Mopar1973Man

Next time my NAPA alternator dies I'm heading this direction. Nice mild boost of power, no modifications to the electrical, direct bolt in and wire up alternator. Bit more money but a very nice upgrade. KATOOM would you be willing to create a write up of this for the site?

Yes but make sure to treat your exposed end of wire in the ring terminal with some sort of sealant to prevent rotting of the copper.

315k... I would say the injectors are tired.

All right here...

Just talked to her tonight and the doctor is optimistic that they can provide her some sort of quality of life after all this. I've got to head down on the 2nd of Jan. to be with her before her surgery on the PD catheter. Most likely be bringing her home on the 4th Jan. Man this is going to hang me up. So the clutch comes on the 3rd. That means I've got to put effort into the 1996 Dodge and have it ready to make the run down. @Taz will stay here and watch over "Diesel" the dog. When I get back I'll be stuffing a clutch in the truck quickly. @MoparMom and myself are really hoping the PD catheter works out because the long trip back and forth will end as soon as the Doctor says it functional again. All I can do is keep saying prayers and keep my spirits high and keep pushing forward.

The only problem with hosting sites is that when you do and you kill your account or delete photos then the pages here reflect that. It always best to use the site upload feature as much as you can. I've lost several good articles to photo hosting sites. Even the start of the Quadzilla thread that @TFaoro started is missing all the photos now because he's deleted them from his hosting site.

Well... I can't really help. I've got Ubuntu Linux OS so my Gimp program is way different than Microsoft Paint or Photoshop that I haven't used in ever. Basically load the picture up in a paint program and resize the photo to no bigger than 1024x1024 which the site does automatically when there is enough memory to support the resize. Remember this is Ubuntu 16.04 Linux and Gimp.

Started October 2nd and still going to January 5th. Long haul. She is ready to bail out of the place she is in. She ready to come home. I'm glad I got on the Quadzilla Beta team because this is going to be my edge to making those trips and being efficient. At roughly 300 miles round trip. Christmas weekend I was down... Yes, they even let "Diesel" in the room too.

Most likely too large of photo and the server is low on memory at this time. I've seen that as a random problem but typically goes away in the slow hours. I bet if you shrink the photo it will go through.

The moral of the story is if you newbie to drone don't think of flying high up and getting wild because if you caught off guard like I was you fight to gain control of the drone in a wind gust and lose the battle. The best thing to do is to cut the throttle instantly and let it fall out of the sky. At the last second you can throttle back up to catch it some what. Still in all you need a plan of what to do if things get out of control and how to deal with the condition. I've not flown my drone since the snow flew. I know the center hub with the electronics wouldn't tolerate the snow and getting wet. So waiting for the snow to leave then back to flying the drone again. I've got plans on places I want to fly it already.

That is something to look into... Hmmm...

Update... Jan 5th she should be home. We are not out of the woods yet. She still will need to do her dialysis Mon, Wed and Fri. We'll have to make the 2.5 hour drive down to Ontario, OR and then she'll have her 4 hours having treatment and then the 2.5 hour drive home. They are scheduled to revise her PD catheter and see if that can get it working. So we are praying that it does work and reduce the amount of trips to Ontario, OR. She is healthy and doing well she'll be glad to get home but we are both not happy with the situation we've got to possibly deal with. In the mean time my new clutch will be her on the 3rd of January so hoping I can get the transmission all pulled back and the old clutch pulled out and ready for the new one to slam in. So @Taz is going to give me a hand in getting that done so I'll have use of the Cummins and which has way better MPG number than the 96 Dodge does. Cummins is still holding 21-22 MPG through the winter the 96 Dodge is barely 12-14 MPG. So things around me are hoping at the moment. On another note. I've got a cable producer in Boise that is creating the first article cable for the high idle kits and working on get the first one done by Jan 4th. Then the other 99 cables will be coming. So hopefully I can schedule cable pickup times with the time @MoparMom is in doing her treatment I could sneak back over to Caldwell, ID to get the the cables picked up.

I'd say be careful doing this...

No biggy... Just pointing out why the harder starting issues. It good to use your case as an example. Most of the place I go with my truck there is no power to plug in the block heater anyways so... I've got to keep that in mind during my modification thoughts. As for cold air this is pushing the limits for ignition quality.

There is why your starting quality is lower. The larger droplets are fairly large and hard to ignite. You need more heat or more compression. Here we come back to guys requiring a block heater more than I do for cold starts.

Valve cover, vacuum pump or tappet cover. There is another possible spot is the gear case gasket between the block and the gear case too. You'll have to wash it all down and do short trips and attempt to spot the source. Like I've got a leak at that gasket between the gear case and block and the very tall end of the tappet cover. I just changed a tappet cover on another Cummins as well make sure not do what the previous nimrod did to pile on all kind of different sealant. OEM Tappet cover was just a rubber seal without sealants. You can lightly cover the edge of the cover with silicone and then slip the seal on the edge of the cover. Make sure the wide edge is towards the block. I've also got a bad oil cap o-ring that is capable of blowing oil out on the rim of the valve cover and then running down the back of the engine mostly on the drivers side giving the illusion of worse problem.

Ok let me explain a bit more... General requirements is compression and fuel. Now with temperatures in the minus numbers your grid heater function is very important to feed heated air to the cylinder for better compression temperature. Now the fuel is also very cold and typically already winterized #2 diesel or #1 diesel is used. So the ignition quality is already present. The problem is guys with larger injectors tend to have larger droplets size and with very limited heat of the grid heater they typically have more starting issues than stock or smallish injectors.This why a lot of guys have to plug in there block heater through the winter as a requirement because of starting quality. There are some of us that can start very good down in the minus numbers. Again its about the quality of the fuel mist and how fine you can make it, how much compression heat you can make (with the grid heater alone), and you fuel quality (cetane) if it capable of igniting easily at minus numbers. Now you can see bad valve lash could affect the valve timing and compression quality. If you already got excessive blowby (worn rings) then compression quality will be down. Grid heaters are ran on a timer from the ECM so if the batteries and or cable are poor quality then the amount of grid heater heat will be reduced and make starting more diffcult. Starter speed will also impact compression quality being these truck can draw up to 700 amps DC they are power hungry when cold. Again battery cable are very important to have less than 0.2 voltage drop while cranking. Bad starter contacts and or brushes can and will slow cranking down considerable. I've done it several times this year with hauling cows and hay where I left my truck parked in New Meadows, ID in minus weather come back hours later and just fire it up like it was no big thing. Like this fall I knew my starter was getting weak in the brushes and needs to be rebuilt so I've installed a new NAPA starter and not had a single starting issue as of yet.

I've been using the 15w-40. I see maybe a week worth of time where the temperature falls to at least -30*F like right now its +27*F. I never panic about oil viscosity a few days of cold isn't going to break the truck. I'm not going to panic and constantly change oil everytime the weather changes. In the next few day I'm forecast to go right back down to 0*F again. I'm not going to change oil just for a few night worth of cold.

Take all your 2x4 scraps and screw them together.

Drones are weird animals. Like model airplanes you know the direct of flight because a plane flys in one direction. Drones do have a head to them but very hard to tell which way the head is pointing if you not able to see the head light or the underside LED markers (blue and red). So if you yaw the drone even a little then all your control get confused. Like I got high up one day and a gust of wind spun mine and confused my controls. So trying to save the drone I shut the throttle down to let it fall. Slammed in yo a tree way high. Then tumbled down to the last limb.. It took a 35 foot long 2x4 to knock it out of the tree limb. Now try to balance a 35 long 2x4 you'll understand how hard that was.

Yes, Google Maps does provide LAT LON numbers. https://www.google.com/maps/@45.2365164,-116.3393906,15z Look at the URL The LAT (45.2365164) is the first number and the second number is the LON (-116.3393906). The z15 is just the zoom level of the map.

I've done Geo Caching. Now this is really pushing the GPS to the limits. It doesn't matter if the map is good or not. The thing is to reach your LAT and LON numbers one way or another. Once you've done some Geo Caching you realize the map part isn't much of a problem. I'm using a Garmin Nuvi 42LM and works nearly flawless. I use favorites quite a bit they are saved by LAT LON numbers. Address look up can be challenging some times but 99% of the time its work good for me. I rarely ever use a GPS for long travel. I'll use it for like for getting across town in traffic or one way city area. https://www.geocaching.com/play I also use a Garmin GPS V for my search pack. That GPS the maps are totally out of date and no longer even close for travel of roads. Now as for get from point A to point B using LAT / LON not a problem. I've done it many time where I make a way point at the truck then take off hiking any direction. Then I can return back to point A. I've had several times where SAR's provides a LAT / LON and I've always found the point without any issue. Driving roads, hiking, ATVing you name it.

Launch in headless mode. The fly out a short distance and then yaw 90* to the left with the left joystick then fly forward again I bet it fly forward still. If it in headed mode if you did the same thing then it would fly to the left if you flew forwards.

That is correct. The headlight will flash in headless like mine does. The thing is headless mode you can yaw the craft in any direction then it should fly still the same way in relation to the way to launched from. With headed mode if you yaw the craft the controls are now in the relationship of the head of the craft.

At 5F above it fired right up no issue. High idle kicked in by its self and let it warm up to 100F worth of coolant which was like 3 or 4 Minutes. No block heater, just one cycle of the grid heater. Sad part my tablet was so cold it would turn on till it warmed up in the cab. So again good compression and good atomized fuel is important. This is heat wave compared to back home at -20F to -30F.