Just double checking....

nickandersonLS01

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So my 01 LS is going in for service, new tires and body repair on Monday the 19th, right now it's misfiring, I'm getting check engine + transmission lights, real bad gas mileage(around 10-11), and of course the notorious hesitation(purchasing the xcal2 once I get the car back from the dealership).

So this is what I told the dealer what I want done: valve body, new valve cover gaskets(is there a certain P/N I should tell them about?), transmission solenoid and motorcraft plugs.

Do I need new coils? There's a definate misfire and it's under warranty so they should do all of this for the low cost of $100 deductable.

Is there anything else I should have them look at? Any help would be appreciated I just don't want to get it back and find something they missed and have it gone for another week or so.
 
The coils are about $100 a piece from the dealer - so.... if you can get them to change them while they do the plugs (no extra labour) then it's a steal.

most dealerships will not simply replace the VC gaskets and all the coils unless there is evidence of oil leaking and will only replace the coils reporting bad. That is why many LS owners had to go back a couple of times....
 
They've been leaking since before I ever bought the car, my car REAKS of burnt oil inside the cabin when I'm driving, then I get a misfire about 3 days after owning the car. My assumption is that the valve gaskets leaking caused the misfire. Or am I terribly wrong? I'm not going to the dealership and asking them to do all these things just because I said so! There's obviously something wrong.

EDIT: I thought that the "coils" were a coil pack therefore I would have to replace the entire pack instead of just the misfiring ones?
 
you are likely right on with you diag - and if the dealership sees oil in the spark plugs wells - then they will swap them.

the coils are COP - coil on plug - design - so they go bad one by one.... and the silly dealership only replaces the ones that throw a code...
 
I would change the coils also. My coils went bad at 100,200 miles, actually it was one coil, but I replaced all of them and got new sparkplugs.
 
so basically I'm going to have to purchase my own coils and do that myself or will the dealer cover that? I have the warranty and it only excludes "wear" items, it covers everything else. I wouldn't mind purchasing coils, but if it's covered under warranty maybe I can get this xcal2 a little faster.
 
find out if they will swap them all under warranty. If they come back and say 'no - only coils #3 and #5 are bad' - then it may be worth paying them to swap the rest while the car it apart. You'll pay a higher price for the parts at the dealership - but there should be almost no extra labour.
 
I agree with Quik. in the long run, it's probably better to bite the part bullet on this one now to save time and money down the road
 
I sure wouldn't go in and tell the dealer to "replace the valvebody" for example. Don't ever tell them what to replace when you have a problem with a component. If they follow your instructions...and it doesn't fix the problem, you are stuck with the bill. They did exactly what you told them to do. If you're having a problem, ask them to fix the problem. Let them diagnose it. You may suggest...but let them do the diagnosis. That way, if they replace something like the valvebody and it ends up being the solenoids, you aren't stuck with the valvebody bill since it didn't fix the problem you brought it in for.
 
Obviously I'm not going to go in there telling them what to do... What I will be doing is tell them that I read the TSB's and these are the common issues. The only thing I'm TELLING them to do, is replace all my coils, which I will pick up the bill on the coils that aren't bad. And no, I wouldn't pay for anything covered under my warranty. Keep in mind I just bought this car a couple weeks ago, so they obviously knew there was problems with it. I smelled oil after a 5 minute test drive, hence why I bought the 3 yr 36k warranty that covers basically EVERYTHING.
 
You should tell them actually..I call it the 50k curse

I had the same problem and Ill tell you it wont be fixed untill you replace all the coilpacks and if you are going to do any proformance mods get a good grounding system cause this year LS sucks electrically. The exact cause, faulty gasket leaks after 50k miles (most common ammount) then oil spills onto the packs My dealer left me high and dry for a few thousand miles till they found the right problem then after # 7 and 8
were replaced it still happend. Hopefully you got a good dealer mine sucked.The thing is, the more you drive with this issue the more it will stress the other packs. If this has been a problem for any previous owner who knows how long it was left alone. After the bad coilpaks are replaced if it still happens they will not diagnose your problem thinking they fixed it correctly. I have the best waranty as well and they still ripped me off. Well actually they didnt know what they were doing but after all the packs were replaced it stoped and ran like a you know what. They only fixed ones that were vissibly damaged untill I freaked out with the lemon law ppl on my side.

You see the signal arcs off of the packs that are corroted and into the rest of the electrical system messing with almost every other electrical component. If you havent seen any problems with your trans acting up or your batt, or engine light it might still be early but if you dont get all the packs fixed soon it will screw up the whole elec system and leave them guessing cause, every check engine code "will" pop up at different times and unless the guys are good they will mess with everything the code tells em to.
PM me if you need more info.
 
So I took my car into the dealer on Monday(thats when I was scheduled), they fixed the scratch on my trunk lid that day. Then it sat in the shop until this morning when they finally started working on it(unless you count them diagnosing it).

Problems:
Transmission solenoid - covered
All 8 new boots - not covered $150 parts + labor
All 8 new plugs - covered(why these and not the boots? dont ask me)
Valve cover gaskets - covered
Tires - $360

Hopefully by the time I leave work today I'll be able to pick it up. They said the coils were all fine.
 
Well, I kinda want the best for you but I would suggest that before you get very angry be prepared for another vist trust me...if the oil leaked and the car hasnt had it done yet it needs to be. They did all of the above but my TIRES? I dont remember did you say you needed new ones?..Oh well your gunna get realy pissed when you find that it wasnt the solinoid as well but I figgured. Hey they replaced a hell of a lot that didnt need it in my situation so now its like I have a new car, maybe this will happen for you. The big problem is that he more they mess around the less miles you have untill your warranty runs up. Make sure you get on the nearest high way and test it out before you get all the way home the thing that made it the hardest for my Dealer was that they couldnt go far with my car and most of this happend on the highway.

1 question did they or can they stress test the coils?

GOOD LUCK!!!
 
The transmission solenoid was def. shot, the guy that is working on my car owns an LS, the service department was massive and filled with exotic cars. These guys know what they are doing and I wasn't about to dump $82 PER coil when they said they were tested and were fine. If the car isn't running correctly, my warranty covers all mishaps from service with no charge(I have a $100 deductable). And yes, I did need new tires, when I bought the car there was like 10% tread left and thats not good in Chicago winter. They gave me a great deal $78 per tire(dealer cost, was on speaker when talking to the tire dealer) + tax, and free install + balancing. The car wasn't in THAT bad of shape when I took it in, all I can say is I think I caught the problem extremely early, my misfire only happened about a week prior to service(maybe only causing the plugs + boots to die and didn't hurt the coils?) It's starting to get a little better around here so hopefully I can get under the hood and check out the work in a couple weeks.

My only problem is that I paid $2200 for a warranty that doesn't cover the boots, but it covered the spark plugs. I might change the coils later anyways just to avoid future problems. I just don't want to pay for them + labor because that's just adding to my $610 bill.
 
Wonderful....

Just got a call from the service department, they have to take out my transmission and "inspect" it. Now I won't be getting it until next week sometime! They replaced the solenoid and it shot them a new code. I guess the only good news is that everything else is working perfectly. Hopefully they have to put a new transmission in so I'm riding on fresh gears.
 
?????? double check those packs ??????? Dude I am not lieing to yah. If I could and had a scanner I would post the paperwork from my "REPAIRS" so you can see the comments and notes from the mechanics.....it seems like the same steps I was takeing then I told them dont touch the trans stop messing with it and check the packs.....they might only be able to replace them all and not even tell if there is anything wrong till the difference it makes afterwards is seen.
 
I'll be going there tommorow to check the progress, I'll ask to see the coils and see if they can stress test them. The dealer said they were covered under warranty, and if they weren't working, they'd swap them out. The warranty is 3rd party so the service department is getting their money. The valve cover gaskets were fixed and he said they were just starting to leak.... so I don't see how the coils could be that bad already, he said the boots weren't even THAT bad in regards to the VCG leaking. But I'll check it out tommorow, I have to go with my girlfriend tonight to another dealership she's buying a 2001 Mercury Cougar. She wants me to check it out first.
 
One thing like I said is that the remaindeing packs might not and probably are not visibly damaged, you may be right since you havent put many miles on it since it occured, but this is my exact experince with my LS so far....I wish the comp. would have done something about this cause to my understanding it happend to alot of cars. The leak is very small and takes even more time to get bigger, think about it like this if you have way over 50k on the odo then maybe the pre owner had the leak as well and drove for a while...long enough to stress the others but not make a bigger leak.

Good luck with the Cougar not my taste at all but chicks like em, they are supposed to be good clean running cars for women..... and younger ones as well.
 
That's why my girlfriend is buying it and not me lol. And I get what you're saying but NONE of the coils are damaged. Only the boots are, they drove the car fine, everything is fixed except for the transmission.
 
other than the check trans light what kind of indication did you get that something was wrong with the transmission?
 
other than the check trans light what kind of indication did you get that something was wrong with the transmission?

+1, i'm having a minor problem and its getting worse. but no check trans light.
 
If it is all the same problem you wont get anylight for a bit....then it will just throw out nonsense codes...IE...check trans....check advanced trak.....then you might eveb get that letter e on your message board that tells you what gear your in...apparently thats real bad but its false..I even had my car cut out on majore highways with tractor trailers screaming up behind...realy scary when the roads predomanantly Rigs then haveing to steer a 4000 puond car accross 3 lanes of trucks to get to the shoulder oh and the steering sucks as well when this happens...be carefull get the problems fixed as soon as possible.
 
Originally the problem was that it would shift out of 5th gear and into 4th, shoot me the error code. All I had to do was turn the car off and back on, I could run it in D4 with no problems. Turns out that the OD band was bad + the valve body, I'm getting it back on friday.

Go get it checked out before it gets worse.
 
Finally picked up the LS last night, total $651 and some change.

Work done:
fixed scratch on trunk lid
new Toyo spectrum A/S tires
all 8 new boots
valve cover gaskets
transmission solenoid
valve body(originally the tech said "this car doesnt have a valve body")
new OD band
8 new plugs

It's running amazing right now, they did an amazing job. They stress tested the coils and obviously tested the car out alot, I went in there with 3/4 tank and got it back with close to nothing. The TOYO Spectrums are pretty nice for how inexpensive they were. I have yet to break them loose and it was raining yesterday and snowing on my way to work, I would recommend, we'll see how long they last though. All in all I'm extremely happy, except for having to pay for the boots.
 

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