Johnny Cache

I'll give Fern credit for doing the job, must have been a typo. I do it all the time myself, even smart people goof.  

The other day I got some new rockers and some other stuff. I had planned to replace the spark plugs and thought I should also look into the rockers because of a slight ticking noise (more noticeable cold. Hardest part for me was removing the intake manifold (not too bad).  Yep, #5 cylinder had a  bad rocker on the second intake valve, the rocker's roller was loose on it's little shaft. I found some scoring on the edges of the cam due to the sides of the rocker rubbing on the cam, but other wise the cam looked pretty good. I don't know how long it had been this way, since we bought the car with the tick already present and the car has 112K, everything else seems pretty good. And, we got it for a pretty good price, probably due to the ticking. At first I was a bit worried about doing the repair and the cost, but it came off pretty easy. I've done allot of work on other cars but this was a different animal, so much of it plastic and those little push-in plastic anchors to deal with. I'm an old school Ford and Chevy guy with some VW, Volvo and Subaru experience along the way. Nothing like this.  Thank God for 100K spark plugs!  I think the ones I took out must have been the originals, Champion and still looked pretty good, but were replaced.  Took me about 4 hours to do the job, less than I thought. I had taken it to a couple Auto Repair places including the dealer to get an estimate, cheapest was about $1000 and the Dealer was saying around $2000 and up. I did it for less than $100 with new plugs and still have some extra rockers incase it does it again.
 
My only advice is get it done when it happens, don't wait too long and you'll save damage to the cam, which will save allot of money. 

The other day I got some new rockers and some other stuff. I had planned to replace the spark plugs and thought I should also look into the rockers because of a slight ticking noise (more noticeable cold. Hardest part for me was removing the intake manifold (not too bad).  Yep, #5 cylinder had a  bad rocker on the second intake valve, the rocker's roller was loose on it's little shaft. I found some scoring on the edges of the cam due to the sides of the rocker rubbing on the cam, but other wise the cam looked pretty good. I don't know how long it had been this way, since we bought the car with the tick already present and the car has 112K, everything else seems pretty good. And, we got it for a pretty good price, probably due to the ticking. At first I was a bit worried about doing the repair and the cost, but it came off pretty easy. I've done allot of work on other cars but this was a different animal, so much of it plastic and those little push-in plastic anchors to deal with. I'm an old school Ford and Chevy guy with some VW, Volvo and Subaru experience along the way. Nothing like this.  Thank God for 100K spark plugs!  I think the ones I took out must have been the originals, Champion and still looked pretty good, but were replaced.  Took me about 4 hours to do the job, less than I thought. I had taken it to a couple Auto Repair places including the dealer to get an estimate, cheapest was about $1000 and the Dealer was saying around $2000 and up. I did it for less than $100 with new plugs and still have some extra rockers incase it does it again.
 
My only advice is get it done when it happens, don't wait too long and you'll save damage to the cam, which will save allot of money. 

The other day I got some new rockers and some other stuff. I had planned to replace the spark plugs and thought I should also look into the rockers because of a slight ticking noise (more noticeable cold. Hardest part for me was removing the intake manifold (not too bad).  Yep, #5 cylinder had a  bad rocker on the second intake valve, the rocker's roller was loose on it's little shaft. I found some scoring on the edges of the cam due to the sides of the rocker rubbing on the cam, but other wise the cam looked pretty good. I don't know how long it had been this way, since we bought the car with the tick already present and the car has 112K, everything else seems pretty good. And, we got it for a pretty good price, probably due to the ticking. At first I was a bit worried about doing the repair and the cost, but it came off pretty easy. I've done allot of work on other cars but this was a different animal, so much of it plastic and those little push-in plastic anchors to deal with. I'm an old school Ford and Chevy guy with some VW, Volvo and Subaru experience along the way. Nothing like this.  Thank God for 100K spark plugs!  I think the ones I took out must have been the originals, Champion and still looked pretty good, but were replaced.  Took me about 4 hours to do the job, less than I thought. I had taken it to a couple Auto Repair places including the dealer to get an estimate, cheapest was about $1000 and the Dealer was saying around $2000 and up. I did it for less than $100 with new plugs and still have some extra rockers incase it does it again.
 
My only advice is get it done when it happens, don't wait too long and you'll save damage to the cam, which will save allot of money. 

Thanks for all the replies. Whew, I didn't mean to start a brush fire amongst us. So what I'm getting out of this is, there is a way to check the tranny oil, they just don't provide a way, like the good old days. From my limited experience with Dodge cars and automatic transmissions in general (most of my previous cars were manual tranny) it's good to hear all the pro and con. Thanks for all that.  IMHO the first line of preventative maintenance is to check fluid levels and their condition. Surely you would want to make sure your brake fluid was at a safe level and the same for the engine oil and cooling system, so why not the tranny?  My best guess is so people don't mess with it or maybe to save a few $$$ building the car. Neither reason is a good one to me. I'll check out the videos and find out what I can about it.  It's a shame they don't put out a service or repair manual like Haynes or Chilton, I used to buy one for every car I owned and did most my own work. Times have changed, now they want you to buy a DVD for a few 100 dollars or subscribe to a online manual, I think that's BS. So I've learned allot from all this, and hope this car last along time with few issues.

Thanks but the problem is I want a book not a CD or down load.