From my time spent as a flat-rate dealer tech, I agree with this sentence wholeheartedly.Originally Posted by JRB
My vehicles mostly date from the period 2000-2004 because it's the time that I was a tech, and I understand their systems thoroughly. I also can still get paper copies of shop manuals for them off ebay, which is what I was used to and is what I still prefer.
Not what I’m wanting to hear as I have a ‘98 Cobra that may be needing some engine work. It seems real hard to find shops in the bay that know much about late model mustangs and I was hoping a SVT dealership would know what needs done.
Seems to me like they probably never made something like that in house anyway, wonder if there might be a way to figure out who they sourced it to and seek out that brand?
Not anyway I could tell and I read a lot about this on two Jeep forums.
Just a dog chauffeur that used to hold the dumb end of the leash.
That was the original intent of 'book time' - accommodate techs still learning, prevent the shop from paying a tech taking things slow for no reason, but allow a true expert to get ahead. How it works in practice is now very different. In all of my years working on flag hours aka 'book time' I hit 40 flag hours in a week for 40 hours worked exactly once, ever. Almost always, billed hours was 25-35hrs for every 40 hours I actually worked.
These days, on almost any modern vehicle it takes a true expert with the exact right tools and absolutely no parts delays to even match book time on a majority of jobs. The more complicated the job, the less likely the tech will make book on it. The 'gravy' jobs, aka the jobs that you can almost always complete under book time, are rarer and rarer across every brand.
This means that if you get charged, say, 50 hours labor to replace a full engine assembly - you can pretty much bet that the tech will have 65-80 hours in the actual job.
Older, simpler vehicles were much easier in all regards, including book time.
Get Sig to work on 556IX. Or get Apple to repair an iPhone 4S. They don't because they don't have to. Just because they made it doesn't mean they have to work on it. This is no different with cars. It is a consumer product.
Once the warranty period is up, the OE makes little if anything on vehicles that last forever. The only benefit to making a vehicle that lasts forever, like a Toyota, is that it drives new vehicle sales by reputation. Toyota, Mercedes, and a few other makers are pretty good about enduring genuine parts for common engines/vehicles that were made by the hundreds of thousands. Others like Ford are not. But getting upset about a lack of parts or experienced service techs for a vehicle and engine that were both discontinued 17 years ago now -using the 2005 V10 Excursion as an example- is pretty silly.
I've been personally involved in trying to get Toyota to reproduce a lot of desirable original parts for the 1993-1998 Supra and Toyota doesn't give a tenth-inch of shit about parts for old Supras - they'll sell 100 Priuses in two weeks and make more money doing that and not have to do a damn thing... but that's a rant for another time.
Emphatically agreed - it is best to find a shop that is set up for and genuinely loves working on the vehicle you have. They'll have all the right tools, tricks, know which parts are the best from a list of suppliers, have faster & more skilled diagnostic abilities, etc. That makes all the difference.
Unfortunately, the majority of dealerships are a bunch of fucking idiots about higher end sports cars available within the brand. I worked on a LOT of SVT's, GT500's, even a couple of Ford GT's because the owners did not trust our local Ford dealer or their staff with their vehicles. I can't blame them.
The older it gets and the rarer it gets, the less and less likely anyone in that shop will know WTF they're doing on a car like that.
The '96 and '98 SVT Cobras were rare ponies to begin with and they're VERY rare now. Find the local Mustang people and find their favorite hole in the wall garage ran by a guy that eats, lives, and breathes Ford mod motors and SN95/New Edge Mustangs, and that will be the right place. I can almost guarantee he'll have a wait list months long.
In the meantime, I've had my head in the tight ass engine bay of several SN95 Cobras over the years, and I've damn near bought one on at least 3 different occasions. So feel free to drop me a PM if you have any pressing questions/issues I might be able to help you figure out!
Certainly true that there never were that many 96-98 Cobras running around....but Ford did make a trillion 4.6s (and 5.4s) so depending on the issue he might be better off than the OP. The top end is where that engine is pretty exclusive; the heads and intake manifold changed pretty substantially in '99. Totally agree on the advice, to add to that, check the Mustang forums and you'll probably find good guidance.
I've had more mod motors than I can immediately recall, and have some pretty good resources - my dad spent his life running a Ford service department and has a '96 Cobra. Feel free to reach out to me as well and I'll do what I can to help.
Not my lane in any way however: to at least get some idea what the MIL means you can get either code scanners or Forscan and an inexpensive DLC dongle, then do some research online. This may not even require opening the hood, the investment is pretty cheap especially for Forscan which is free.
If the diagnosis / code is complicated and expensive this may at least inform how to proceed with further efforts to find a place to repair it. There are a surprising number of videos & blogs out that that reference pretty specific DTC codes. Your vehicles are not that common but the V10 was also used in F250, F350 and possibly other Super Duty trucks.
Sucks that dealers and Ford itself are not interested in supporting the vehicles they were happy to sell you, but previous posts have pretty much covered that disgraceful situation.
I think the industry must have turned on it's ear since I was in.
We *hated* warranty work because while yes, there was a flag time attached to it, it was almost impossible to match. Daimler-Chrysler figured warranty paid time starting with the vehicle in the bay, on the lift if necessary, parts in hand, and necessary tools already out. Multiple practice runs had already been made.
A tech of average experience could expect the job to take about twice the flag time. As technicians, a job where we could match warranty paid time was a day to celebrate. Recalls were figured the same way. For example, there was a limited recall on the automatic trans breather vent on the Dakota back around '00 or '01 which the repair process included unbolting a bunch of stuff including body mounts and jacking the cab up so you could reach the affected area. If I remember, it paid 1.6 hours which was nowhere close to how long it actually took to do. I figured out a way to reach around the back of the engine and do the job in 0.3. It was a rare case of getting one over on the factory. So I got all of those recalls that came in the door.
50 HOURS?!?!?! Wow, things have certainly changed. An engine replacement used to be 17-25 hours. The most recent engine I've replaced was on a '13 Prius and even slowing way down and taking my time because it was for a personal friend, it still took less than 15. If I'd done another back-to-back I'm not sure it would've taken much over half that. No belts or engine-mounted accessories made it a breeze, and except for all of those coolant hoses going everywhere, it was literally cake.
When I was in, I could work 40 and figure on getting paid 45-48. The really good techs could go 50-60 in a 40-hour week. I would say I was average. But a 0.6 serpentine belt, 0.2 air filter, 0.2 wipers, 0.5 oil change, and 0.6 tire rotation / balance add up to 2.1 hours that even somebody like me could have done in about an hour flat. Drum brake jobs were another place to make bank.
Or the infamous Neon head gasket that paid I can't remember how many hours that one of our techs could do in like 20% of the time by cheating and just raising up the head enough to slide the old gasket out and a new one in. Needless to say some came back. But nobody ever made him do it the "right" way. So he did all of the Neon head gaskets since he could beat book time by the mostest. These days he owns his own shop LOL.
My buddy owns his repair shop and 99% of his repairs are older vehicles. In some cases he has to find parts from junk yards. I learned that there are some parts carried on parts house books but not stocked because they are no longer made. He told me that dealer techs are clueless about older vehicles.
Find a shop that services fleet box trucks and buses. Ford used the 2v Triton V10 in the E-450/550 cabs that are were used to build box trucks, ambulances, and buses until 2019.
If the dealer has a Fleet Sales guy, get ahold of him and ask him who does service on the fleet vehicles they sell.
The chassis is easier to service, sharing virtually all the parts with a 3/4-ton Super Duty.
To put it bluntly, you're dealing with a specialty vehicle, now, they haven't sold the Super Duty base the Excursion is built on since 2007 nor put the V10 in a retail vehicle since 2010. The service guys and manager on the retail side won't know what to do for you. The fleet guy can help.
And it's not just you. Once a vehicle is out of production for ~5 years, spare parts become far more difficult to find, even with an enthusiast vehicle, and not until the vehicles reach 25 years old does the market start to pick back up for them.
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