Monthly Archives: July 2021
New And Improved . . .
For the first time in days it was nice enough, and dry enough, to set outside with our coffee this morning. In fact I think this is the first 24 hour period in a couple of weeks when when we haven’t had heavy rains during the day. Some days it looks like our puddles have puddles.
About 1pm Jan and I headed over to the Denny’s for our Ultimate Omelets, and then it was over to HEB for some groceries. Before we left I add the last half of the can of Seafoam to the Jeep’s tank in a last-ditch effort to save a trip to the mechanic tomorrow afternoon. But, unfortunately, there was no improvement.
So as soon we got home and got the groceries put away, we headed back out, with me in the Dakota and Jan following in the Jeep. The truck was low on gas and I wanted to top it off before we drop off the Jeep at the mechanic’s tomorrow afternoon. I also added a bottle of STA-BIL Gas Treatment since the Dakota doesn’t get driven all that much anymore, so I don’t want the gas to go bad while it just sits here parked in front of the rig for weeks at a time.
In fact I think the last time I drove the Dakota was back in Nov. 2020 when we drove it up to Conroe to bring the Jeep back to Santa Fe after we bought it.
So tomorrow afternoon after I get home from work, we’ll take the Jeep down and drop it off at the mechanic’s and see what he can come up with.
I know you’ve all been waiting for this to come on the market, and it’s finally here. New and Improved.
Finishing up, I thought you might enjoy this.
Thought For The Day:
Don’t be afraid of the robot that passes the Turing test. Be afraid of the one that deliberately fails it.
Still Nothing . . .
Following up on my Jeep’s engine problems, I first talked to the font of all family mechanical knowledge, our son Chris. As an example of this, when I talked to him this morning he was getting ready to pull the engine out of his wife Linda’s car to tear it apart.
We talked about the problems with igniters can give you. Ironically this 3.7L engine in our Jeep is just the 6 cylinder version of the 4.7L V-8 engine in our Dodge Dakota. Essentially they just took the 8 cylinder and chopped off two of the cylinders to make the 6 cylinder one.
We talked about some of the known problems with the igniters, especially on these engines. Problems like igniters ‘ghosting’ a code to an adjacent one, or even multiple ones that really don’ t have a problem.
My next call was to long-time friend Ed Hurlburt who we bought the Jeep from back last November to see if the igniters/plugs have been replaced while he and his wife Debi had owned the Jeep. He said that he had replaced both the spark plugs and the igniters (Ed reminded me that they’re also called Coil Packs) about 5 months or so before we bought the Jeep from them.
So my next diagnostic attempt was to swap two of the igniters, the #3 and the #5 cylinders, figuring if it was an igniter problem on #5 as the code reader said, then the problem would move down to the #3 cylinder.
Swapping out the igniters only took about 5 minutes, just having to unclip the connector plug and then remove the mounting nut and then reverse the process.
But before I did a test drive, I wanted to clear the codes. And when I first checked them, it suddenly said that cylinders 3, 4, 5, and 6 were all misfiring. Well, I knew that couldn’t be right because that would only leave two cylinders, and I’m pretty sure the engine wouldn’t run on just two. So I cleared the codes and started my test drive. And it was clear immediately that I still had a problem. But that would still be true if the problem moved with a bad igniter.
But checking the codes again still showed #3 and #5 having the problem. But at least #4 and #6 didn’t show up again.
So unless I think up something else to check, it’s off to the mechanic Monday afternoon.
Stay tuned.
Thought For The Day:
Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes the reason is that you are stupid and made a bad decision.
