Had a long time customer come in and asked me if I wanted to work on his E-450 PSD box truck.
I looked it over and said yes.
First job I did for this truck was a set of ball joints and shocks. His were shot.
I didn't know it was that easy to work on the front end of these beasts.
And if it's that easy, I can understand why people hate to work on VW's!!! LOL.
I booked out the whole day for this one job and I was done by lunchtime.

 

Yeah, at least something is easy to do on these trucks. Did you look under the hood?

 

I heard that they can be a real pain if you don't have a lift or is it something that could be done in the driveway?

 

Time to build a bigger shop Kwik.

 

Did it without a lift. You need a ball joint press to get the job done.
Guzzle the mental wheels are turning, and I'm praying about it this weekend.
For too long I've struggled with the frustration of watching the cars that I work on go from very easy to work on to nearly impossible to get my hand into the engine compartment. I'm getting too old to want to have to deal with that sort of hassle.

 

Ya Kwik, you ever seen under the hood of one these things?

 

Yeah, I did look and it's pretty tight in there. The fuel filter would be a PITA.
And absolutly no room for a 6637 air filter!

 

did you use the red press you cut up? or was it a special press?? johnny8 and i will be doing his soon..thanks kwikk

 

Yep, thats why I started a thread a couple of weeks ago about getting rid of the fuel bowl. 30k a year I'm in there every six months. Btw she's due for a filter and that stupid cable operated drain is stuck. It's always something.

 

Something similar to this was used once I had the spindle assembly on the bench. There were some special adapters that I had to buy because of it being a Superduty. Without it, well, don't even try. It would be impossible or at best a royal PITA.

http://www.matcotools.com/Catalog/toolcatalog.jsp?cattype=T&cat=2119&page=1&#28506

 

And I welded that press back together, it's as good as new.

 

Well why not mount a remote screw on flange type filter just past the fuel pump outlet? You could drop both the oil filter and the fuel filter into the same bucket when doing your maintainance.
It's pretty tight beyond the fuel pump, but you could extend the hose on the outlet side and loop it back around behind the pump and then return it to the fuel rail. There's about 18" worth of flex line between the pump and the hard line going up to the engine.

 

My plan was to do the intank/pre pump mods with the filter and then get rid of the factory bowl, but I do not want to spend the money on a regulated return for a work truck. I talked with Dennis? at ITP diesel about the pre pump kit and he informed me that the E's have a fuel tank with a bladder inside and he does not recommend messing around inside there for fear of damaging it. So now I am just going to get a filter like you said and leave the factory one in there and replace it at maybe 30k miles.

Kwik, just curious what you charged to do the ball joints. I just had this done and I would be interested to compare what I paid. There back on topic.

 

Mark and I double teamed on the truck.
He did one side and I did the other.
What I did was all four Napa ball joints with Zerk fittings.
All four shocks, Bilstien
Oil change with a Napa Gold oil filter and 4 gallon containers of Mobil 1 Delvac 5-40.
There was some extra time that I had to charge for on the shock job as the company that installed the work box set the box frame right down on top of the shock tower and we had to cut them out of there and figure out how to make the new ones work. Basically shorten the tower on the new ones.
Remove an aftermarket tachometer per the owners request.
Local dealership here quoted him $1800.00 for the ball joints alone.
He was out my door with the above work for $1725.00 including 8.9% sales tax.

 

Local dealership here quoted him $1800.00 for the ball joints alone.

Wow, I guess I got a helluva deal at $600 for ball joints. Well hopefully I got a good deal and not a poor quality job.