all over the country. Should we get right to them?

Yeah, that sounds big.

Give anything, anything to say that's more important than that.

All over the country.

All over the country. I'm looking at it.

Like what, what, what, what do, yeah, we do. Where do we go?

Michigan, Maine.

Vermont, is that the, oh, that's Venza. I thought it was Vermont.

That's all over the country.

Yeah, I like it.

Why did, did you doubt me? Did you, I just thought it was a little...

Well, we've got a YouTube question from Australia.

I'm just saying, yeah, that's all over the world.

Yeah.

There you go.

Good point. We got calls coming in and questions from all over the world.

And that's not hyperbole.

We shouldn't have probably stopped this month long before we went to Keegan in Maine. Keegan,

you're on the under the hood show. What can we do for you?

Hey guys, first I want to thank you for, I called in a few weeks ago about a 2011 F-250

with the diesel. It was locked up. So thank you guys.

Oh, no, it was, it was completely locked up for the owner. Yeah, it's completely locked

up. Can't turn that thing at all.

And it wasn't fuel?

I did get the full story. No, I did get the story. It ran for 20 minutes. It idle for

20 minutes.

There was more to the story when they said there was oil below it.

Yeah, there was more to the story.

We wondered if there was more to the story.

Yeah.

So that's unfortunate.

A fuel leak. I just thinking about it now going back to that is like, I missed that.

It could have been hydrologged.

Yeah. If it shut. So if it died because it was getting too much fuel and missing and

you had an injector stuck wide open, could have filled a cylinder with fuel, locked it

and then that could have been fixed in a new injector.

And boom, you're good to go.

Oh, well, what I called today was the question. Yeah.

The question I had today was from my 2014 F-450 van.

I was changing out the the downstream oxygen or upstream oxygen sensors.

And I noticed on the back, I was in the rear of the engine there on the back of the intake

manifold. I was seeing some weeping or oily leakage.

I look like right where the intake manifold goes on the head.

I'm not really familiar with that manifold.

I looked it up to see what gap it should be.

I found that Dorman has complete replacement.

So I was curious, is there a known history or failure issue for these intake manifolds

on the 5.4 liter Windsor engines?

Yeah, not only the gasket leaking, but the manifold themselves.

I believe you can still purchase that entire manifold from Dorman.

It's got repair for it because they on the corners of them, they had some issues with

them just deteriorating on the corners of the manifold.

And then you get the leakage.

Okay.

Had you not noticed any leakage on the ground or anything ever?

No, no, I'm not noticing leakage on the ground and the front looks fine.

So the only one that was in there doing the oxygen sensors, I saw leakage going down the

heads.

It wasn't like actively wet wet, but it obviously had been leaking.

So then I was like, oh, I'll replace gaskets.

I wanted to see what those would be, and I saw that Dorman had a complete new different

aftermarket set of gaskets with a whole new intake manifold system.

So I was just curious if that's a known issue.

I have almost 200,000 miles on it.

I've not noticed performance issues, but I'm guessing it's time to change that.

Well, I think Russ said it earlier on another call, and we'll say it again, I'm sure.

But if Dorman makes the replacement parts, it's not because they don't fail.

Right, right.

They have the product because there's an opportunity because of failures, and they're monitoring

repair shops all the time and they're asking them, hey, what are the things that you're

seeing all the time?

They're always casting the net looking for what's that failure part out there that they

can come out with a better OE fix for, and I think they've got a pretty good inventory

of intake manifolds.

And there's other ones that they have the intake manifolds for because there's a lot

of engine replacements, and when you do an engine replacement, there's so many of these

that they get things lodged inside of them from valve failures and upper ends.

In the valve stroke, up and down, you get that stuff back up into the intake, and you'll

put it right into the new motor if you don't replace it with the new engine.

So there's other reasons, but I know on these fours, it's not unusual.

Okay.

I have one more quick question on a 2005 Jeep Wrangler.

So it's mine.

I've had a TJ for a while, a few years now, and it's been running great.

Thank you guys for mentioning ZGDP Additive, and every oil chain's been doing that, and

the engine's running great.

But I've been noticing a squeaky, cyclical sound on takeoff, and suspecting how to do

with the transmission, but I wanted to ask you guys about that.

It does have the automatic transmission.

My fluid level looks good, but it's on takeoff.

At first, I thought it was a U-joint because I had the cyclical quicker than the tire rotation,

and only went on takeoff from a dead stop, and then it would go away and run fine.

But then I also started noticing an idle, that same squeak ever so often when I was

idling on a light, almost like a misfire, but not quite like a sputter, and I hear that

squeak very lightly, the same exact squeak, not nearly as loud.

And it's regressed if it got louder, so I was wondering, is that have to do with the

torque converter bearing in that area?

It sounds like it's mechanical.

There's no blackness in the fluid.

Well, put the thing in gear.

Try forward, and also try reverse, with your foot on the brake and the gas.

And just start off very lightly first, and then a little more, and play with it, and

see if you can get this noise to duplicate without the vehicle rolling at all.

If you can get it to duplicate without, yeah, if you could.

It doesn't duplicate a neutral report.

Well, it had to be in drive to do this, but if it, if it squeaks, it could be a

torque converter issue if the vehicle's wheels are not moving at all.

But if it only does it while the vehicle's wheels are moving, that puts it back into

either a issue with a transfer case bearing or a drive shaft issue.

If you're hearing it spin, that squeak is about four times as fast as one wheel

rotation, that leaves it somewhere in the drive shaft between the output of the

transmission and that rear end.

Because that drive shaft, if it's a 410, it's going to be four times around, or

even a 350, three and a half times around.

Right.

But everything in the transmission is going to be a whole lot more coming in.

You know, you've got a thousand RPM coming in and you've got zero RPM going

out until you're rolling.

So if you hear it squeaking when you're stopped, it's in the forward section of

that transmission, probably torque converter area.

If you only hear it when the wheels move a little bit, it's got to be in the back

part.

Interesting.

So a better test would be have it in drive, but have my foot on the brakes

or and put some load on the engine and see if I can simulate the squeak.

See if you can do it right without it moving at all.

Because if you don't get that squeak unless the vehicle moves, then then it's

all shifting towards the back from the output of the transmission to the rear end.

That's where you're you're shifting that to.

There you go, Keegan.

Very good.

I appreciate it.

Thanks very much for the call.

Good luck.

That was a good, that, that was a good, I liked that one.

That one taught me some stuff.

I feel bad for him, though, because that's the one that for other people that may

not have heard the call, they called in and somebody was plowing snow and they

had a oil filter issue with what they were told by the driver, a bunch of oil on

the ground, but they got the oil back in it, but then it wouldn't start.

And they had tried all kinds of electrical stuff.

And towards the end of the call, I think we said, you sure that motor's not locked

up?

Right.

And that was just a $10,000.

Mistake mistake.

Eight, six, six, five, nine, four, four, one, five, oh, that's the number to reach

us here at the end of the hood show.

Let's go to Michigan and talk to Dave.

You're on the end of the hood show.

Dave, what can we do for you?

Hey guys, thanks for taking my call.

You bet.

So, so my question is I've got a 2018 Pacific that has showing up to 0300 and

302 code and let me give you a little backstory on that.

That code showed up about around 14 months ago in December and it came

on when it was really cold outside.

So I did what anybody would do.

I cleared the code and oddly enough, it went away.

The weather warmed up.

We roll forward another 18,000 miles to this last December.

I think you guys had the same type of weather we had here in Southwest Michigan.

It was cold and it stayed cold for a long period of time.

The 0300, the 0302 showed up again.

I would clear it, it would come right back.

It started to warm up now and that code seems to be staying away, although it's

come back a little bit.

My question to you is going down the rabbit hole on the internet, it looks like

there's that specific code, I guess it's the second cylinder and the valves

there seems to be some issue with that.

So my question would, what I've described, what are your thoughts on

your pairing that?

Well, if you've already gone the route of a new coil, a new spark plug on that,

you can eliminate that unless it's been a repeat failure.

We have a number of those coils that fail for a second time.

That's just, some of them are very poor.

I know in our shop, I've used the motor ad coils in a lot of vehicles just

because I'm tired of some of the, even the factory ones, I've had repeat failures

on the CRVs seem to be the worst.

They're just not a strong coil.

And that's why I use the motor ad coils on them.

So don't discount a coil.

You can find that out by swapping it, you just swap the spark plug and coil to

a different cylinder and see if that moves to the other cylinder.

If not, that engine has been known for some valve issues.

You'll usually hear a ticking noise in the top end of the camshafts worn out,

but even more than that, the actual valves themselves.

Shannon had this engine in a Jeep 17 and it kept burning out the coil.

Isn't this part plug fouled and coil?

Yeah.

And it, because it was not seeding the valve, probably, I think they put a

head on it, didn't they?

They put a motor in it, put a whole motor to get ahead at the time.

It was because they had so many fail.

So I, that's one of the things, and they are extremely hard to diagnose.

Basically what you're doing is if it, if it keeps falling out that one, you just

assume that's what it is because they all, they're, they're doing it.

The ones that do it all tend to do it the same way.

Um, if you do a leak down test on it, that might have been the same cylinder

that he just, yeah.

They, they, they tend to pass a leak down compression.

They look good and you're like, okay, it's passing.

Well, how do we know?

Because it's killing this coil and plug on this cylinder every time.

So on number two, that's, that's kind of the way we lean on that.

And it does, it seems to do it worse.

They hang up more when it's cold out than when it's warm in the summer.

We don't really see this a lot.

Like if it's over 60 every day, but when it starts dropping down, you know,

15, 20 degrees or less, that's when we start seeing this issue more when

those vehicles are going to have it.

Have they put a coil on it and then a spark, spark plugs?

No, I haven't, I haven't put a coil or a spark plug on it.

Cause it looks like I've got it.

Do I have to remove some of the intake to get to that number two cylinder and

that coil?

Right.

Okay.

And you might just swap it.

So if you do pull the intake, get your go, go down, get a, pick up a gasket for

it and then pop the intake off and then take that number two cylinder, take the

spark plug and the coil out and move it to the other side of the engine that you

can get to easily inspect the spark plug for us.

And you know, as long as it looks fair, but then put the other one from the

good side on the side that you can get to put that in the back.

So now you know, you've eliminated that part of the issue, put it together and

see how it runs.

Hopefully it'll just move to the other cylinder.

And then if it does bring yourself down to advanced auto parts, get yourself a

coil, get yourself a set of spark plugs, I'd put a whole set of spark plugs in it

at this, you know, at this age here and run it.

Okay.

No, that's good advice.

Thanks for that.

So my second question is it falls more into, we're likely going to be replacing

that and we're looking at the seven Cedar SUVs from GM, like the reverse

the enclaves and that two questions on that.

I talked to a couple of people that have had some older ones, like the 15 and 16

year and all of them have commented on transmission issues.

So my first question is, have, is that gone away?

And my second one is it looks like they're putting a new engine in that one,

that 2.5 liter turbo in the last couple of years.

Any comments on the transmission in that newer engine that they seem to be using?

Oh, the engine, we haven't had problems with yet.

They're not out long enough to know if they do, most of them would be under

warranty, so they wouldn't be coming in, but we still hear about them from customers.

And so far we haven't, doesn't mean we won't the turbo engine in the CRV, the

one five, we didn't hear a lot about problems with those either until they

were out of warranty and now we see a lot of them with, with different issues,

turbos and some engine issues.

So that was just to, yeah, I tell people, well, maybe you're looking

for a non turbo if you're looking for one.

So I don't have data on that yet.

As far as the transmissions go in the, we haven't seen a big demand for them.

A lot less than they're in, it's, it's pretty fresh yet.

Yeah.

If we go back like a 14, 15, 16, oh yeah, we, we did a number of those.

And some of those, they had recalls right off the bat on some of those early ones,

like, you know, seven, oh eight, oh nine.

I mean, they, they had them out like for a year and they were already doing

some recalls on trainees, but, and then GM's trainees just, they had some

problematic things from time to time in that era in a few different vehicles.

But if you were looking, would you go for the new, new transmission, not the new engine?

Well, I think I just think if he's looking at vehicles in the, in the, in that

era, newer couple of years that are out there for a late model use car, I think

he's going to, I really think he's going to be fine.

Just, I think Russ was starting to go down this road.

But if you buy one of them now, that they're using the smaller displacement

and a turbo to give you some amazing power and good fuel economy, do understand

that you probably have a different maintenance interval on your spark plugs

than you would ever imagine compared to the V six that you have now.

Now he might have a maintenance level for a different reason, but as a rule on

those, you can go a hundred thousand, 80,000 and not ever worry about it.

But a lot of these new turbos, they're talking 30, 40,000 miles, but

spark plugs in them.

So just something different, something to consider.

Look at what the maintenance chart is.

Just so you're aware of what it is.

Don't get scared by it.

Just understanding what it's going to be.

Yeah, you can get at everything.

The price of spark plugs has gone up a lot lately.

Not 69 cents anymore.

I have been my cost on, let's just say the last five engines we've done

have been over $15 of spark plug.

Yikes.

Now I did a, well, I can't say all of them though.

I did a Chrysler V eight.

And by the way, if you don't know it, a lot of those, the four or six and the

are the four, seven, the five, seven takes 16 spark plugs.

They were $14 and 90 cents each times 16.

So when you're telling somebody, you're going to put an engine in

and we put spark plugs in.

That's a shocking number.

And when I say, well, you know, it's this and I go, well, this shop's going to do

it for this price is like plus parts, right?

Well, yeah, they said plus parts.

Well, they're probably getting a whole lot more per spark plug than I'm getting

for those.

I just want them in there.

So the engine goes good and we can give you that year warranty.

Ask them what they think the total estimate will be by the time they get all

the parts involved and they usually call me back and say, well, they have no

idea because they don't hardly do engines.

So they can't really tell me.

It's like, well, I do thousands of them have done thousands of them.

So we can give you a pretty good idea of what each engine needs.

Yeah, you're going to need 16 spark plugs.

This will be over 200 bucks just for spark plugs.

Dave, thanks very much for the call.

Good luck.

I have a question that's like a old car talk puzzler question.

Maybe the Pacifica, are there any, what, is there any other car that changed

styles, makes body styles without changing the name?

Just one year to the next.

It was a different type of vehicle.

Explorer.

Yeah.

Didn't they dump the old Explorer and go to the cross when they did or did they

drop a year?

I just remember they went from basically brutal drive frame on chassis to

front wheel drive in, in one point.

But it was the same.

I mean, it was still a utility.

The Pacifica changed from a crossover to a minivan to a minivan.

I think about that one for a little bit.

There's got to be others, but I like that.

Let's talk to Ron.

You're on the end of the hood show.

Ron, what can we do for you?

Hello, guys.

Thanks for taking my call.

You bet.

2009 Toyota Venza.

Thought we had a rear wheel bearing going out.

Took it to the repair shop.

He says it's a differential noise doing some research on the internet.

Apparently they had some differential problems there.

Are you familiar with them problems?

Oh, yeah, we put a few in.

Uh, you can you replace gears in them or do you replace the hole we're in?

You replace the whole thing.

It's, it's small enough and hard enough to get into and difficulty getting seals

and parts that I don't even think you can buy the internal parts for those.

You, you're going to have to get a whole used unit.

And I don't believe you can buy a new one at the dealer anymore either.

I think it's going to be a certified used aftermars, you know,

auto recycler, car dash part.

Okay.

There is available parts then or are there used parts available for them too?

Yeah.

I know that's when you go to, you go to car dash part and you could look to see

what's out there under a differential.

Um, now I'm just, you know, we, we made an assumption there, but did you, did

they give you a quote on a, on a new differential or how, how'd that go?

No, no, I, I haven't checked.

I just, uh, I was planning, it was going to be a wheel bearing.

So this is kind of news to me.

So anyway, I haven't checked any further than that.

I just thought I'd check with you guys and see if you encountered that problem before.

Is the, uh, is the noise associated also with some trouble?

We just got a little bit here, but just, is it causing any problems or just starting

to get a noise?

No, no problems.

Just, uh, you hear the noise a little bit.

I mean, as you start out, uh, five, 10 miles an hour, you can hear it.

Uh, the only other option, I guess, is turn the radio up higher.

Well, they want to, they're going to want to check the fluid.

And when they pull the fluid, inspect it, and if there's debris in there, there's a

problem, but if it's clean inside, they might think about an additive or something

in there, you know, if it's not, if it's not debris inside of it, yeah.

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866-594-4150.

Let's go to Iowa and talk to Grant.

You're on the end of the hood show.

Grant, what can we do for you?

Grant, are you there?

Let's put him on hold, see if we can get back to him.

Let's talk to Byron.

You're on the end of the hood show.

Byron, what can we do for you?

What do you think there, Russ?

Well, let me tell you.

Byron, are you there?

All right, we lost.

We lost them.

Well, Byron has got a 13 traverse.

He most likely has a transmission problem.

We don't know this for a fact, but making some assumptions here.

The, uh, those GM vehicles, we had that call earlier with a newer one.

They were asking about a transmission.

So that's why I kind of went down that road.

Probably shouldn't do that.

That's a bad assumption.

Just to tell somebody that has called us for help, right?

We can't talk to that.

They probably have a transmission problem.

That's probably not good.

No, that's probably this.

That's just a bad thing.

We don't want to do that.

We got, uh, when that happens, though, uh, with some of those vehicles, there are,

just like we talked about with Dorman having an OE fix for things where if they

have an OE fix, there's probably a problem.

That same thing applies to transmissions.

We had, we know a lot of transmission remanufactures.

I'm sorry.

I got off on this tangent here, but they don't sell every

transmission for every vehicle.

Right.

If they only sell the ones that are breaking, right.

And so they're again, if you look up in their, in their catalog and they have

got in stock transmissions or lots of sales on a certain one, it's well, number one,

they maybe made a lot of those vehicles, but number two, there's a lot of them

failing or else they wouldn't go down that road either.

And so that's just something that, uh, you pay attention to all the time on our

side of the fence when they start making remanufactured parts or if there's

aftermarket available or whatever it might happen to be.

Uh, that's the, that's the kind of things that we pay attention to.

Let's see if we have grant.

Now, Grant, are you there?

I am here.

Okay.

Go ahead, Grant.

Okay.

So I got a town and country, oh wait, then I'm pretty sure the head gas is going

out on because it's pushing water out the reservoir and I add about a cup or two

to the radiator every, every other trip and it's maintaining.

So that's about ready to die.

It's got 175,000 on it.

If I were to replace the head gasket on it, if that is the actual issue, God knows

the transmission is going to die.

So our family has shrunk down from five children down to one here in about a year.

So we're looking to move down in size to like a crossover or something like that.

Somewhere between an old 12 to an old 18, I think is my price range.

I know the GM products in that area are basically junk from what I've understood

from a couple of different YouTubers I follow.

Uh, car wizard out of campus is what made the main one.

He loves the Toyota, but I don't think I can touch a Toyota in my price range.

You guys have any suggestions?

Well, one thing I would do just for fun and fun doesn't have to cost money.

But in this case, it cost you a little bit of money.

I would try some KCO ultimate in that town and country.

And just, just see if I tried to dump, I tried to dump them in last night, but

the radiator was too full.

So I only got like a quarter of the bottle in.

You got to get it all in there.

So I'm going to have to wait until I dump some more water out.

And you can even do something even more fun with that.

If you got a cylinder, you know that the coolant is going into, you're getting

that pressure in there, take the spark plug out of that cylinder, take the coil

and the spark plug out of it.

So there's no compression in there and run the engine with it out.

We've had them, we've had like a Cadillac North Star four sixths.

That was just blowing water in there.

So we took the radiator cap off.

We filled it up with a bottle of KCO ultimate pulled the spark plug out of

the cylinder that was getting the antifreeze in it and ran it till it was

completely warm, let it cool down, ran it till it was warm again, cooled it down,

put the spark plug back in it and ran it and it sealed that cylinder up.

Because you took the pressure out those through the gas.

Yeah, you have to take the pressure out because you've got 16 pounds of coolant

pressure pushing one way, trying to get the KCO into the cylinder.

And then you've got 200 pounds trying to push back.

So it's not going to seal.

It's just keeping it, it can't reach it.

See, this is right now, I think it's just the 200 pounds pushing it back because

what's really weird about it is that it never pulls any of the water back out of

the reservoir.

Right, because you're pushing, you're pushing, it's like a one way valve in

that gasket, you got 200 pounds pushing out and it's not, it's not pulling it back

in because wherever that gasket's blown out, it's pushing in and it's like a

little flapper valve keeping it the other way.

So what we would do is we'd pull the spark plugs out, right down where

they came out of and look at them real close.

You're probably going to see just one of them that looks different than the others.

It's probably going to be real clean from the steam.

That's the one you want to leave out or and look at your misfire monitor on a

scanner, see which engine, which cylinder's missing and then leave that plug out and

run it like that and try to, you know, unhook the injector so you're not getting

fuel in there, pull the spark plug out of it and let me jump in with a question

for Grant before we go any further.

Grant, do you want the town and country to stay or are you really

don't sell to somebody else broken?

Right, right, right.

I'm just wondering if you want to fix it.

I mean, do you want to try it?

That's why I said just for fun.

The town and country is going to drive until it dies.

Okay.

I just need to know what I'm going to replace it with.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Now, now we're back in and I'm going to go in a little bit here where

whoever the YouTuber you're watching there, they've got an audience because

they're probably saying some things that are dramatic and fun.

And that's what gets an audience usually.

And not necessarily, he's just a good old run-of-the-mill mechanic.

I mean, that's good.

That's good.

He's a fairly reasonable guy kind of thing.

I'm not going to say his name because I don't know.

No, no, no, that's okay.

That's all right.

But he's got a good follow-up.

But if you go with a 16 GM crossover that somebody has already done the timing set

in the engine with a 3.6 that's in there.

That's the problem.

I'm afraid I'm not going to get that.

I'm not going to get that timing change fixed already.

I'm going to be buying the car that the timing change is going out.

Or, you know, I want to try and avoid that.

Car facts will help you because a lot of times in today's world,

so many of the shops are connected through that system that if we do the work, it just

shows up on there.

And you can find those things out sometimes to see that there's been an engine repair done.

I know we have at least of the regular repeat customers we have that do oil changes and stuff.

I know I've got at least a dozen of those customers that have those vehicles.

And maybe two of them have ever had to have that done.

And they're all well over 100,000 miles.

And with the transmissions, sure, they go out.

I could say they're all junk, yes.

But if every one of them was, we wouldn't have any to sell here at Nordstrom's because

they'd all be sold because we'd sell everyone.

We have them for sale in our inventory.

And we pretty much specialize in one of our biggest things we do is engines and transmissions.

We have every make and model in our shop.

It can be a Toyota.

It could be a Ford GM Chrysler.

It doesn't, you know, Honda, Audi, Volkswagen.

It doesn't matter.

We have all of them.

Our friend Jeff just called us and wanted to quote on a Sienna van, all-wheel drive.

Fairly new.

And it had metal in the...

I was going to let you know.

He just called me the other day and said it was covered under warranty.

They did some digging and found a special campaign coverage that paid for it.

Brand new transmission.

Yeah, they were lucky.

But that was a Toyota Sienna van.

And that's a van that I would recommend to people typically.

It just had a failure.

But we do see a lot of failures.

But like I said, I just don't...

It's not overwhelming.

There was a time where we had an overwhelming number of Chrysler transmissions back in the

late 80s and early 90s that were just 100,000.

I got a problem with it.

It's bad.

They just were.

And we had head gaskets that were always bad on the old 38 Ford cars and vans.

They just went bad.

But with these transmissions, if you owned in Acadia, I would say probably

two out of 10 are going to have a problem at some point in their life.

That's 20%.

But two out of 10 and they made like a million over a million a year with that transmission

model of vehicles.

So that's a lot.

I guess we're trying to say we're not completely scared of the domestic stuff.

I'm not.

But I want to see what it looks like.

Get a pre vehicle inspection.

What is the condition of that transmission fluid look like?

Has it been fixed?

Has it ever had one put in it?

Yeah, the vehicle inspection and looking at.

And the Carfax reports, we brought this up before.

They are really good, but they're not the be all end all because there's

certain repair shops that don't report to the system with the system that they use.

There are certain states that they may not have the DMV information at the same level

as another state or maybe not at all.

They've got really good coverage.

But I wonder what their numbers are that they brag about.

I would just say as a person on the radio talking to people,

there's probably a 10 to 20% gap in coverages of what's put into that system because they just

don't have the relationships or people have done it on their own or they're part of a private fleet.

You know, there's different, not all the information ends up in there.

I mean, obviously their goal as a company is to get every connection they can get.

And we use the heck out of it at our dismantling facility to be able to look up vehicles.

And we've told people that too.

If you're going to buy an engine and you're going to buy it on the internet

and it's a broker of some sort, first I would be very cautious if they're not

able to show you the vehicle they took it out of as their own and the VIN number matches.

But run a VIN check on it.

Make sure they're telling you the truth on the miles.

Make sure that you can see anything you want to do about it.

That's a, it's a tool that cost a few bucks.

It's at your disposal nowadays that I would not have recommended that strongly 15 years ago.

Gotcha. Does that help you out there, Grant?

Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Yeah, great, great to talk with you.

And let us know if that case you'll experiment works.

Because sometimes when they talk about it in their marketing,

sometimes they're just too big of a gap.

I mean, there's too big of a hole and it's not going to work.

My heater core and my 79 trans amp, it didn't fix.

Because the corner of the heater core is most likely corroded out.

I didn't open it up yet.

And I'm not going to probably, I re-routed it.

But the, the water pump tiny leak that it had, gone.

Took care of.

866-594-4150.

That's the number to reach us here at the end of the hood show.

You got something interesting over there.

I do. Chris, did you ever get involved in the, the fair?

Did you ever bring any projects for 4-H to the fair or maybe something for FFA,

ever in your life or your kids?

Officially, me, no.

Unofficially, yes.

Every year I did one with my daughter.

My wife, really, she got a couple really nice ribbons.

So what's the best ribbon you ever got?

Oh, my daughter through very, she, she was grand champion, went to the state fair.

So we're talking purple ribbons.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Sashes.

Yeah.

The whole thing.

Lots of, lots of rewards.

Deserved and earned.

Yes.

Yeah.

Also a few that my wife earned when she was real little.

You know, with some help.

Soapbox Derby?

No soapbox.

Pinewood, Pinewood Derby?

Okay.

All right.

Never.

Well, I tell you what.

Never exceeded it then.

I'm holding in my hand that a project that probably should get a purple ribbon.

That thing is a perfect 4-H project right there.

It just happens to be.

It has happened to be from our, our hoodie Craig that sent us a packet that he prepared

as a thank you gift because he called in and we talked to him about his Nissan hardbody.

And we talked to him about his problems and he'd already figured it out.

He had a light problem.

He had, but he had restored the truck and it was just such a good story.

Rusty decided to send him a hoodie.

And as a thank you, I've just got a chance to browse through it.

But there was a lot of time and energy put together on this packet.

And it's really, it's really neat.

It talks about stories of when he was trucking, stories of the restoration of the hardbody

that he did himself, bought it new.

And just a very nice typed up hand signed thank you to the hoodies.

And this is really, really, really neat.

So I just wanted to say thank you to Craig, our hoodie with the heart, our hardbody hoodie.

It was, this is really cool.

I, and I can tell that you put a lot of work into this and spent a little bit money on glossy paper

and printer ink and.

If you had that, pick, pick any of your cars, pick any, any of your transams, your collectors.

If you had a folder like that on that vehicle that we're talking about, that Transam,

what would that add to the collectability of it?

It would add 10%, I bet ya, with this kind of a trail.

When you see that stuff at Barrett Jackson, people go nuts for it.

Yeah, I've got one car that has a booklet like this that somebody else had put together.

And it's, it's very valuable.

It stays in the car.

And, but this is about more than just the Nissan.

This is about other things in his life and very much appreciate it.

And we'll, we'll all take some time to look through it.

Absolutely.

And thanks for sending that to the Under the Hood Show.

We really appreciate it, Craig.

866-594-4150.

Let's talk to Chris here on the Under the Hood Show.

Chris, what can we do for ya?

Well, gentlemen, I got a 15 RAM with the Cummins in it.

It's got the 68 RFP transmission in it.

Obviously, had a bunch of transmission issues to actually get out right now,

getting the transmission rebuilt.

Overdrive went out for a second gear, different things like that.

What is something that's got 120,000 miles on it?

I also have three more RAMs various years that have the exact same transmission in it.

Looking to see what we can do, their work trucks, we use them to pull trailers

every single hour of every day.

Wondering what we can do to prevent transmission failures

that prematurely on our trucks, I guess.

We obviously, we're very cautious and we do all our maintenance, things like that.

Just kind of wondering if this is a fluke thing, is this just a dodge problem,

which seems to be kind of the norm?

Or is there something we can do preventative maintenance like?

What did they tell you the failure was caused by?

Was the fluid black and burnt when they went to repair this?

Or was it a hard part failure in there?

It was the fluid was dark red, had a burnt smell to it.

They said more likely the one that they're redoing had a tune on it.

So it was just a tow tune, but it was setting the pressures at 200.

They said factories at 160.

So they did say, obviously next time try to bring it in,

drop throttle body, reduce some stuff on that and we should be good to go.

But I guess just trying to get some second opinion.

Well, pressure too high in a transmission is usually better than too low.

I mean, you don't want it too low, it'll slip too high.

You slow down some of the slippage, but if you get too much,

you can actually have valves that don't actuate.

So they, they can cause a slip too much pressure.

So it's got to be a happy medium in there.

You probably want it just a little more.

Or you can break hard parts if you get it too hard.

If it's shifting hard banging in between gears, that would cause it.

Fluid temperature is very important.

Keep it down and keep the fluid clean.

If the fluid's getting hot, even if it's clean fluid, but you're getting it hot,

parts are going to melt and fatigue and break.

So if you're pulling trailers with these, if you're not in that 80% of the maximum recommended

factory towing, you know, if they say it's 10,000 pounds, that means 8,000 pounds max.

That's everybody in the truck, the trailer, everything.

If you're going to be towing all the time, it's, it just takes its toll slowly.

So if you get a hundred thousand miles on a vehicle and you've been pushing that max towing

every single time or exceeding it by 500 to a thousand pounds,

it's enough to cumulatively add wear to the transmission until something finally breaks.

I don't know what you got for towing, but that's something to keep in mind.

If you can spread it around, if you've got heavier loads, sometimes like here,

we have several trucks.

And if we know we're going to tow something, we've learned the hard way.

Don't send your half ton out to Rapid City to tow a trailer back.

Send your one ton out there to tow it back.

Even though the half ton may be able to tow it and you're within that 80%,

if you're coming back and you're driving full speed and you're pushing a very heavy wind and

like here, they're talking about 70 mile an hour winds coming up.

And that's not uncommon to get 40 mile an hour headwinds here.

That all of a sudden makes that 8,000 pound load a 13,000 pound load.

If you're pushing a headwind at that speed, so you could overdo it.

So if you can switch out, a lot of it has to do with it's like Shannon will say,

it's not what you drive.

It's how you drive it.

You got to kind of look at the load and with employees, it can be hard.

I mean, I've been an employee driving somebody else's vehicle other than here where it's like,

it's like the rental car, Shannon says, that's not my car.

I just drive it, right?

You know, well here, here's the difference.

I drive those cars as an employee, but I have to fix them.

And it's, I'm paying for it.

It's coming out of my pocket, out of my budget when it breaks.

So I want to take care of it.

That makes it a little different.

Yeah, sure.

Hey Russ, I'm just trying to remember on this particular model range that they still have.

That's an eight or 10 speed.

Yeah, they still have the thermostats on the side of them.

And is there?

They're internal.

Yeah, it's all internal.

And you got the pan, which is the filter.

So if you switch out the pan to, you can't flush it because of the thermostat.

So you need to drain and fill.

So you get an aftermarket pan.

The Dorman pan that's made for it has a removable filter,

not like the factory where it's built in and you can't take it out.

And it also has a drain plug.

So all you have to do is just drain it.

That's like a 30,000 mile drain on those drain and fill.

That's cheaper on a work truck than if you wait.

But I know that fluid's expensive.

But you can't, if you buy it by the gallon instead of by the court,

you can save about 40% is what I found even just yesterday trying to buy some.

So buy it by the gallon and I would drop it at 30,000 miles, at least inspect it.

And if you got a pan on it that will allow you to drain it with just by pulling the plug,

that's the best way to do it.

Does that aftermarket pan give any more capacity or any different cooling?

No, it's exactly the same.

But for filling it, you need a special tool that you can purchase on Amazon for about 60 bucks.

It's you fill it up.

It's got a hose coming off it.

You hook an air compressor to the other side of it and then it allows you to just

fill it because it's a nightmare.

Having a little school session with your people that drive the trucks to talk about transmission

temperature and what to watch is going to go a long way.

And sometimes it's hard, but like we do around here,

and you know, if you're at a company, you're like,

I don't know how to get them to do it if it doesn't affect their pocketbook.

Here we say, hey, we got a special, you get a bonus if you work here and you protect the

equipment so we don't have to spend it because we're at this level.

And you're going to make money by driving it better.

Chris, thanks very much for the call.

Good luck.

Question came in for you specifically.

How are the EV buses holding up that you were involved in the purchase of years ago?

I see them every day.

I'm not on the school board anymore.

So you don't know?

I mean, I actually talked to Tim, the maintenance and transportation manager.

You don't have to spin it now.

Unfortunately, we were at a funeral when I talked to him, but

he said that they've been working great for what we bought them for, for our local routes.

They had one that had a pesky problem with the throttle,

and the problem was something that they had to figure out,

and it ended up being an electrical connector.

And they're still able to get the information through a couple of the big fleet companies,

but that particular company is only operating in Canada now.

And so it put a little bit of an interesting twist on it,

but he said they've been working great as intended.

Has it been five years, four years?

And just trying to think has been at least that.

Oh, when we started in the show in the studio.

Yeah, it's real similar.

I'd have to go back and look at my pictures on my phone.

I can tell you, isn't that amazing?

Sometimes you would find your picture, you look at the date, like...

No way.

No, really?

Well, if they continue to hold up for any bus,

if that was a diesel bus or a gas bus, at five to eight years,

we'd be looking about.

They're getting pretty worn, so if they can keep rolling and...

Yeah, no, so far, so good.

Why not?

Bob, there you go.

There's the answer to that question.

All right, this is the aftershow.

Probably going to be short if you've got a...

Yeah, I mean, so the electric school bus is what you're just talking about.

We don't know how...

We think about five years.

Yeah, I'm just...

When were you the...

That was the first...

I just got off...

This is my first year of not being involved in negotiations and all that stuff,

so it's been a year.

I got off in July of last year.

And you don't have any more kids in the school district?

No, we're done.

Are you able to not care?

No, I still care.

No, I know, but...

Not at the same level that I cared when I was on there.

I mean, because obviously you're making the decisions and you're involved innately with it.

And you care in general.

Yeah, no, I read the minutes and see what happens and...

Shake your head.

See what our new board's doing and they look like they're making good decisions.

Yeah, I would have done that.

I'm always going to think some of that because you got things that you were really engrossed in.

Oh yeah, I suppose, yeah.

It's hard...

You have editorial ownership and it's always hard to walk away from sometimes.

So when were you on that board?

And then I'm just trying to figure out when those buses came in because that was a big deal.

Well, I'm just trying to think.

Paul that fixes Teslas and forklifts, he was at our warehouse picking up the electric pallet jack

the same day the buses got delivered.

And so I want to say it's been four years.

Okay.

Is your phone buzzing right now?

I can figure it out.

I know how I can figure it out.

If this works right, here's a little test to see how good I am.

I'm going to my photo library.

I'm in the entire library of 41,496 photos on my phone.

And I'm going to search the word bus on my iPhone.

We used to offload...

There is 40 plus pictures of buses on my iPhone.

I just offloaded my photos because it was filling up the cloud.

So we offloaded them.

The whole cloud?

Yeah.

I don't miss the pictures at all, but what I do miss is this.

I miss the archive of it because I went to look for something for the same reason.

Like, when was that?

Let me go look.

Oh, I don't have those pictures anymore.

So I totally get that.

I don't have any.

I don't have 40 plus photos.

For the reason they were going to have to buy and build a new data center.

Yeah.

Isn't that nuts that all of us are using?

We're storing so much garbage in the cloud.

And when we do a Google search and it says here's the AI search.

Yeah, the AI search.

All that requires hundreds of little data storage.

Tons, gallons of water every time you put yourself as a cartoon.

All right.

Here's what I've got.

Okay.

Wow.

I don't have the picture of the buses when they were being unloaded.

Because I think I took a video now that I think about it.

But I have the pictures of the buses that we had to destroy when they were being destroyed.

Okay.

And that happened within about six months later.

Okay.

I'd say within a six month window.

Okay.

So as I look at those pictures, the most recent ones, I got to go this way.

Could have jumped those.

We should have set up a ramp and jumped those buses that put it on our YouTube channel.

2024.

Okay.

This is when I destroyed buses.

All right.

So that means we had to have the other buses or else we weren't going to destroy the other ones.

But that was nothing.

That's two years ago.

But not even.

Two year and a half ago.

Really.

Yeah.

I'm just looking to see if I have any other dates.

Because we did also destroy some buses when there was a LP liquid propane buses that we bought.

Now, all these pictures are 24.

So I think that we got those buses in...

23 probably.

Early 24, late 23.

Okay.

All right.

So, and I'm talking to Tim, they had this one problem with the throttle.

And the guy helped him over the phone diagnose it.

And he said, pull that plug in apart.

And so they, he had somebody else over there, Mr. Stotter was over there helping him too.

And they started pulling some plugins apart and just pushing on wires.

And they found one that wasn't quite crimped good.

You find that sometimes in that sort of stuff.

Motorhomes, buses, campers, they're assembled.

Things happen.

And so that fixed the problem.

But they did, they do know from another school district that they needed a windshield.

And for the Lyon bus, which is the brand that we have,

there was not a windshield available easily because that, like I said,

the United States operations went bankrupt along with a lot of other EV stuff.

But they still have presence in Canada.

And there's a big fleet that bought their technologies equipment and that sort of a thing.

They just haven't had to use it yet.

Sure.

So there's, there's some caution signs, but we've been good so far.

All right.

There you go.

Hey, anything else?

You got something?

I just thank you to our YouTubers.

I mean, continuing to tell friends and others.

We've watched our subscriber base grow and we appreciate that.

And if you're watching right now and haven't commented,

we are giving away advanced auto parts has given away a diehard tool set.

So comment on this show and we will draw a winner from everybody who comments.

Yeah.

And that's something, a good kit.

Something, a good thing to win.

You should always have a toolkit in your car and be prepared.

You know, I've got stuff that's been under my back seat that I've used.

When I always like, Oh, that's right.

I put that in there.

For other people's cars.

Yeah.

But it's always nice to have it.

It's like, Oh, that's right.

I do have that back in my, in my area there or else my old, the charger, the, uh,

rugged geek, rugged geek.

I have one.

It's still there.

Yeah.

I just, I narrowed it down to, I have two left.

I had like six of them and after, I mean, it's been over a decade.

So problems with them or other people got them.

No, they didn't work, um, for jump starting cars anymore.

And it turned out to be just the connectors.

So I have two with the connectors that will connect and auto detect and work.

Oh, those are the newer updated ones that they had.

And they'll start, but the other ones, all those were junk.

I threw them away and I still have the batteries.

They still run the air compressor.

So I can use them to inflate tires and stuff, but that's it.

They, so what I did is it's been, when I can think about it, it's usually it's spring and fall.

I'll take the one I have left.

I just did one, uh, Monday this week.

I had a car that was a little weak that I was going to need to jump start.

So instead of using our big one from the shop, I just took my rugged geek out there and hooked

it up and it started it right up.

So I looked at it.

It still said 95% on it.

So then I plugged it in and recharge it.

I said, this is good.

This one's good.

It's been tested.

Yeah.

And, and those kind of lithium ion batteries don't usually just fail instantly.

Like a lead acid can.

So then I took it and did it with the other one earlier and it works.

So I was like, okay, I have two that work right now.

But really, I shouldn't expect them to last 10 years.

Right.

I should really be thinking about just getting new ones at five years, but I got them.

They work.

I'm okay.

All right.

There we go.

One, one more rabbit hole when Russ said lithium ion, it triggered me.

I'm having conversations with a company that has a method and an extinguisher that their

videos are showing and their testing that's been done.

It's locally here as Yankton, South Dakota have been able to extinguish an EV battery fire.

Okay.

And I'm going to be talking to them this more again on Monday, but it's, it involves,

it's from some folks that were in the business of trying to use funding, public funding,

government funding to recycle the raw materials from the batteries.

And in the process of doing it, they had enough fires where they were having things shoot,

even in their water submersion, it would be shooting flames out.

They were telling me in different things.

They started investigating and figuring out and they created an agent that will subdue the flames

and surround them and choke them.

And so they've got something that by what I've watched on video and by what they're telling me

is quite effective.

And so they've got to, they just got another big round of public funding and we need to learn

more because it's something we're interested in for our trade association.

Sure.

For our members to have something on hand as we're running across these,

there's more and more of these vehicles that are going to be coming into facilities.

They haven't stopped making them, right?

They're just not being mandated.

There's still a lot of people buying them.

Still a lot of people driving them.

There's a big old chunk of them coming off lease in the next couple of years

that are going to be probably very affordable for people to buy and bring into the market.

So we're going to probably see some sort of an acceleration in that.

And we want to make sure that people have the right tools at their disposal

because we're worried about the ones that end up in trouble.

They end up in a flood.

They end up in an accident in a certain way where it compromises.

Like our friends that had a fire at their salvage facility and burned down a building

may be affected by a fork of a forklift that hits the bottom of a battery case and

affects the cells and causes them to start off gassing and go into thermal runaway.

So I'll keep you posted on that.

Very, very intriguing.

And we're continuing to talk to them.

Make sure that it's something that makes sense.

That is certainly, no matter what, will have to be addressed.

Yeah, it's a huge issue.

And there's fire blankets out there that can hold things at bay.

And they come with their set of danger with some of the fumes that get trapped in different things.

But it's the kind of stuff that we're working on for the trade association and for our own business,

for our own employees, for the tools that they need to take care of problems.

There you go.

Thanks for watching the end of the hood show.

Thanks for being part of it.

We appreciate it very much.

With Russ Evans, this is Shannon Nordstrom thanking you for tuning into The Nordstroms

Under the Hood Show.

Have a great day and remember PTLA.

The opinions heard on this program, based on the many years of experience of Russ and Shannon,

are offered for entertainment value only and as a guide to your repair needs.

No claim to repair or cause is given or implied.

Always consult with your own certified technician and follow all safety procedures

before attempting any repair.

To be a part of the show, call 866-594-4150.

Find out more by visiting UnderthehoodShow.com.

Under the Hood is produced by Prairie House Productions.

All content is the property of Nordstroms Automotive Incorporated

and may not be used without our permission.

Copyright Nordstroms Automotive Inc.

Can Oil and Gas Ruin Your Engine? How Can You Fix That?

About this episode

Toyota Venza

Ford F-250

diesel

engine lock-up

oxygen sensor

intake manifold

Dorman

Ford 5.4 liter Windsor engine

aftermarket parts

torque converter

drive shaft

coil

spark plug

plug fouled

leak down test

compression

turbo

displacement

maintenance interval

V6 engine

warranty

differential fluid

additive

agreed value coverage

car club membership discounts

Berkeley One Classics

parts recycling network

Chrysler Town and Country

Carfax

Cummins

electric pallet jack

lithium ion batteries

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