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every dog......

ryoken

ryoken

Puppy Fabricator
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has it's day.. ;)

so... :whistle:



I'm often overlooked in my profession, being so widley versed in my job description...:whistle:

I'm not Mercruiser certified.. Yamaha, Onan etc.. but i'm probably the only marine guy on the least coast that can gelcoat your 60'er, rebuild the rotating assembly, install the electronics and redo the interior... :whistle: :popcorn:


anyway... recently we had an acquaintance buy a long block from us thru Jasper... straight forward 350 mpi merc setup.. he swaps over the intake, injectors, balancer, tins, yada, blah... calls us, motors fires perfect, idles ok, etc..

they take it out to test run it, etc, spins ok, gets to 4200, than falls on it's face and goes to limp mode... :dunno:

throws a cam sensor code...


so, after a 1/2 dozen of the best state merc certified mechanics throw all new sensors at it, new dizzy, a new wiring harness ($1200 :eek1:), a new ECM $2000 :eek1:) and a gazillion hr's of labor and Merc tech support at it, he finally comes back and talks to me... :whistle:

after going over the symptoms with me, I ask him how he installed the harmonic balancer on the long block.. a hammer? no, no, an installer! :whistle: :popcorn:


lo and behold.. he brings it to me... got another 1/8" installed on the balancer... the crank trigger was walking forward on the crank snout at higher rpm's behind the cover, losing it's cam/crank signal.. run's like a scalded dog now...




:whistle: :whistle: :whistle:



thousands of $$$$ later in wasted labor from CERTIFIED merc guys, and a lowly grunt like me figures it out..... :doah: :haha:
 
:haha::haha::haha:

:bow::bow::bow:

had a old man stop in were I worked years ago with old drw chevy 4x4 dana 60 front truck . been to 3-4 shops and even dealer . no one could pin point the real bad shake he had in the front end .

I asked 3 questions . he replyed and I told him he needed around $75 bucks in parts . he said who does a young kid ( 22-23 at the time ) know what I need with out even a test drive . ?

I told him fine we go for a drive . I even got it to do the death wobble before he could tell me how it did it .
I told him if my parts don't fix it it will be no charge to him at all.

well lets just say he paid the bill . . . and was a happy customer :thumb:
 
cracked me up... they'd all been f*ckin with this thing for 6 months! :eek1:

comes back and I diagnose it over a beer after work in 10 minutes! :haha:
 
so did he have to pay for all that crap ? ? ?

since efi why didn't some dumba$$ drive the boat and another dumba$$ watch live data on a scanner and see what was droping out and making it go flat and in limp mode ? ? ?

I don't do diagnostics my self at work but even I know to do that .
 
the diagnostics can be quite primitive.. it'll just come up cam sensor.. they replaced the actual sensor twice..

little did they realize that the trigger wheel was "walking" past the sensor at higher rpm's and causing the fault..

if the cam sensor trigger perimeters where read, like a injector pulse might be read, it might be a different story..

but the diagnostics aren't THAT detailed.. just took some mechanical, hotrod common sense to the issue... :haha:
 
and yeah, I'm guessing he's paying these other marina's... :doah: :whistle:
 
lucky for us we have access to all that knowledge for the low, low price of $25 a year! :)
 
:haha: :haha:

:bow:


it's all your's brother!!! :waytogo: :popcorn:

just kinda makes me laugh sometimes.. :dunno:




in my biz, I'm often treated like a a simpleton, when people see me shrinkwrapping or something, but at times.... I can be saving your arse.... :whistle: :haha:
 
If that was a customer in the automotive world, there would be hell to pay. Well, money to be returned at the very least. No customer would pay thousands of dollars to have their car fixed only to get it back with the same problem without some sort of repercussion.

Good job on the fix! I love it when it's something stupid simple. He should get the money back from the previous repairs that didn't work and give you some.
 
he's a retired marine mechanic, :whistle:.... this was a Sandy boat that sank... he bought it trying to make money... his prob was... he did the job... it was his fockup...

I told him if he had just paid us to do the swap when we got him the long block, it never would have happened.. and if it did, it would have been fixed immediately....

not 6 months later... :haha:

I just found it surprising that all these merc schooled mechanics are throwing parts at it left and right, and moreso that tech support failed to figure it out and led them down that path... granted, it was a highly unusual issue...
 
lol, schooled mechanics. What they teach these days is "how" to replace parts. Not so much the "why". Code says X, replace X.

I'm beginning to think new techs should be required to work under an experienced tech as an apprentice for X amount of time before working on their own. Much like a plumbing or electrical career. But, too many schools will sell you a piece of paper that says you know what you are doing and even make you believe it. So, we end up with dart board diagnostics and parts changers in the field. :doah:

That's not to say that everyone coming out of those schools is useless either. Some of them actually have a clue. Others have never turned a wrench before, aside from assembling Ikea furniture. :dunno:

Rant off, carry on.
 
Well done sir, I find there is a growing lack of common sense in the repair industry, most times the brain is the best diagnostic tool available:waytogo:
 
Great work man – that's called paying attention to the basics and not overcomplicating matters. :waytogo: It is all too often that "techs" don't really look at the simple things first and go straight to chasing fault codes and throwing expensive parts at the customer's unit either at his expense, or the manufacturers.

I do technical support for a major powersports company (BRP) and it never ceases to amaze me how the most long and drawn out cases can sometimes be the silliest, small little thing. And you wouldn't believe the crap I see when it actually requires I have to go out in the field and do a dealer visit to lay hands on something to fix it myself.

I guess one word I'd have on these Merc. Tech service guys is that they are only as good as the feedback that they are getting from the other end of the phone (and obviously they never talked to YOU!). It can be incredibly difficult to even have the guy at the shop that is calling for help to accurately describe the issue and reveal all the relevant information.

Don't get me wrong – its still no excuse for telling somebody to throw parts at something (especially at the customer's expense) but it isn't that uncommon that they are led in the wrong direction by the technician too. Did one of Merc's guys have a look at the motor personally or was it all just phone stuff? I'd be really surprised if they did if this power pack is a Jasper rebuild. Granted that's still their engine management parts but the minute I hear if another reman motor is dropped in anything my company sells is when I do a double take. I've seen some REALLY weird crap come from junk rebuilt motors from places like SBT…

You sure did nail a bizarre one though. Just taking a look at a code like that and then reading between the lines is imperative.

Some really accurate comments from everyone following the thread here too - these new guys fresh out of school often hold a certificate that means nothing whatsoever once they start wrenching. It is one thing to go to a tech. school and go through the programs and wrench on something in a controlled environment but doing REAL work in the field is a big ass kicker sometimes. Props to those who go and put the knowledge to use, but I know there's many dealerships that look at those diplomas and scoff at them.
 
There are technicians in my field of work that have been doing this job for 30 years and still are unable to think problems though. They just throw parts at stuff. Sometimes they get burned when they literally just reconnect a new part exactly the same as the old one but don't check control board jumpers and wiring pinouts to make sure that new boards are set up properly or to ensure that the pinout has not changed on a new revision of the board.

Oh well, I try to think things through as best I can and repair stuff when I can vs just replacing it all the time. I do occasionally wind up replacing the wrong parts, but generally I am pretty decent about fixing stuff right.
 
Great work man
Click to expand...

thanks man...

and to be fair to these mechanics, they where dealing with a series of issues.. someone else's work that you have no idea if what they did was correct... and a boat that had been sunk... green connections can be a nightmare..

that's where a lot of the electrical diagnosing came in, new harness, ecm and such.... merc tech went so far as to have em put a completely isolated power supply to the mill...

I also had the benefit of hearing this whole story of what had been tried, than coming to my conclusion, they did not..
 
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