FNG checking in from the Carolinas

[PD1744]

I bought my '12 a over ago. Love it! So will you.

Congrats on your Raptor and welcome to FRF. The information and the people here are awesome!

I think you're right. So far, she's a keeper for sure. Thank you! Semper Fi Marine!

 

[SS308]

Thank you! Back at ya...

 

[PD1744]

Tackled the blend door actuators this weekend. Yeah, that lower one was quite the job. If anybody has accomplished that job without hacking off that boss that's placed smack dab in front of it, I'd sure like to know how. Placing a failure prone part in an unserviceable location is just a mortal sin of design and engineering IMO. But got it done and all is well.

Couple bits of information/lessons learned I took away from the job:

- When I pulled the top one, I was very surprised to see that it had recently been done. The date stamped on the casing was 5/17/19 which was less than 4 months older than the one that went in it's place. Also, the person that replaced it chose not to put the rear screw back in. I fixed it. My theory is that, when the clicking starting, the PO went after the low hanging fruit, because before I opened it up, I was convinced that it was coming from the top one because it sounded like it was right behind the radio, and when they realized it didn't fix the issue, just said 'eff this!'.

- I ended up pulling the front seats, carpet and floor ducts for better access. Did it help? maybe. Was it necessary? maybe not. I'm glad I did though because it showed me that at least one of the previous owners was a dog owner and that the front passenger window had been smashed in at some point. Both of these, I already knew from cleaning it before (my dealers detail guy wasn't bad, but definitely not the greatest) but this re-affirmed and to a greater extent. Both my 4Runner and WRX have also had that same window broken into at some point of my ownership. Seems standard fare these days. So pulling all of that offered a great chance to clean everything up really well.

- As mentioned above, access to that lower actuator was at a premium. Ended up hacking off that boss, leaving out the rear screw and wedging everything back up into place. The ole 'hack' method. That one was definitely original. Had 2011 stamped on it. And once I took the culprit apart, only one tooth on the gear that turns the spline shaft was missing. My clicking hadn't gotten too terrible yet though.

- Fighting to reconnect the lower actuator to the harness and dealing with the shifter cable were probably my biggest issues.

Regarding other issues:

- no luck with the USB, but I found out today where the other end connects (under the center speaker) and I haven't even looked into it yet. So fingers crossed.

- @Steve R you were spot on with your keypad troubleshooting. I tried your method, and only the outer two buttons responded. So hopefully, I can tackle that some time. Not in a rush, but good to have direction here.

- Had a new noise pop up last week. Appears that the blower motor is starting to squeal/chirp. Looks like a cheap-ish and easy fix, so I got that to look into. Thinking about pulling it and squirting some lube in there to see if that shuts her up for a little bit.

- Still haven't looked into the front end noise yet, but it's significantly quietened down since riding on a functioning front passenger shock. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if this was what actually caused the issue to begin with.

- Driver seat heating element looks like it'll need replacing too at some point. No rush to get that done. Haven't looked into the job yet, but I'm sure it probably will be a good time. Anybody done this yet?


I think that's it for now. Thanks for reading!

 

[PD1744]

Tore into the USB cord from the top last night and low and behold, got it working! Sync has been updated. List is beginning to shrink and I can start really enjoying owning this thing. It's a good feeling.

 

[PD1744]

She's playing a little hard to get with me lately. As a follow-up to Monday's USB win I was treated with a bit of a perplexing issue the following day. Pulled the blower motor (easy peasy), blew it off with some shop air, and tried squirting a little lube where I could without taking it apart. Plugged it back in and got no fan. Nothing. Well shit... Was getting late so I half-ass trouble shot it by checking the relay and fuse. Both were fine. So from my understanding of the system, the only things left that it could be are the resistor (which can be failure prone) and the motor itself.

Since the motor was the only thing I touched, I ordered a new one out of haste and anger. To make matters worse, instead of ordering a half-price quality aftermarket one, I ordered and OEM one because I could get it before the weekend. Normally I could wait, but I wanted it done before the weekend so that I could use the truck with the family.

Motor came in yesterday and just for ***** and giggles, I decided to touch the old motor to 12v to test it and of course, it worked... So it's not the motor. Under the expectation that the new motor wouldn't run either after I plugged it in and that my problem was elsewhere, I plugged it in and tested it AND IT WORKED!! WTF?? So yeah, this ones got me a little baffled. Oh well. Everything works as it should. New motor is nice and quite and I shouldn't have to worry about it for a long time. I'm just about $130 poorer. On to the next.

 

[Big Blue]

Welcome!

 

[PD1744]

Welcome!

Thank you sir!

Update from the weekend.

Talked to a friend that's smarter than me about my perplexing blower motor. He theorized that the old motor was bound up and offered enough resistance that it wouldn't kick on. Makes sense to me because it did seem pretty hard to spin by hand, and there was a ton of black powder coming from it as if it were eating itself. And since I jumped it straight to battery when it worked, it was because that offered more than enough juice to get it rolling... I'll just go with that theory and move on.

Spent the major part of Saturday making 180K mile Tuxedo Black look like glass:





I'm no pro, and I normally mess with Chemical Guys or Griot's stuff, and the plan was to do a full paint correction followed by ceramic coating, but I got lazy and decided to go old school and see what was up with some Turtle Wax products that I've been hearing good things about. So after claying and compounding, I did TW polishing compound applied mostly by hand and finished with just a spray on TW Hybrid Sealand/Wax. Not perfect, but very pleased with the results vs. amount of effort.

Sunday, I started looking into the IWE/wheel bearing noise. Reconfirmed that the front does not free wheel. Half shafts and drive shaft all spin with tire. The IWE actuators do hold vacuum but don't de-couple under vacuum. Lines also hold vacuum, so the integrity is still good here. Solenoid words AFAIK since the 4WD works. Check valve also seems good since it was under pressure when I pulled the line from the solenoid side (also looks newer than the other lines, so it might have been changed at some point). So the only interesting takeaway was that the noisy side (passenger) has a fast ticking/clicking sound that almost sounds like the old playing card in the bike spoke noise. Driver side does it to a lesser degree. Much more faint of a sound. Any body have any ideas here? Does it sound like the splines are stuck in a half mesh? Maybe some stuff broken and rolling around in the hub?

Not entirely sure the best approach here. I'm considering buying a passenger bearing hub assembly and IWE actuator for the passenger side and replace both just to start. If course the most expensive parts in the entire system. Does that sound like a reasonable approach or is there something else I should look into first?

Oh and also as a side note; when I'm sitting at idle there is a fairly constant noise that sound like a compressor that clicks on every like minute or so. What is that? Is it normal? And also also, I discovered what appears to be a slight coolant leak while underneath it. Looks to be wet from one of the smaller lines that comes off of one of the lower radiator hose bungs and goes in by the oil filter housing. Haven't followed this so not sure what it is yet. Oil cooler or heater line maybe? Also I think the radiator support had a few droplets on the underside. Just something for me to keep an eye on until I can get around to figuring it out.

 

[PD1744]

Got a chance over the weekend to drop the skid plate and take a closer look at the aforementioned leaks over the weekend. First was the lower line going into the oil cooler. After a little closer look, this could just be an artifact of it's proximity to the oil filter. Like it gets gunked up when the filter gets changed and just collects crud. So for now, I just cleaned it up and will keep an eye on it.





The other coolant leak was the droplets that I noticed collecting on the radiator support. There was also some on the driver side frame rail. Definitely a real leak and definitely on the driver side of the vehicle. I didn't find a source for this yet. Couldn't see much without pulling the fans and stuff out. Coolant levels are still good and truck doesn't run hot. I've heard of some coolant venting though the caps on these. Not sure if that fits. Again, will just keep an eye on it until I can take a deeper dive.



But while I had better access, I decided to poke around a little more with my flashlight to see if there was anything else going on and, low and behold, discovered a leaking A/C hose. So that'll be fun.





Skid plate is really good at masking this stuff as it contains a lot of the gunk. So I cleaned that up pretty good.
Just documenting this stuff for my own purposes guys.

 

[PD1744]

Update

Last week ordered a new A/C discharge line, some sound deadening material, Dorman IWE deletes, door keypad, and seat heater elements.

Just for ***** and giggles I decided to ask a dealership to quote the A/C line job. They came out to $450. I asked them to break that down and it was $140 for the hose which I had already found online for about $70 for the Motorcraft part. I had a local mechanic quote the job if I supplied the part and he said about $125 plus the cost of the refrigerant and asked O'Reilly to price the part and they said about $120 plus shipping for OEM. Ordered the OEM part from Rock Auto for $65 and ended up taking it to a mechanic that was closer to work. He quoted me $150 for the job which was evacuate the system, swap the hose, and recharge the system. They ended up charging me $180 ($200 after tax) for the job. I didn't really even look at the price to ask about it when I was signing the slip, but oh well. I'm okay with it and everything seems to work fine. Now I know that the noise I was constantly hearing was the compressor constantly cycling because of the leak. So if you're keeping tabs, so far that's two blend door actuators, a blower motor, a discharge line and A/C system service that I've needed to to on just the HVAC system so far. Sheesh...

Regarding the other leaks, the coolant on the cross-member and frame doesn't seem to have come back after cleaning it off, so for now I'm going to mark it up as a burp through the cap or some spillage. The leak at the oil cooler does appear to be real but it's a very slow seep. Not sure if it's just a little loose or not, but I may just replace the entire lower radiator hose when I flush the coolant. Cheap enough replacement part and a good time to get that done.

Dorman IWE deletes going on this weekend. Not many thorough reviews on these out there, so I figured I'll be the guinea pig here. Fun fact; these are actually sold in pairs, so don't order qty of 2. Ask me how I know. So that means they're basically half the price of the OEM IWE's.

 

[PD1744]

Funnest weekend with the Raptor yet. I wanted a quarantine project and boy did I get one. Set out on what I assumed to be an $85 and approximately an hour and a half job, but boy did things escalate quickly. Started on the passenger side because that was my noisy/problematic side. Also the pollen everywhere showed me that the tire there was cupping, more than likely from being ridden on a blown shock for lord knows how long, so I was going to rotate tires as well in hopes to save it since I was going to be taking the fronts off anyway.

Upon attempting to remove the axle nut, it just spun in place... in both directions. Well shit. Meant more than likely that last person to work on it went to town with some power tool and hammered it on there, thereby stripping the shaft most likely. The torque spec is only 20 ft-lbs here. So the first problem was how to remove this nut? It sits in a very confined place recessed in the hub. Then to replace the entire axle all because of a stripped thread. Got the nut off. Man that was fun.



Of course mangled the threads on the shaft even further and likely toasted the outer bearing, so order a new shaft and bearing/hub assembly from the parts store.

Old, failed ring next to the new part. Both sides had failed in this same fashion. Totally separated, which I think is the common failure mode and definitely explains why my axles never de-coupled.



Was a good thing that I decided to order the new hub, because the internal needle bearing was completely toast. Definitely explains my whirring noise that I described earlier.



My attention seeking girl next to her less needy sister. But I love them both:



Hub and axle finally pulled:



If anybody is still unclear as to the inner workings of these things:



Old next to new parts:



Everything put back together:



So yeah. Driver side went exactly like it was supposed to go. What was the $85 1.5 hour job turned into a $500 8 hour job when you factor in two part store runs and a lunch break. Happy to have gotten it done and now all of the noises and sensations are gone. Only hear the sweet hum of the Ridge Grapplers. The A/C performance still leaves a lot to be desired IMO. Is this common or should I have them look at it again? It cools, but definitely doesn't induce frostbite like other systems. On to the next.