Ford Power Stroke Advice

If you own a 6.0 Ford diesel you may already know this, but if you don’t the following advice could save you thousands of dollars.

All of the Ford vehicles with the diesel engine have a fuel/water separator and a sensor that detects excessive water accumulation in the fuel.  This separator needs to be drain every time the fuel filter is changed. If not it will build up an accumulation of both water and debris that will travel into the injector system and destroy injectors.

On most Ford vehicles the fuel/water separator is mounted under the truck attached to the drivers side frame rail. There will be a recessed allen head fitting in the bottom of it that needs to be removed and the fuel allowed to drain out through that opening.

Ford has a 100,000 mile engine warranty on the Power Stroke, but it will not cover damages caused by failure to drain the water separator. Be sure that whoever changes you fuel filter drains the water from the system. It could save you several thousand dollars for new fuel injectors.

The Fallacy of a
Pre-Trip Checkup

We often hear customers ask us to check their car out prior to taking a trip. I think that is a great idea and encourage everyone to do it. Whether it is for business or pleasure nothing will spoil a road trip quicker than being stuck on the side of the road with some preventable mechanical problem.

But most of us drive only a couple of thousand miles on one of these infrequent trips out of town while every year the average Houston driver puts about 17,500 miles on their car.
I know that the fear of being stuck with a broken down car in a strange town has a lot to do with the attitude of the pre-trip checkup. The idea of being stranded with your spouse and young children in a place where you do not know anyone or where there is no one around to help can worry even the most confident of us.

Let me ask this; are there parts of the Houston Metroplex that you wouldn’t want to break down in? Are there areas that you or your loved ones drive through where it could be dangerous to be stranded?

Over the road driving is really the least stressful type of use a car can have. Much more damaging is the constant stop and go of in city traffic.

I encourage everyone to have a pre-trip check up, but I recommend that you do it at every oil change, not just when you are going to take an out of town jaunt.

The most common thing to leave a person standing on the shoulder looking at the car is a flat tire. When was the last time you had yours checked? The second most common disaster is a cooling system failure.

At every oil change you can and should have the car checked for tire condition, coolant condition, visible leaks, suspension problems, brake problems, battery and charging system problems and the proper operation of all lighting, wipers and washers. Checking all of the fluids should be a normal part of any oil change and advising you of what is found is a part of the shops responsibility to you.

Tata Nano, the $2500 car

Tata Motors of India recently announced the release of the 100,000 rupee ($2500) car. The Nano, which sells for about 25% of the cheapest American made vehicle, has attracted a great deal of publicity. The big question is how can Tata Motors build and market a car that cost about ten percent of what the average one sells for here?

The concept of the Nano started with a dream of Rattan Tata, the founder of Tata Motors. In 2001 he announced that his company would design and build a car that the middle class of his country could afford. When asked what it would cost he pulled a figure out of the air, 100,000 rupees. This was a price point that he believed his countrymen could reasonably afford, even if it was then an unrealistic goal as a selling price for any car built at that time.

Tata claims to have been motivated by the ubiquitous scene of the Indian family riding a motor scooter. A family of four commonly relies on one motor scooter to move the entire family; father driving, oldest child standing in front of him and mother holding the younger child while sitting behind.  The scooter leaves them exposed to the weather and provides no protection from accidents.

The Nano price is comparable to the higher end scooters. How did he do it?

First and most important is market expectation. In a country where the vast majority still walk everywhere and owning a car is a fantasy, a lot of the fluff can be eliminated. Fluff is anything not necessary to make the vehicle viable. Power steering, air conditioning, a radio and even windshield washers serve no vital function if all you want to do is move your family about the town in relative safety.

Powered by an engine half the size of a Harley Davidson the car is limited to a top speed of 65 miles per hour. While this may be a problem on our highway system it is not in most parts of India. The estimated economy of 53 miles per gallon is a benefit of the small engine.

The Nano meets all of the safety and emissions requirement of India, but would fall impossibly short of those standards in this country. Air bags are not even an option, nor are antilock brakes, traction control or integrated anti-theft systems.

Even building a most basic car would not have achieved the target price of Rattan Tata. He negotiated concessions from the Indian government and the district of Bangladesh that reduced his factory cost and then made deals with upstart entrepreneurial businesses to fabricate many of the components of the car. He also arranged a network of independent contractors to be the “Nano Service Department” eliminating most of the cost of expensive dealerships.

The first year production is estimated at 250,000 units, but Rattan Tata’s design goal has consistently been 1,000,000 cars a year. According to Rattan there is no point in building a car the masses can afford if you can’t build enough for everyone. In a nation of a billion people with 400 million middle class eager to drive a million cars a year may not be enough. The Nano has the potential to become the Model T of India

What effect will this car have on the American motorist? In a society where we often spend more on the “entertainment system” in our car than the Nano sells for a bare bones vehicle holds little hope of success. The impact will come as the middle class of India is driven to a higher level of affluence and consumption.