Gone, But Not Forgotten: A Farewell to Mopar1973Man

Friends, forum members, and fellow grease monkeys, we are gathered here today to say goodbye to a name.

Mopar1973Man has been with me a long time. The name goes back to at least 2004, when I hand-coded a little HTML4 website during the Cloud 10 Computers years. On October 4, 2007, it became Mopar1973Man.Com, which started as nothing more than my own notes for fixing Dodge Ram Cummins diesels. I never planned for it to grow. People found those notes, and they kept coming back. Folks have called me from as far away as Poland, Australia and Germany for help with their trucks.

Mopar1973Man was the guy with the answers. He was in the shop at all hours, up to his elbows in a diesel, and happy to explain it to anyone who asked.

Mopar1973Man was the guy who sat up at night with a lost soul on a highway in the middle of an Alaska winter, at -44°F, after he'd lost his throttle. I was up at the computer, trying to explain what to do to get him going. I stayed with him until he got home safely.

Mopar1973Man was also the guy who saved lives over in the Middle East. For that, I was rewarded with a U.S. flag from their military camp there.

Yes, it's tough. I can't do these things any longer. But this is who I am.

So why the change?

The honest answer is that I'm not the same person I was. Life took some hard turns. The landslide came off the hill behind the house. The shop was lost. The site sat quiet for months while I dug out and kept the trucks running. When I came back to it, I looked at the name and realized it no longer described me.

It also doesn't describe the site anymore. Mopar1973Man is a diesel and Dodge name. That's still a big part of this place, but it isn't all of it now. The site covers Cummins diesel repair, Cloud 10 Computers (helping people learn Linux and move off Windows), and my own corner of it, Titanium. My wife Suzanna is putting up some of her handmade jewelry too. One name for the diesel guy can't carry all that.

The hard part

I'm not going to pretend this is easy. It's hard, and it's the truth. Saying goodbye to Mopar1973Man feels like a part of me is dying. That name was who I was for a very long time.

It started with the cancer. Then came the news that was even harder to hear: my bladder had to come out, and I would have a stoma. Learning to live with it was a whole other fight. There was a long learning curve with the ostomy bags. They leaked. At night the tubing would come apart, and I'd wake up in the middle of the night with the bed soaked in my own urine. That's heartbreaking, and it's frustrating. I'm not going to dress it up. It wore me down, and it took a long time to get the hang of it. It's one more piece of the old me that I had to let go of.

I'm so thankful for an understanding wife like Suzanna, my Tweety Bird. She has always been there to help me, even with the mess of the leaks and doing laundry in the wee hours of the morning.

Suzanna knows what this is like, maybe better than anyone. I met her on July 25, 2024, and we were married on November 25, 2025. She broke her ankle when she was 16, and it changed her life. She still misses out on the things she loves, like jogging and running. She understands what it is to lose a piece of who you were and keep going anyway.

Why Titanium

I don't want to be pinned to a label. Not a scene, not a category, not a box someone else built. I'm not the same person anymore, and the name had to change with me.

But the real reason I carry this name is cancer. I've fought it twice, at Christmas 2018 and again at Christmas 2023. It was bladder cancer. The cancer was fully involved in my bladder, and nobody was sure whether it had moved on to other parts of my body. My doctor told me I would not make it. I'm still here.

It left its mark. I live with an ostomy bag now, and I'm disabled. I have a 40 pound weight limit because of my stoma. The stoma is an opening in my belly, and lifting anything heavier could give me a hernia. The chemo took a big toll too, and my energy is much lower than it used to be. The L3 and L4 in my back are in bad shape. I've lost a lot of muscle tone and strength.

I've been wrenching since I was 14 years old, and for the last 23 years I was a field mechanic. I did clutch jobs flat on the floor of my shop with no lift. I did transmission work on the shoulder of a road in the middle of nowhere. When a transfer case had to come out, I'd lay it right on my belly and move it myself. That was just how I worked. Now I've lost the majority of my tools, and with my body the way it is, I can't work that way anymore. That part is over. But I'm not done. I'm still trying to do as much as I can with this broken body.

A good friend gave me the name Titanium and told me to go listen to the song. It's by David Guetta featuring Sia, released in 2011 on his album Nothing but the Beat. It's a big, powerful dance track, and under the beat is a simple message: you can be knocked down, hit again and again, and still not break.

The song is about someone who has been shot at and pushed around by words, by people, and by life, and who still hasn't gone down. The metal in the title stands for strength that doesn't give way. When I heard it, I saw myself. Cancer had hit me twice, and I was still standing, even after a doctor told me I wouldn't make it. That's where the name came from, and that's why I'm keeping it. Give the song a listen: Titanium by David Guetta ft. Sia.

What happens next

Mopar1973Man is being retired. The website will remain the same, with all of my knowledge on Cummins diesels still here. I'm going to work on freshening up the information as much as I can. Titanium will be the name running the show, and the old posts under Mopar1973Man will always remain.

I'm still able to help with Cummins issues. All communication will be handled here on the website. If there's a special need, we can arrange a time for a phone call or a video call.

Here's the plain truth about the new articles. Without the shop, I have nowhere safe to work on even my own trucks. The yard is turning to mud from the rain, and snow is on the way. So I'll keep building articles, but slowly. They'll come when the weather is good and when there's money for repairs and upgrades on Thor. I'd rather give you real, finished work than a pile of rushed posts.

You'll hear more from me too: stories, projects, and what I'm really up to, from the trucks to the computers to the music.

So raise a wrench, pour one out for the old name, and I'll see you on the other side.

Rest easy, Mopar1973Man. 2004–2026.

— Titanium