Mopar1973Man

Most of the wood I get is standing dead and dry when I cut it down. Just like AH64ID example I've been wood out of the Poe Cabin Fire for years now. Most of wood is still standing and dry. Just lightly scorched. Nothing like what you are using in hardwood which hold water for long period. I cut down trees before and bucked them up and had them start popping and cracking by the time I get home. Softwoods season quickly. Doesn't get any drier than this... As for this fire year I've purchase from a log yard in New Meadows, ID and brought them back early in the year to season out in the yard. As for what in the shed is good and dry. My standard stove lighting method works just find. Now any wood I split from this point on will NOT be loaded into the shed because now this damp or moist wood that will need a summer to cure out. I'll most likely stack it up in the yard and cover it for now. Here try this on for size load your stove with normal size firewood, no kindling. Then light your weed burner rest it on the edge of the stove. Now fill the tea kettle with water. The fire will be lit in the time the tea kettle is filled. remember this in not kindling. Now leave the air vents wide open for exactly 10 minutes and the pyrometer with be off the scale. The stack is now clean to the top and now I adjust the air shutters to just a hair past a 1/2 turn a piece which brings me back to about 600*F pyrometer. 5 minutes just went by and blower just kicked on. If my wood wasn't seasoned you couldn't do this. Wet fire wood burns extremely cold, smoky, hard starting, etc. Even with kindling... Or in my case a weed burner.

When you take it apart what will happen is the inner screw will most likely come out and 22 or so BB's will come out inside the rack. As for reassembly. I typically I set up so the screw is inside the rack and one at a time feed the BB's inside. Be careful with moving the screw shaft that if you move it to far the BB's unscrew into the inside of the rack. The last 2-4 will be left laying in the half tube. Then carefully place the other half of the tube on and put the clamp back on.

Even with all my offroad usage on my truck and 255k miles on the odometer I'm still only changed just one trackbar and one set of ball joints. Still running OE tie rod ends. Personally if the truck is stock and no oversized tires then there is no real need for too much upgrading. I would suggest stay away from Moog its not like it once was. I would just pick up NAPA ball joints and track bar but I would look towards the premium line. Some are getting Spicer Ball joints which was the factory ball joints.

Gotta watch this one!

Like every time I say my prayer I'm always quick about Thanking the Good Lord for all the wonderful gives and abilities he's granted me. Then if there is any thing else I want to ask for blessing on I ask only after I've Thanked him first.

We had a Blaze King stove and it didn't last very long. The stupid EPA designed stove burn poorly and the weird air ducting and cat's make it a mess of a stove. After a few year the air duct get deformed from the constant heating cycles and eventually start to crack and leak air in different places. Like ours was leaking more into the exhaust of the chimney than into the fire box so the fire would go out on its own. Our lasted about 4-5 years and end up throwing it out for these two "Stove That Jack Built" and never had any other issues. These two stoves are built with heavy plate steel and no glass door so there is complete fire safety. I can crank down both air shutters and kill a fire in mere minutes. Very air tight box. Compared to the old Blaze king it had a cheap sheet metal shutter for air control and even on the lowest setting it would run quite hot. I suggest you don't look for a stove with beauty in mind but a good heavy steel cabinet and steel door. If there is any steel metal or light gauge metal anywhere in the stove you can bet it will fail in short amount of time.

Rebuilding the alternator is extremely easy. It just the diode pack is expensive from LarryB. http://www.fostertruck.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=alternator He supplies the bearings, pulley, diodes and the brush pack. You'll need at least a two jaw bearing puller. As for replacing diodes and brushes that simple as pie. Can be done in minutes. Just need a few sockets and a phillips screwdriver to get that far. I was planning on going that way but when I found the bearing holder in the rear half of the case was wallowed out and the bearing was fine but the shaft moved about 1/16 of a inch I knew at that point I had to replace mine again. More than likely the shaft movement and the wore brushes in mine where the cause of the AC noise issues. As for the ABS module I called Module Masters in Moscow, ID and they can rebuild my ABS module in 2 days for $130 total cost. On top they give a 5 YEAR warranty. I'm going to talk to a shop tech tomorrow when I hand deliver my ABS unit. I want to find out if we can get ECM's and PCM's done. Also I can tell you that if you unplug and remove the ABS module you can still drive the truck with normal brakes. There is no speedometer function at all. So you'll need a GPS to tell road speed. As for cruise control that is dead too because no speed signal. Also the BRAKE light is out and the ABS remains lit up. Which is odd.

Lot to be said about our current times. Like MoparMom and I both see and sense it as well. I think mostly because we are not attached to any mainstream media like TV and Movies so we tend to think on our own. 12 years without TV kind of makes you think on your own. There seems to be a big push by everyone to work harder and longer because of financial instability everyone is looking at. At the same time prices around us continue to climb higher. Generally speaking people are still continuing to spend at even high rates than they did 20 years ago. What is so great is where I live and how I live gives me the ability to shut out the world as the mainstream media tells it. I can choose to live the simple life that the Good Lord has provided me or I can open that porthole and sample some world around me be it in jobs, travel to the larger cities like Boise, or just hoping on the Internet surfing. That's one of the things I crave right now is the outdoors. Just too darn cold...

Stainless Diesel went over 1,000 HP on a VP44 pump.

Don't go there. I've still got my old Atari 800 in the shop packed away. Yes, I even kept that old beast and all my 5.25 floppies for it too. I like dragging that beast out once in awhile and play old old Atari Games.

Ummm... If you guys didn't work me so hard geez I might get time to do thing like this... Me78569 -> <- Mopar1973Man

Yea... Exactly correct.

I normally preload the bearing and back off one face of the nut. As for repacking I always washed the bearings in gasoline and then inspect them for damaged rollers, cages, etc. Then check the races as well. If anything is damaged I replace a full kit in hub. Inner and outer bearing.

In a nutshell that's about it. Now if you want to go farther there is people now hacking the CANBus signal and learning how to control things in the vehicle like stereo, headlight and other things with a simple cellphone or tablet. There is several other videos other like this where people create all kinds of features with a simple OBDII dongle.

Finally... I yanked out the old 1st Generation switch set... Man talk about a historic part. This is where the entire high idle started from. I'll most likely hold on to this forever. Neat to look back on history and see where we came from to where we are going. ECT Fooler (up fooled - down normal) IAT Fooler (up fooled - down normal) MPG (up) / High Idle (down) 3/6 Cylinder mode (3 cylinder up and 6 cylinder down) Now install the new Mopar1973Man High Idle Kit... I will admit so much nicer to have that plug at the switch. One wire basically to stuff through the firewall and easy to do. Takes a few minutes to install. It actually took me more time to pull the old switch out. So much nicer to have 1 knob only 4 positions.

Here is the forum that supports the OBDLink products. https://www.scantool.net/forum/

Bluetooth range is extremely limited like 6-7 feet tops from the dongle. WiFi Range will be greater how much I'm not sure. USB cable length... High speed is limited to 5 meters or 16 feet 5 inches. Low Speed is limited 3 meters or 9 feet 10 inches. So I doubt your going to make it into the house and keep signal running good. You could buy a cheap Droid Tablet like I did. ($40 bucks for a Azpen A729) Then you got a device for your dongle. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9684027&CatId=11943

Your correct. Don't feel back insert the Android "Droid" jokes and Linux jokes for me.

Take your pick... http://www.obdlink.com/ What I've got is The OBDLink LX. I've considered getting the USB version for some in depth CANBus hacking. Then for the shop I thought of upgrading to the OBDLink MX so I can cover the newer Ford and Chevy protocols that the LX can't do. I never know what rolls into the shop these days. Still to this day the ScanGauge II is the best trip computer over all other products.

The only time I use the high idle feature more so is to break the ice or heavy frost off the windshield. Other than that I fire up select MPG and get moving. I rather invest the fuel towards movement than idling trying to create heat. Now the other exception is MoparMom if she is going with me the truck has to be warmed up a bit. She really hates to sit in a cold truck for 8-10 miles waiting for heat. I can tolerate it but older folks don't do cold very well. So I'm willing to sacrifice MPG numbers for some comfort for her.

Remember using high idle to warm up is going to reduce the MPG. So I typically try and keep my high idle usage down if possible. I only use it long enough to gain some coolant temperature like 80-120*F and get rolling. If you wait till it kick off it could use quite a bit of fuel. As for MPG mode it will alter the timing map enough to act like summer conditions and reduce excessive rattle and should provide a mild increase to MPG's. Again is based on how much or little high idle time you use too. So for example if you start the truck in the OFF position allow the grid heaters to fire and then flip to MPG mode. Now just drive to work you'll see the best gains for MPG's vs. using either high idle mode and attempting to fully warm the truck up before leaving. So it would be optimal in your case to plug in and just use the MPG mode. The only time I use high idle modes the most is when there is no way to plug in, extremely cold days where it best to leave it high idle than to shutdown. Another is extremely hot days and needing to cool down the cab fast. Other than that it better to fire up and drive easy till the coolant temperature rise into the normal range.

Inside the head is possible. It would leak pressurized fuel out in the head and "may" draw in air as well. Check the back of the head for the return line to be leaking which might draw air in. Hard starting can be because of lack of rail pressure or air leak issues. So to see rail pressure you going to need a live data tool like OBDLink LX dongle or similar to read the rail pressure while cranking.

I'm going to shoot from the hip. I just got done working on a 2005 Cummins that was able to start easy but the truck would only travel a short distance and then rail pressure would fall out. That is a loose cross over tube. Now a bad injectors(s) that are leaking excessively would most likely cause hard starting. So for testing I would remove all the injector line and torque the cross over nuts to spec. Then test drive and see if it goes away. If not I would bench test all 6 injectors see where your at. If any are failing I would replace them as a set of 6. Too many time I see people cutting corners and replacing only the bad ones and end up doing it over and over till all 6 are replaced.

I'll keep that in mind. I'm going to see about finding a local source first with a good alternator. Still got one ace up the sleeve yet. Let play that in the morning as see what falls out.

As for replacing the alternator I stopped in NAPA and had mine tested. According to the test machine it PASSED with .7 AC volts. The new alternator PASSED with 1.3 AC Volts. So no sale occurred. I figured I'll take mine home and rebuild myself. Now that I tore it down and found the issue is the alternator case is damaged and the rear bearing is flopping around in the case. So basically the whole armature is dancing in a orbit. The brushes are shot one brush is nearly wore to the point of no contact. So now on the hunt for a good alternator.