Coolant spikes. White smoke rolls out the tailpipe. The shop drops a $5,000 quote on the counter. Head gasket jobs aren’t light repairs. They mean full top-end teardown, precise timing resets, and often machine work. On late-model F-150s, that’s 20+ hours of labor before the parts even come out of the box. This guide shows … Read more
Catch a faint burning smell near the grille after shutoff? That pump plug might be cooking itself. BMW’s 24V-608 recall hits over 720,000 vehicles with N20 and N26 turbo 4-cylinder engines. The defect? A mix of oil vapor and fuel condensate leaks from the PCV system and drips straight onto the water pump’s power connector. … Read more
Slams into gear. Hunts. Drops a wrench light. That’s how the 10R140 announces it’s in trouble. Ford’s heavy-duty 10-speed was built to tame 1,000+ lb-ft from the 6.7 Power Stroke and 7.3 Godzilla. Clutch-to-clutch design, no bands, no sprags; just pure hydraulic timing across six packs and four planetaries. On paper, it pulls harder, shifts … Read more
Hook a trailer. Crack the throttle. A minute later it’s gear-hunting, shuddering, and flashing a MIL. That’s the ugly side of the so-called Allison 10-speed, a unit that’s never seen the inside of an Allison plant. GM builds it in Toledo. It shares blood with Ford’s 10R140. And despite the badge, it carries problems the … Read more
Tick starts at the valve cover. Wet streak forms under the freeze plug. Fuel rail pressure dives under load. The 5.9 Cummins just blinked. Built for tractors and brought into trucks, the B-series held torque like a vice. But push it hard, tow hot, or tune past stock, and known failure points show. Each generation … Read more
Press the start button. Hear a click. Nothing happens. That no-crank moment on an F-150 could be a cooked starter, a dead battery, or buried logic inside a transmission or hybrid module. The symptoms blur fast. One day it cranks fine. The next, silence. This guide breaks down real starter problems by generation. We’ll show … Read more
Spot a cheap Ram 1500 with a “strong 4.7” and the temp needle creeping up? That’s your warning. The 4.7L PowerTech V8 was Chrysler’s leap from pushrod grunt to overhead-cam efficiency; a clean-sheet design with modern flow but zero margin for slop. It can hit 300,000 miles when babied. Miss an oil change, let it … Read more
Hit Tow/Haul, throttle in, and it flares. Then slams. The load jerks, and the 6R140’s game face cracks. This transmission was built for big numbers; 1,000 lb-ft diesels, 8,000 lb trailers, PTO duty, and chassis-cab work. On paper, it delivers: six gears, full electronic control, stout ratios, and a deep first gear that hauls like … Read more
Derates. Choked boost. Coolant vanishing fast. The 6.7 Powerstroke doesn’t fail quietly when it’s pushed too far. Ford’s first in-house diesel ended the Navistar era with a clean-sheet CGI block, reversed flow heads, and up to 1,200 lb-ft of torque. But that torque comes at a cost; high rail pressures, plastic cooling hardware, fragile sensors, … Read more
Bang into gear. Flare on the 2–3 shift. “Transmission Fault” lights up before the loan’s halfway paid. The 6F35 was Ford’s fix for fuel economy mandates. Small case, six speeds, low-viscosity fluid. But that design packed heat, friction, and pressure into a unit that can’t take much of any. Failures come early and follow a … Read more