Knowledge is "Power" otherwise, how can you repair it if you don't know?
If you wanna play, you gotta pay. As my old boss would say.
Too Good to be true..! Of course the most valuable thing anyone can have is knowledge, that can be obtained in many different ways, followed by skills and experience and with the ability to use them., so my friend, your boss is right.!
You see, I am an old experienced Master ASE Tech from the era when most cars were rear wheel drive, had carburettors, distributor, rotor, breaker points, condensers and caps. A/T Transmission were 2 or 3 speed and very easy to service. by the end of the 70's
I closed my shop and turned it into a Collision & Refinishing (Du-Pont Certified) Shop, thus no car could get away from my spray gun.. again I closed it in 1999 and semi-retired.
The thing is, today, I am re-inventing myself with auto/self education on the newer technologies to keep me up-to-date and be able to properly diagnose and work with todays cars, so I do a lot of tinkering/practice with my cars and those of our neighbors, mostly "Pro-Bono", as it give me the opportunity and the basis to practice and apply my new learnings and to derived from them the pleasures of accomplishment, or the agony of defeat which almost never occurs? thus becoming a "Jack of all trades and a Master of none
, one
or more
".
My last project now is : I bought a 1998 4R70W transmission to put it on my 97 Towncar. This will require to repin the harness end connector to the 98 Transmission case connector, or otherwise, move all the 97-4R70W internal elctronic components and case connector to the 98 Tranny and thus, simply connect it to the main 97 harness without re-pinning it, in other words, 98 guts with 97 electronics. Note that the 98 internal components are "Hard Wired" while the 97 are soft wired. and in addition, Ford relocated and changed the pin position wires, from 10/97-up , thus the need for 97 repining to 98 so 98 Tranny can operate.
Also I am working on a variation of a J-Mod to improve the shifts for the 98 transmission to be a little more aggressive than the 97 wich is now giving me some 3-4 shift flare issues since 120K miles now is at 130+K and getting worse. . Have taken many photos of the progress, and modifications to the 98 Tranny that would like to post in the near future along with some remarks and comments. Had also R&R the Intake manifold on the 4.6Lt engine thus is prone to develop stress cracks and leakeage of coolant occurs as it did with mine.. but that is a subject for another powertrain blog.