Ford F250 Starter problem

The last GM vehicle I had was a 79 Chevy Malibu. It was a retired Seriff's cursier with 123,000 miles when I bought it for $500. I drove it 96,000 miles before I sold it. The only failure in that five years was the starter solinoid. I was busy with a Telethon, so I called the dealer to fix it. The SOB replace the starter instead of the solenoid, and used an inpact wrench on the mounting bolts. They twisted one off, but didn't tell me. A week later I am a hour away from home, it is one AM and the starter just spins because it has rotated away from the flywheel on the one bolt.

I had a '63 Catalina convertible. My first car. It ran great, and other than a tuneup, I put a full set of new tires on it. That was followed by a '66 GTO that was bought with a blown engine from an idiot who took it to a race track and tried to put his foot through the floor. A spun crank, and two connecting rods were damaged. I had a spare crank, bought two rods and put it back together. I replaced the two speed auto with a three, which was too bigh for the transmission oil cooler so I lost a couple used transmissions. Later I had an 'Olds Starfire' which was a compact Pontiac with different trim. The head cracked at 125,000 miles. I had it remanufactured, and drove it for several more years until a drunk ran out of the road and pushed it into my '73 Chevy stepvan. She totaled her car, my car and did $200 damage to the Stepvan. I bought a beat up '68 GMC handyvan when I got out of the service for a work truck. Beat to death, and was painted with orange acrylic by a house painter. It was a retired 'Stanley Steemer' van, and he painted over all those huge signs. I drove it for about four years before the engine blew. I was told it was an old taxicab engine. He had shoehorned a Chevy 283 into the thong becaus ehe didn't like the 292 it had when he bought it. The guy was strange.

I owned a 79 Dodge RAM. It had been in storage for years without being started. It was gummed up, beat up, and pretty sad looking, but it was $500 and I needed a truck. I cleaned the old plugs, and managed to get it to fire up on two cylinders. I let it idle for 15 minutes, coughing, smoking & shaking as two more started firing. I drove it for a couple days, and the other two were working, so I gave it a tuneup. I drove that truck for five years. The 97 Dakota I have now I've had over five years. It was $2,800. The crap clearcoat is peeling, and it has other problems, but it still runs and is safe.

The only new vehicle I owned was the '83 Toyota pickup. It lasted seven months.

Den 16-02-2013 07:11, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca skrev:

Saw one funny thing on some Chevy's a while back (1995/1996). We were told they were built in Canada and that was the reason for the all out metric tooling and threads on those. Gave us a hard time since all our tooling was imperial. Do you know if that could be true?

It was this model

only line trucks with toolboxes on the side of the bed.

Old African hunting books tell of having to send damaged rifles back to England to be repaired by craftsmen who filed and scraped the new part to fit , using candle flame soot to judge their progress. I've fitted someone's wobbly scope base to the receiver at the range by scraping it with broken glass off the ground and checking the contact area with soot from a Bic.

Made in Oshawa Ontario. Vehicles of that vintage were bastardized metric. Some parts were imperial - because they came from the USA. Some were metric - but not metric standard. For example, in place of

5/16" bolts they used 8mm - but 8mm SHOULD have 12 mm heads - they used 13 because it was "close enough" to 1/2" that 1/2" wrenches would "sorta" fit. Same with 1/4". Replaced with 6mm - which should have 10mm heads - but they used 11mm because a 7/16" wrench would "sorta" fit. So some redneck shadetree mechanic would try to force a 1/4 unf or 5/16 unf bolt into the hole, or nut onto the stud, and bad things started happening real fast. Not bad on a new vehicle where the "metric" bolts had a green colour to them - but after about 5 years?????

...

Began 10 yr or so before that--and all three US manufacturers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) did the same thing and didn't matter about whether were US- or Canadian built--they were all the same across models for any given year.

I've just found as recent as 2003 Buick LeSabre still has some SAE on a couple of the brackets on the belt tensioner assembly, the structural portion of which serves as a transition passageway for heater coolant on the 3800 V6 (and, I presume the various other incarnations of it as well).

The stupid plastic elbows w/ o-ring seals that fit between the block and the tensioner assembly had cracked; discovered it while changing them out. Why at this late date there's anything that's not metric is beyond me, but so help me, one set was exactly such that only an SAE (Imperial) tool would fit.

It basically all began when the Common Market stuff got strong enough to demand that imports have at least X% metric in order to export--up until then US was dominant-enough could just thumb nose at individual countries[1]. I'm sure there were all kinds of negotiated conditions in the economic agreements of the time but I've never looked into trying to actually discover the details thereof...

[1] We Yanks, of course, thought it was totally stupid (and most still do if one judges by the quickness w/ which it has taken hold (or not) in general use)... :)

But what the heck were we exporting then? I saw a Corvette in Paris once, but that was about it.

I may have a better answer for which parts vendors (that's where the SAE fasteners are coming from) haven't converted yet, and why. There is no money in it for me now so I'm not going through that hassle of penetrating the Tier 1/ Tier 2 press departments. But something is coming up, for which I'll be looking into it.

The cost benefits are still a mixed bag. Our annoyance is not a factor. d8-)

Den 16-02-2013 18:35, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca skrev:

Was stuck with several of those bastards in a location were it was difficult to get supplies. A 1/2" was simply not allowed if it should be a 13mm. Rather park the vehicle for the time it took to get the right spanner. Standard sizes on spanners for metrical nuts are: (thread/spanner)

6mm/10mm 8mm/13mm 10mm/17mm 12mm/19mm So my guess would be that they used 12mm heads.

You have it mixed up. Standard on an 8 is 12, everywhere in the world except north america.

I must have been buying US metric bolts then for the last 20+ years in the UK as all the M8 hex fasteners I buy have 13mm AF heads. See

You are buying hardware store fasteners - not automotive/industrial fasteners.

I'm buying industrial fasteners to ISO spec. Auto fasteners can be anything the maker wants due to quantity. For instance M7 is not a preferred size but is more prevalent these days in the auto industry as the jump in strength between M6 and M8, both preferred sizes, is significant and the intermediate M7 can perform the job where M6 is insufficient and M8 overkill. Such is the way the engineering is these days in the auto industry. IIRC a mate that works in auto engine design has many boxes of M8 fasteners with 12mm AF heads and washer faced but these are auto specials made for the application and not to a normal fastener standard.

There are 14 and 15mm hex heads on my Honda and some 18mm ones on the Ford.

Den 17-02-2013 00:13, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca skrev:

This I must give you: Glad I don't have to argue with you on a daily basis due to me not being a good looser ;-) Must admit that I went on a lookout tour on the web and you were damn right the automotive fastners/nuts that I found were skinnier than the standard nuts :-( Never gave this much of a thought just grabbed another wrench for the job. Living in Europe have wrenches and sockets in mm and having troubles with the Imperial nuts and bolts. Except for the hex/allen keys. Having a South Bend lathe I'm forced to have at least Allen keys in Imperial ;-)

Den 17-02-2013 01:07, Jim Wilkins skrev:

The Ford I know about since a Ford Mondeo sits in the driveway here. The first time i came across the odd size of 18mm I was confused, but now I konw better ;-)

What? No proper scraper in your range bag? That's a handy skillset.

Years ago a mate that speaks fluent German and French and was working in Munich at the time mentioned a German expression about something being as useful as a 17mm spanner indicating it was of little use. I thought that odd at the time as at least the spanner for the spindle on my German angle grinder was 17mm AF, maybe he got the size wrong.

What does 17mm AF exactly means? My guess would be something that expresses 17mm wrench but why calling it AF?

The clamping screws on my Swiss Multifix lathe tool holder are 7mm. I found replacements for the damaged ones in an auto parts store. The heads are 11mm which a 7/16" wrench fits nicely, so I can use the antique wrenches I've collected to go with the lathe.

The only tool I carry is a $5 Chinese ripoff of the Swiss Soldier knife. It has fixed a remarkable range of problems.