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I recently picked up a 98.5 2500 2x4 short bed that had some money thrown at. I decided to take it to the next level and do everything possible to get 30 MPG when empty at 65 mph. I live in a 5th wheel camper and travel for a living, so diesel costs add up! Please give me your best ideas to improve MPG. Here is what I've done so far. Front End Aerodynamics on the grill & lower bumper shroud & tonneau cover ( Considering a belly pan underneath ) RV 275 Injectors with 7 holes ( Are there better injectors out there for economy ? ) 19.5" tires that leave me at about 1750 RPM @ 65 mph with 3.55 gears Quadzilla with an economy tune ( Hoping to get a custom tune when all hardware is done ) 205 degree thermostat ( higher temp leads to more complete combustion ) I have an upgraded radiator for pulling Borg Warner K27 turbo ( 18 cm^2 exhaust outlet volume is 50% larger than a stock HX35 at 12cm^2 thus reducing back pressure ) AFE Bladerunner GT Series intercooler 3" thick ( denser air burns fuel more completely ) Full Lock Up Torque Converter 15" Dual Electric Fans ( Stock fan clutch eats 20+ horsepower according to some estimates ) I'm looking for a used gear vendors overdrive as that would get me to 1500 RPM @ 65 Mph What ideas do you have ?

Thank you sir. I'm still doing every day one step at a time slow right now but working on getting the site tuned up and more info flowing soon.

Good to hear from you man.....Titanium. Glad to hear you're in the fight and still throwing punches that connect. I look forward to reading your content and will continue to make good use of your work with the Dodge Diesel Truck. I have 2 2003s 5.9s which are my hobby at the age of 70. Always wanted to own the Dodge Diesel Truck and two years ago I bought two Gen 3s from owners who 'had to sell due to hard times", trucks they bought new, and maintained very well. And when it comes to natural disasters which take a person's life and turn it upside down and inside out, living her in central Florida makes that threat a potential reality every year. So far since 2003, I've been fortunate to not have disaster strike. I however feel your pain because I had a major flood in central PA half my life ago, take my garage and wash it 2 miles downstream. Stay strong Titanium

Truth. But I think we can do better with aftermarket at this point than trying to get the highline option working correctly. I could do a car alarm better than a high line security. 🤣😂

It has the highline CTM assembly. But that's all I've found under the dash. I wish I could add heated seats, electric seats, and I'd love factory keyless entry! *Edit: scratch love to have - been reading aftermarket with remote start, alarm, keyless entry is way cheaper and more reliable...? But unfortunately it does not have seat heater, upgraded radio, electric seats...

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 partI'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 TitaniumI 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 nextMopar1973Man 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

November 2, 2026 People like to ask what kind of person listens to what kind of music. Goth, emo, alt, metal, country, pop. Pick a box, wear the shirt, learn the rules. I never did fit one, and the older I get, the less I care to try. Titanium came from the same place. A good friend told me to go listen to the song, and it stuck, because it was about getting knocked down and not breaking. I wasn't the same person anymore, and I didn't want to keep wearing the name of someone I used to be. So I picked one that fit who I am now. That's the whole idea behind it: not fitting in on purpose. What's Actually On My PlaylistIf you looked through my music folder, you'd find a wide mix. It's not one scene, and I'm fine with that. Here's what I keep coming back to: Bring Me The Horizon: started heavy and went darker and more electronic. "Parasite Eve" is a good place to jump in. Evanescence: big, dark and dramatic. "Bring Me To Life" is still the one that gets people. Breaking Benjamin: moody, heavy and melodic. If you only try one band from this list, I'd say try this one. Three Days Grace: raw and angry in the way that clears your head. Shinedown: big hooks with real weight behind them. Starset: cinematic and a little otherworldly, good late at night. twenty one pilots: hard to pin down, which is the point. David Guetta and Sia, "Titanium": the song behind the name, so it gets the last spot. There's more in there too, from country to dance floor to old rock. Good music doesn't ask what category it belongs in. Live It Your WayYou don't have to be one thing. You can be a diesel mechanic, a computer guy, a husband, a goth at heart and a guy who likes a good dance track, all on the same day. The people who try to sort you into a group are mostly trying to make themselves feel sure of where they stand. For the record, I'm an American, and I believe in American first values. I won't side with communism or socialism. That's where I stand, and I don't need a scene, a look or a playlist to tell me what to believe. You can dress dark, listen loud and still think for yourself. So crank it up, play what you like, and don't worry about the label. That's what Titanium means to me. What's on your playlist? Drop a band or a song in the comments. I'm always looking for something new to listen to. — Titanium

November 2, 2026 Winter is coming to New Meadows, and the garage doesn't forgive cold water lines. The old spot for the water heater was too far from the living quarters. That meant long runs of pipe sitting in a space that gets well below freezing, and every cold snap was a gamble. So today Mark and I moved it. The new home is against the white wall on the house side of the garage, as close to the living quarters as I can get it. It's a 40 gallon electric unit with 2500 watt elements, and it now sits on a plywood platform so the bottom of the tank stays up off the slab and out of any moisture. Under the tank is a drain pan with its own drain line, so a slow leak gets caught and carried away instead of soaking into the floor. The Theory Behind the MoveAn electric water heater turns almost every watt it pulls into heat, so there's not much efficiency to squeeze out of the element itself. The savings come from the heat you lose before the water ever reaches the tap. That loss shows up in three places: Pipe length. Every foot of hot water pipe between the heater and the faucet is a foot of hot water that cools off between uses, and a foot of cold water you have to run out before the hot arrives. A shorter run means less heat wasted and less water down the drain waiting for it. Cold surroundings. A tank loses heat to the air around it, and the colder that air is, the faster it leaks. A heater sitting in an unheated garage in January works harder to hold its temperature than one sitting against the warm side of the house. Freeze risk. Long runs through a cold space are exactly where lines freeze. Shorter, warmer runs are cheaper to heat and a lot safer. That's also why the cabinet matters. Foam board around the tank cuts how fast it sheds heat into the room, so it cycles on less often to hold temperature. I haven't put a meter on it, so I'm not going to throw out a savings number, but the logic holds up and I'll report back on how it behaves this winter. A few things we did on purpose: Flex connectors on the hot and cold lines, with a shutoff valve on the cold side. When this tank wears out in 10 or 12 years, swapping it will be a lot easier. Relief valve line run the full size of the valve outlet, downward only, with no cap or threads on the end. Separate pan drain so the pan and the relief valve each have their own path out. Fill before power. The tank gets filled until water runs steady at a hot tap before the breaker goes on. Powering up a dry tank burns out the elements in seconds, and that's the one mistake you can't take back. Next up is the cabinet. We've got the framing started with pink foam board on the walls to hold the heat in and keep the cold out. The plan is a removable front panel so the thermostats, element covers, and drain valve stay reachable. The anode rod on top also needs headroom so I'm not fighting it down the road. Two old guys, a cold garage, and a tank full of water. It's not fast, but it's getting done right. More photos once the cabinet is closed in. — Titanium Running the genrator to reload the water heater with hot water! Gotta love Linux for allowing you to create custom information display on your desktop.

I've always had an idea of using a 12VDC hydraulic pump to flow the NV4500 fluid out to a cooler and back into the gear box. Then use a ISSPro EV3 gauge to control the pump operation so the gauge would be set for an optional control circuit. So set the pump to come on at 200℉ and then cool it off and shut off again. Just my wild idea I've never done yet.

That was one thought of the plug in my mind but never really seen a high line truck with the options under the dash. 🙄

I went through the FSM section 8W-80 CONNECTOR PIN-OUTS and came up with a few ideas. Does this truck have the "high-line" option, seat heaters upgraded factory radio?

Thank you! The bed still had some things to get done on it, but mostly done lol. Now hopefully someone will buy the rolling cab/frame with it...

Same here about 200k to 250k in radiators.

Ohhh man that is super sad shes in peices. You did awesome on the bed and bumper. Thank you for shareing photos

Here are some older pics. I built this truck and redone so much, and its sad to say but shes in pieces now but alot of her parts still live on in the 1500 cummins. Im gonna try and do some video updates/progress on the 1/2 cummins should anyone be interested. She's gonna be sweet!

My 02 is at 370k oem radiator. But its been leaking alittle the last couple years. I had to put a radiator in dads 04 at about 200k leaking bad at tank seam. My 98 appears to not be leaking at 240k now. Its only leak is the damn vacumn pump.

Pretty sure that white one the trailer brake harness for brake controler. If you have brake controler hooked up then im wrong lol Stanley we need some pics of your rig the built not bought bed and bumper is interesting me. And that youve turned it in sw truck. Thats awesome, not many know u can put single wheels on.