Stupid mechanics thread

[damn-I-Suck]

Okay.. so here's what transpired at the shop in school today.

I get the car on the lift, first look under there with my flashlight. The entire bottom half of the tank is wet with gas, all around. Hmm..

So I drop the tank about 6 inches just so I can get my arm in there to disconnect everything.

I get the damn thing on the workbench. I plug up everything, I stick the smoke machine in one hole, and the goddamned thing starts pushing gas out just above the horizontal seam that goes all the way around. I wipe it clean just to be sure, the whole is too small to see with the naked eye, but I could clearly see gas getting pushed out and dripping.

Can you believe it? The goddamned fuel tank itself was leaking! Steel tank BTW.

So then my buddy gives my a ride up the street to napa and I get me some permatex gas tank sealer.

The directions on the back say DO NOT drive until 4 hours after applying. By the time I got it on there, my class only had 2 hours to go. So I basically had to sit there for 2 hours AFTER class was over just to wait for the damned thing to dry.

It was a bullshit day, but I am VERY relieved that the gas leak wasn't anybody's fault. It's one hell of a coincidence, but shit happens I guess.

I'm not 100% sure if this permatex shit works well or if at all. It was a 7 dollar gamble VS spending 150$ bucks on a new fuel tank that would have taken 4 business days to order from napa.

Hey HRD, do you have any experience with permatex gas tank sealer and does it work well?

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

Hey HRD, do you have any experience with permatex gas tank sealer and does it work well?

I do have experience with that shit. And lemme tell ya, its shit. If youre just looking for a temporary fix to get you by for a few months then its fine. But dont be suprised if a few months down the road it happens again.

Where do you live? Yall got snow and salt and that sort of shit out there or what?

ALSO:

Out here in san diego, most radiator shops also deal with gas tanks. They might be able to braze that thing up to seal it correctly. I suggest getting out the phone book and call radiator shops to see if they will mess with your gas tank.

 

[damn-I-Suck]

hmm..

Well I'm all about learning how to do that shit myself, so I might look into something else.

I live in NC, not much snow, hot and humid summers, and NO they rarely salt roads only when its black ice and that aint often

 

[damn-I-Suck]

Also, I don't know how to change the thread title, so if any mod or whatever is listening, if you dont mind, can you please change the thread title to " auto-mechanic/customer horror stories"

But then again, that what I just wrote sounds kinda lame, IDK, I'm not creative enough.

If this Mod can some up with something that sounds better/more suited to the content, be my guest. I trust you'll come up with something more interesting than what I did :)

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

So today at work, i actually thought of you damn-i-suck. Going back to the machine shop shit that i do, there are several engines you see on a regular basis. The infamous 3.0liter ford is a set of heads i see bout 3 times a month.

The problem with the 3 liter heads, is that the exhaust valves will actually pound themselves into the valve seat and actually start to pull themselves through the top of the head.

The above pic shows the bottom of the cylinder head. As you can see the exhaust valve has sunk far into the bottom of the head. When this happens the valve losses its valve adjustment and the car runs very poorly with the addition of a compression loss. As you can guess an engine doesnt run very well with compression missing from a few cylinders.

The common thing i see is that most mechanics will condem the entire engine. All they see is no compression and noises and will usually sell a customer a long block as opposed to a valve job.

This is what you would expect to see on an engine that has a few hundred thousand miles on it. This exhaust valve will be replaced as well but its nothing unusual.

Also notice that the valves are a different color. The top picture indicates major run-ability issues and the valve is just fried. As to where the bottom pic shows a valve that has seen better days, in fact looks like its been running pretty lean for a long time.

Moral of the story, 3liter fords are notorious for this issue. If you look in AllData you will see bulletins for days. Its also in rangers along with the taurus and believe it or not in some older marine applications.

An old man taught me a long time ago a remedy to fix this issue. From the factory, the valve seat in the heads is made of the same material as the rest of the head. Usually this is ok but the 3 liter has pretty high combustion heat. And the exhaust valve is the poor guy that has to do all the hard work, so an exhaust valve is made of a harder material than an intake valve. Hope that wasnt confusing.

To fix the issue you machine out the old seat and put in a valve seat made for a diesel head. They are super hard and a little expensive but the issue will never return.

However your taurus could have a 3.8 in it and which this whole story made no difference to you. But i promise you, if you ever work on a taurus that just seems to runa little funny, check the compression. Ill bet you will find a cylinder that dont got none or next to none. And when you diagnos that and look like a bad ass, you will think to yourself "holy shot, that weird guy from the internet was right!"