Mark: Hi, it's Mark Bossert. We're here with Bernie Pawlik, doing the Pawlik Automotive Podcast talking about cars. How are you doing this morning Bernie?
Bernie: Well.
Mark: You're doing well, that's excellent. So we're talking about a 2004 Ford F-450 that had a manual transmission repair. What was going wrong with this vehicle?
Bernie: This vehicle was towed to our shop with actually a different issue, the engine wouldn't run, it wouldn't start. So we diagnosed that, repaired the issues, got the vehicle running quite nicely and were out on a road test and during the road test, it's a six speed manual transmission, the transmission shifter just jammed up between third and fourth gear. Took a lot of coercing to finally get it to move out of that jammed position, we were able to limp the vehicle back to our shop, and of course the transmission at that point needed repairing. You could hear some pretty horrific noises going on. It's something that while we were driving, it had just broken inside the transmission. So that's basically what was happening.
Mark: What did you find?
Bernie: Well it's interesting, we can have a look at some pictures. To start with, we had to remove the transmission to take it apart, but we started by just draining the oil out and having a look at it. I'll just share some photos right here.
So this a close-up view of our transmission oil pan, sorry our drain pan, and we drain the oil and this vehicle uses a DEXRON ATF fluid for the transmission. If you look in here, all these little things these are all particles of metal. This should just be ... This is the black, sort of, ribs of the pan, this is the red fluid and all these little blocks, or all these little speckles, are all pieces of brass and metal in the bottom of the transmission. You don't want to see that. That indicates something's broken and let go. This is a picture, there's a magnet. When we took the transmission apart, there's a magnet in the bottom of the transmission to catch metal filings. Now this is a picture of the magnet cleaned up, this is what it should look like if there's no metal. But this is what it looked like when we took the pan out, when we took the transmission apart. You can see there's a lot of metal here, but also a very distinct piece here. This is actually a part of a circlip that actually snapped, and this was part of the problem with the transmission. The piece of circlip actually ended up stuck onto this magnet. Now there's a picture of the transmission assembly. It's an F-450, so this is a medium sized truck, dual rear wheels, it's pretty big. It's pretty tough, and incredibly heavy transmission, incredibly large. Built for what it was meant to, built for hauling heavy things. This is the transmission assembly sitting on the ground. This would be the first gear over here, and the main gear set is inside the transmission. With it being a six speed, it's got gears outside and sort of on either side of the centre of the case. This is one of the Synchro, the shift collars. We'll just go to one last picture to the inside of the transmission. So this is the actual main gear cluster being removed. We actually use a crane to remove it, because it's that heavy. But the problem was actually, and unfortunately for some reason I didn't take any pictures of the actual damage, but that circlip actually sat inside this area here. We didn't see that until we actually took the shifter rods off, and dismantled the transmission. But inside here, these are called the Synchro's and they basically, this is what allows a manual transmission to actually shift without having to double clutch, like you would've had to do in the 50's, way back when shifting a manual transmission was a lot of work, required a fair bit of skill and timing. Recently transmissions with synchromesh, you just push the clutch down and you can shift gears. This mechanism allows that to happen. As I say, the problem was in here. There's a shaft, and a piece, and the gear that's basically held together by the clip, and the clip broke apart, and that's what caused this whole mechanism to jam up. So that was right here. This is by the way fourth gear, third gear, second gear, first gear, and then you have your overdrive gears up here. So that's our pictures.
Mark: What did you have to replace to get the unit running and reliable again?
Bernie: We basically replaced the input shaft. You know what, I can actually just go back to this picture again. You see the transmission again?
Mark: Yep.
Bernie: So this whole shaft here with this gear, we replaced that piece. We replaced this Synchro mechanism, which is located behind this ring here. That ring, this round piece here, and everything inside there was replaced because it was damaged. Other than that bearings, which is a normal thing to do whenever you do a transmission overhaul, very surprisingly were in pretty good shape on this transmission. But it would be silly not to replace them when you have to take everything apart, if a bearing fails down the road then you have to do the whole job over again. So the bearings, replaced the bearings. We replaced all the Synchro rings, which are these small rings located here. They tend to wear over time. And all the gaskets and seals, and that's what we replaced.
Mark: So is this kind of transmission failure a common issue with this vehicle?
Bernie: Well apparently it is. I mean we don't see a lot of these. Most of our clients with these larger trucks have automatics, but apparently it isn't an uncommon problem for that particular gear, and that actual issue that occurred on this transmission. We haven't seen a lot of it in our shop, only because we don't work on a lot of them like a lot of other people might do. Yeah, it's pretty common.
Mark: We haven't really discussed transmission repairs before. Do you do many of them?
Bernie: We do. We do manual transmissions. We do anything with gears, but we don't get into automatic transmissions. It's just too specialized. It's not like we couldn't, but it doesn't make any sense when people they're doing them all day long, they have the tools, equipment. So automatics we send out. On manual transmissions, we normally do in house.
Mark: So is a Ford F-450 2004, again this is a fairly old vehicle, worth repairing?
Bernie: Oh yeah, it's a good truck. It's a diesel. This had a dump box bed on the back, so once you start investing in equipment like that it kind of makes sense to repair the vehicle. For a few thousand dollars worth of work, the transmission's overhauled now it should be good for quite a long time, and with the engine repairs we did it should all last and be reliable for quite a long time. It's a good truck and tough. You can see by the size of this gear set on this transmission, it's meant to haul some heavy stuff around. Good truck, I mean it is a six litre diesel. We know what that means, there will be a constant stream of issues going on, but in between it's a good truck, if that's a good thing to say.
Mark: So there you go. If you're looking for repairs for your Ford Diesel medium duty trucks, the guys to see, or your any kind of manual transmission repairs, the guys to see in Vancouver are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them at 604-327-7112 to book your appointment. You have to book ahead, they're busy. Or check out the website, pawlikautomotive.com, there's lots of information on there, hundreds of postings on there in the blog and in our videos, as well as our YouTube channel, Pawlik Auto Repair. And thank you for listening on iTunes, we appreciate it. Thanks Bernie.
Bernie: Yeah thanks Mark, and thank you for watching.
