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Well I'm coming back. I'll admit I'm not able to do a lot of jobs. Anything in the heavy lift is over. Currently have Thor stuffed in the house garage and getting ready to go back over the injectors again. Now Thor my 2006 Common rail is my pet project. Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes the new version of me will be going public. Sadly no more wrench time for me. I'll still play with my own rigs. My problem is I've got to consider my stoma and kidneys. So I'll continue my education of the Cummins line. As for my medical issues I'm clean of cancer nearly 6 months. Check up coming. I'm stuck with Stage 3 Cronic Kidney disease this is due to my kidneys being choked by the cancer. The website I'm going to upgrade software and there is a lot of new features coming. Stay tuned in. There is a feature to have live chats again and when the chat ends it will convert the chat unto a forum thread auto-magically. One of many.

One step closer

Well the girl is starting to come together. My Nations 180 showed up today and I’m going to install it on Monday. I’ll make sure to clean all the mounting surfaces to ensure a decent ground. My ecm & pcm are in @Tractorman care and he’s forwarding it to ACS on Monday as well. I’ve installed my Airdog 100-5G during the week. Quite happy with the install (I’ve deleted the oem filter housing now). I put a 6.7 wif sensor in the water separator and made a jumper harness from the engine harness wif connector so I can retain that. I’ve lost the heater side since I couldn’t find a filter with a heater element in it. One thing I noticed in the airdog harness is it uses the oem lift pump connector for the relay trigger and already comes with a diode suppressing relay. I removed the oem lift pump & plate and am waiting on a Fleece block off plate to cover the hole. During my adventures in wiring down on the engine harness I was leaning on top on the engine and accidentally broke the dipstick handle off. I see they discontinued it and have the “new style” dipstick & tube on order. The old tube came out surprisingly easy. Just a note about my GDP Fuel Boss removal. I ended up breaking the crank side pulley wheel to gain access to the harmonic bolts to remove the adapter. Those set screws are a PITA to get out after many years of exposure to the elements. What a nightmare it will be if you had to replace a crank seal or something all because the set screws don’t want to come out. If anyone is interested in buying my old kit I got a deal for you. You’ll just need a new pulley wheel adapter (I’m sure you can buy one from GDP) and new 3/8” hose.

@mace, I have performed the power steering pump and vacuum pump conversion that you brought to this site. I hope you are still perusing the site and will see this. The time and effort spent on this project (and the APPS relocate) has been very worthwhile. Much engine space has been freed up and the power steering reservoir is right where it should be for easy fluid check / fill. The reservoir is like the brake master cylinder reservoir – you can see the fluid level through the reservoir. An unexpected benefit is that this direct mount power steering pump outperforms any previous power steering pump that has been on this truck. There is no more stopping of the steering wheel when the power steering is under high demand, such as when maneuvering in tight spaces, steering from stop to stop with little forward or backward movement of the truck. I started the project by finding a location for the new power steering reservoir, which was going to be right where the APPS assembly used to be. Then I built a mounting bracket for the reservoir (shown below). The first part of the bracket assembly is designed to let the weight of the oil and reservoir rest in the V slot. In the above photo, note the welded nut where the tab on the top of the reservoir is screwed into the bracket. In the photos below, more brackets are added to fasten the unit to the engine. Below is the new location for the reservoir in the engine compartment - lots of space available for mounting with the removal of the APPS and APPS mounting assembly. I don't have any photos of the actual pump mount, but the mounting is straight forward, especially with the addition of studs instead of bolts. Much easier installation the old vacuum pump / power steering pump combination was. I didn't use a gasket - just the grey Permatex RTV gasket maker. The one thing that Mace did that I should have done (which he clearly mentioned) is to have the pump suction fitting turned down on a lathe from 22 mm to 19 mm to match the 19 mm connection on the reservoir. Because I didn't do that, I have not-so-neat connections from the pump suction to the reservoir (another reason to not take a photo down there). @Mace, thank you again for making this possible. That’s all, folks! John

The winter covers definitely work. I bought mine from Genos 2 years ago. What a difference in the winter. Warm up times are much shorter and she holds heat a little better also.

I went for it yesterday on the first running board top skin. Those long beads are tough to try and keep straight. Did I? Mostly.....at least its gonna be Rino Lined and not gloss back!

Have you ever considered an Alice Cooper look? Mark

Formed edge

Finally had time under the hood & I found that when the transmission company installed the power supply for the transmission temp sensor the battery terminal nut was put on finger tight..... pretty sure that was the primary issue. I also checked & cleaned all grounding connections. Batteries are brand new. I did change the fuel filter & found some debris in the bottom of the filter housing but nothing crazy. Drained the fuel from the filter housing & did not find any water. Just got back from vacation towing a toy hauler 300 miles & it did not miss a beat. Thank you @Tractorman & @Mopar1973Man

Interesting - not what I was expecting. I was expecting to see rail pressure below 4500 psi while cranking during the hard start. That would have made sense as the ECM would not have turned on the injectors at that low of pressure. Also, it would have coincided with high fuel return rate. So, if I am understanding correctly, you are getting fuel rail pressure above 4500 psi immediately, even with the FCA connected and the engine still won't start. So, the question for me is, why isn't the ECM telling the injectors to fire right away? This is where my lack of fully understanding the details of how a common rail fuel system works comes into play. If this were my truck, I think I would want to know what all has to be in place before the ECM will tell the injectors to fire. Example: could an engine rpm sensor cause the ECM to not fire injectors, or could the fuel pressure sensor cause the ECM not to fire injectors?, etc. - John

Yup. Im still here plugging along slowly but still going forward.

Don't know much about delivery valves. But the idle screw needs adjusted to prevent stalling when cold and 2800rpm is because you need to upgrade the governor springs and washers.

@Threadzy, I just edited my post with some additional information on the track bar. - John

I’m looking into those as well.

Might consider adjustable control arms too so you can get the correct geometry for the front axle.

I’m running a moog track bar, beefier than the OEM unit. I was told it had a tiny bit of play but wasn’t in need of replacing yet. I swapped it anyway while I was tearing everything else apart last weekend. Lifetime warranty ftw.

The last one I put on was from napa, they offer a couple. Sorry, I don't have the part number handy though.

Also, without a dense rubber bushing on one end of the track bar, every pulse of energy generated from the road will transfer through the track bar to the frame, then the body, then to you. I don't think you would like that. - John

That looks like cheap Chinese knockoff crap that break under any kind of stress. Don’t trust your life to $119. I made my own. I used a 07 Power Wagon bar (16mm) and cut it in two and had a machine shop make a threaded turn buckle in the middle for adjustment. Worked great. The bracket I use is from Dodge Off-Road.

I replaced my control arms a couple years ago with Stryker’s as they’re a tad longer for levelled trucks and the bushings are greaseable. You can center your wheel by adjusting the drag link by the pitman arm.

Welcome! Its nice to see 2nd gen’s living on still

I have the 6spd but I’ll look into Nations. Had a good run of 24 years but I guess it’s just 2nd gen luck! I did the wt mod 2 years ago I never had issues up till then but it seemed like a good idea to just do it.

Test for AC noise. Now that you’ve done the W-T mod it could be ok. Once I got my Nations alternator I still had the lock unlock issue with my transmission. Once I did the W-T mod I haven’t had any issues. I did the mod 5 or 6 years ago. It’s the high AC noise that fries the computers.

Test for AC noise from the alternator while the truck is running with no accessory’s on. Anything below .05 mv is acceptable. Above that replacement is necessary. I’ve been running a Nations alternator for years with no issues.

P0606 is a ECM death code. Try resetting but I'm pretty sure it will return. @Auto Computer Specialist should be able to fix it up for you.

Made the trip out to meet my guy on the bed trade I'm doing. I'm trading the super heavy winch bumper and the steel flatbed with toolboxes. Here is the bed I'll get. Yeah it's rough but workable. Now to get my injector back in Thor so i can roll it out of the shop.

Passenger side done. As typical it went better and looks better. I figured a way to jig the bead rolls so it went much better.

There is a tag in the glove box with the rear end size. If the tag has disappeared, you can call the Dodge dealer's parts or service department and ask for the info from the factory build sheet. This web site has an app to calculate final drive ratio with gear/tire size info. https://tiresize.com/gear-ratio-calculator/

Project Thor continues... Mark found me a set of bumpers, 8 foot bed, and tailgate and swapping the flat bed and winch bumper. I'll post up photos what we see when I get to Jordan Valley, OR.

I'm at 3.69 final ratio. 245/75 R16 tires vs. 265/75 R16 tires (stock). But I'm 3.55 geared axles. At 82 MPH turning exactly 2,500 RPM. Still getting upwards of 20 MPG. High RPM is not a issue and is way more efficient than 3.55 gears on 31.6" tires (265/75 R16) and use a 245/75 R16 which is 30.5" inch tires. Beast can fry the tires in every gear but 5th gear.

@Mopar1973Man It looks like he has the updated main shaft already. I purchased several of my transmission parts from Allstate Gear online. The 5th gear nut I used was their "super nut" kit that cane in the master rebuild kit that I bought. I has to replace all 3 shafts, input shaft, counter shaft and the kit came with the full spline updated main shaft as well. My trans was trashed. The main shaft bearing in the front took a massive dump and trashed everything. Also, get a big torque wrench! As Mike mentioned, the 5th gear nut needs to be torqued to 300ft/lbs. DO NOT use a chisel and hammer and think it's good. It isnt. I post some pics of mine below. The carnage More carnage New input shaft and counter shaft New counter shaft in place, reused the small reverse idler. Case has been cleaned here also New main shaft installed, also replaced the tail housing with a cast iron piece. OEM was aluminum and had the mount holes hogged out of round. Now, the shift ring or collar that I have circled in this pic are important! I installed the ring backwards. If you look closely the ring is flat on one side and has a tapper on the other. The flat side has to go toward the large gear to the right as shown in the pic. Due to installing that ring backwards I do not have the use of 1st gear. I don't need it unless towing and I will pill it and make it right, just haven't yet. Hope all this helps!

If your going to pull the 5th out why not just put a new one in while you have it apart? At least it should get you home, then to a proper rebuild. I rebuilt mine (4x4), they're not extremely hard to do, many good videos online to take you step by step.

Yesterday, I put your situation in the "911" section of the TDR, but so far no response - but, it was a weekend. Here is what I posted, "Trying to help someone out here. Fellow has a '99 2WD Dodge Cummins truck. He is 1100 miles from home and has lost 5th gear. He wants to know if he can remove 5th gear and drive home, or if anyone knows of a reliable manual transmission repair shop in the Fort Myers, Florida area. Thanks," I let you know if / when I hear anything. - John

Vehicle Nickname: 1999 Dodge Ram 3500 Laramie SLT Quad Cab Cummins Dually 5-Speed Date Added To The Garage: 2025-01-12 Garage Link: 1999 Dodge Ram 3500 Laramie SLT Quad Cab Cummins Dually 5-Speed

Heck I just did a live video on Tiktok just about an hour ago.

Remove and Replace Fuel Injectors First step you need to have all your tools ready and clean place to layout parts in the assembly order. Make things a bit easier take a moment and disconnect the 2 plugs going to the valve cover. Grab a 10mm wrench or a short socket on a ratchet. There are 6 bolts holding the valve cover in place. You don't need to pull the bolts out of the cover just loosen and leave till you lift the valve cover off. Now you should see this below. You are going to grab a 8mm short socket and ratchet and remove all 12 wires from all 6 injectors. Don't worry about tagging there is no wrong way for those wires. Then just lift the gasket off carefully and watch for snagged nuts. Now you have the spacer to remove. There is 10mm bolts holding the space in place. Be aware there is one bolt at each end right near the gasket. There is 7 bolts in total. The rear most is difficult to see bu the next photo should help. Showing the bolts for the spacer. Now your ready to pull the exhaust rockers of using a 10mm socket and just loosen and lift of each rocker and lay in order on your clean area. Make sure to grab the valve bridges as you go they have to stay paired up with its valve set. If you don't you will have to do a valve lash adjustment afterwards. It should look the same as this with all 6 exhaust rockers removed. Now you have the external stuff to handle. 10mm socket and 11mm socket and remove the single 10mm bolt holding the dipstick to the air horn. Then loosen the 11mm nut on the hose clamp and slip the air tube off the air horn. Then the last 10mm should be 4 holding the air horn to the grid heater and intake. Now grab a 19mm open-end wrench and start loosening all the high-pressure lines from the fuel rail and the crossover tubes. There will be 10mm bolts holding the lines to the manifold. Be aware cylinder 6 you have two 15mm bolts in the hoist ring. The right bolt is a 13mm nut holding the injector line. Use an 8mm wrench and loosen the clamp. Remove the 13mm nut and flip the holder off the stud then you can remove the 15mm bolts to gain access to cylinder 6 line way in the back. Now using a 24mm open end wrench or socket you can remove all 6 crossover tube nuts in the driverside of the head. As for removing the crossover tubes, there is cap tools that aid in the removal of the tube from the heads. I wrap a rag around and gently grab with channel locks in a rocking motion and pulling it will come out without much effort. Just for the backyard mechanic. Now use an 8mm socket and remove all 12 bolts holding the 6 injectors in place. Using a flat-blade screwdriver insert it below the collar and twist the screwdriver to lift the injector out of the bore of the head. Cylinders 1, 2, and 3 Cylinders 4, 5, and 6 Injectors and crossover tubes. INSTALLATION Now I'm going to show you how to install new injectors in your common rail Cummins. Lay out all your injectors. Remove protective caps. Look and see if the copper washer are installed on the nozzle. If not use a small dab of axle grease to hold the washer in place on the injector. Now place the injector in the cylinder head. Please take notice to the crossover tube hole and its location on the injector and make sure it faces the driver's side. You will also notice the one side of the collar is square and the end towards the exhaust valve side is rounded. Install the two 8mm bolts and torque to 44 inch/pounds. After this loosen both bolts. This is only to seat the injector completely in the bore. Now install the crossover tube with the BBs facing up. Then install the collar nut. Then torque to 11 foot/pounds. Now complete the torquing of the injector hold down to 89 inch/pounds. Make sure to do both bolts evenly. Then you can finalize the crossover tube torque to 37 foot/pounds. Install the valve cover spacer and tighten the 10mm bolts. Don't forget the one bolt in back. Install the valve cover gasket and electrical. Torque the electrical nuts to the injectors at 11 inch/pounds. Install the exhaust rockers. Remember these must be in correct order to the cylinder in which it came from. Don't swap rockers to another cylinder you will be forced to do a valve lash adjustment if you do. The torque on the 10mm rocker arm bolt which is 35 foot/pounds. Install the fuel rails to each injector. Torque the line nuts to 37 foot/pounds. This should get all the injectors installed but you'll need to install remaining things like the grid heater and air horn. View full Cummins article

This should help others to install common rail injectors properly. More to come!

Go over to Quadzilla Power website. https://quadzillapower.com/quadzilla-power-high-idle-switch/

Hey Mike, I contacted Quadzilla Monday and they are sending me out a new PCB board and switch. I will keep you updated on how that turns out. They will send me a wiring harness if that doesn't correct things.

I have an '01 3500, she has some rust in the typical areas like rockers, floor boards and door bottoms. Truck has 194k roughly. I plan to fix the rust and keep her going. I prefer the look of my 2nd gen over the newer body styles, that's my preference though. I also love that I don't deal with emissions at all. It's also a 5speed, I have rebuilt the trans once myself. Another factor there is that I can and have done it. If needed, I'll do it again. I love my truck and will do what I can to keep her as long as I can. There is a lot of life left in the drive train, just need to keep the rust at bay.

Yes sir you can. Just key on and click the switch through the different modes and report back the values seen.

I would still be interested in the behavior of the fuel rail pressure while the engine is cranking during a hard start. I don't think you have done that, yet. If the fuel rail pressure is low during the hard start, remove the fuel control actuator electrical connector and see if the rail pressure rises when cranking the engine and the engine starts right away. If it does, you have a high return flow rate problem somewhere - not an "air in the fuel" problem. - John

There should be power steering and brakes immediately all though it may be jerky and noise from the system due to the entrained air and slowly go away in a day or two. There is flow so the pump is delivering fluid but is there pressure? I think you have "3. That pressure regulator in the pump has gotten stuck open and even though there is flow the pressure is too low to do the job." If the high-pressure line/hose was blocked there would be very little flow and the pump would be making a noise as if the steering wheel had been turned to full left or right with no let up. You may want to remove the pressure relief valve and inspect it.

Ok. Best timing numbers are based on the the engine oil temperatures. When your timing is correct the coolant and oil temperatures will fall slightly and engine load is reduced. Like myself I got to calculate the pop pressure on mine a bit more being I'm a bit more retarded with higher pop pressure. Colder IAT typically likes more timing but need to keep retarding also to be able to build boost quickly. I just released the newest version (2024.12.1) of my Eco Tune for December. The 265's are bit taxing to MPG's. I've created the newer version of tune with deep retard for boost building and power is nearly instant. Still can reach below 20% engine load and keep in the 20's for MPG's.

Just checking in on the server this morning the memory issue and huge swap file is now stable and not wasting system resources. The crazy part is the server is VPS (Virtual Private Server) so I'm limited to 8GB of RAM and attempt o give every process a chunk of memory so all the software can work flawlessly. Strange but true my server has more CPU than my machine at home but yes the server is a 8 core CPU. Just a matter of keep the server running fast on the software I require.

Good Morning Gang! Mopar1973Man is up and getting built into my new way of life. OK! I'm going to attempt to return to my previous plans. Beast is getting a bit slobbery with a oil leak at the rear main seal. The GF and I agree that Thor needs to return to be put back to function. Mark just got his truck out of my shop and we are going to be shoving Thor in being its been dead for 2 years just about. I need Thor to bring some of the GF stuff back here to the house before winter really hits. Myself I';m going to move forward working on producing 3rd Gen articles off of the adventures of Thor failures. The GF wants to get involved and help in rebuilding this industry of Cummins Support and make it work for all of you. Yeah I'm under limitations that prevent me from going whole hog right now but I'll keep you all posted. Thor's first project is to retro fit a AirDog 150 on that truck then I'm going to sell the bumpers, flat bed and return this truck to factory bumpers and bed. Thor is way too heavy empty to even get good MPG nearly tipping the scale at 10k empty. As for the Titanium side of things., This will remain a part of my life from here on out. Why? I continue to get stellar comments about my appearance. More fun when you have nurses betting money on what I'll wear next. I'm still creating videos on TikTok and Titanium is growing in followers. Too many people here even locally look for me in makeup and hair most days and get bummed when it just normal me which is rare.

Another update. Medically I'm healing slowly. Finally made it past my first cancer check and still going. No medical appts except for PT which I need to help ditch my spare tire. I need more core strength to prevent having hernia anytime soon. Still a risk with any heavy lifting. Tidbit that is funny that my makeup and Goth look now has nurses betting with money what I'm going to be wearing. Yeah it true I just was down getting resized from 1 inch stoma to 7/8 inch stoma and change the Rx. The nurse was overjoyed when I was there with my black and purple hair and makeup.

As for the newer MySQL database software late last night found I've got a bad configuration and the database refused to start. Currently is missing the configuration but default values are close enough right now. As my search engine Elasticsearch is being tweaked also to improve server speeds since the software was cramming every thing to my 2Gb swap file. Hard drive is slower than memory. Keep an eye open we are working at it.