Wild and Free

I worked at a gear shop for a few years and if you do have a locknut issue there is no amount of weld that holds long term, the only true fix I have seen is to update the mainshaft, if the one the company sells is truely a fix without a main shaft replacement as they calim I would research it heavily before i would spend money on it. It is easy to remove the t-case and inspect it without tampering with it. If it is still tight then I wouldn't worry about it, you can peen the threads behind the nut to keep it from working off as fast if it were to come loose. Key sentence taken from their site......... "If installing this retainer because of 5th gear failure, be sure to inspect the main shaft splines to make sure that no damage has been done by the break down. If damage has occurred be sure the transmission is repaired properly first." This is the problem with all aftermarket solutions other than mainshaft update, if the nut has been loose most likeley the shaft splines are worn and will not hold any nut even with a helper fix.

It would be a lot less work. actually it would be cheaper to go with vb /conv as I see he has an OEM clutch and a bad main shaft nut so with the cost of parts and a new clutch you would be better off sticking with what you have.

Well the gains and losses are a difference of opinion. In 30 years of driving auto and manual rigs, I have lost 2 auto trannies in old early / mid 80's 6.2 diesel GM rigs, and numerous manual trannies in all makes not to mention all the clutches. Newer Autos are very reliable and even more so with a few simple mods, the 47's just needed help in by replacing a converter and VB to hold a bit more power. $1200-1500 is all it takes for up to 200K trouble free miles if one is smart about how to drive and maintain them. Enjoy your manuals while you can they are almost a dead horse from a manufacturers stand point, the autos are capable of much more now days, even in OTR trucks "semi's" autos and auto shifts are taking over big time. You can also find the NV4500 tranny in most GM pickups so don't limit yourself to just Dodge in your search. Just need to take the counter weight off the tranny tail shaft which the 6.5 diesel needed. I saw a couple guys put an NV 4500 from Dodges into 6.5 Gm rigs and break crankshafts because they forgot to put the counter weight in the tranny.

Extreme Cold temps are one thing that can be dealt with.................throw 20-30+ mph wind with it and it becomes deadly in minutes if unprepared.

Could be worse we could be in Canada. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/winnipeg-deep-freeze-as-cold-as-uninhabited-planet-1.2479967

Here is a news story about it. http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2014/01/02/frozen-out-98-stories-ignore-ice-bound-ship-was-global-warming-missi

Yeah funny how they had to rescue the "Global warming researchers" from an iced in ice breaker by helocopter !

Its actually an easy conversion especially since chevy ran this configuration in the 70's/early 80's C50/60 trucks, a simple swap from a chevy truck to same vintage pickup, it bolts right in. Ether is a must with these cold blooded low compression junkers too, anything under 70 is an ether can start, If you had one that started down to 40 without ether you had a good one or one that was just overhauled. The two times in my life I had to go wipe and change my underware were while working on the older style detroits, the injectors are manually controlled and the fuel rack is part of the injector with a remote governor that controls the injector linkage rod, the older ones had a solid control and detroit injectors were known to lock up and this creates a runaway situation as you can't move the shutdown linkage to shut off the fuel to the other injectors so one had to make sure the emergency air shut down flap was free at the blower to choke the air to it. The newer ones had breakaway injector arms on the main control rods so that if one injector stuck open the rest could still be shut down as the arm to the stuck injector would break away and the rest would be in no fuel shutdown and eventually drag it down until it killed itself. Nothing more frightening than standing over the top of an engine when it gets started and goes to WOT instantly and keeps climbing as the governor can't control it at that point. tHE OTHER THING THAT HAPPENED WAS THE BLOWER SEALS WOULD GO OUT USUALLY WHEN A BEARING WAS GETTING LOOSE and the engine would run away on engine oil, another reason to make sure the emergency air shut down functioned, it was amazing as to how many were never checked and when time came for them they were rusted open and blew up many hundreds of these engines.

Well hes 300 miles from me so I am not too worried yet!

We have been getting 2-3 inches a 2-3 times a week, lucky for us it hasn't been windy yet but sounds like that will change this weekend. we have about a foot of snow in the open areas and it is so cold it is all powder snow, tomorrow it is supposed to get into the high 30's but I doubt it will be long enough to melt the snow to put a crust on it before the wind kicks in. Will probably have 4-5 foot drifts to deal with by the end of the weekend......................................

What I ran into one time on my 02 was when I installed new wheel hubs that came with new sensors installed I tried to cheat and left the good sensor on the pickup from the OEM hub and kept the new one from the new aftermarket hub. After the job I had rock hard brakes and the ABS was always kicking in until I figured out that some sensors are not interchangeable with some hubs, I had to pull the OEM sensor off and put the one that came with the hub and it solved my issue. Some hubs have a different # of teeth on the tone rings and the sensor reads and sends the signal differently I guess. There was nothing wrong with the OEM sensor and the measurement was identical so spacing was not an issue.

I doubt I could get that sample info with all the privacy laws now, and I am not the one making the negative statement, like I said just passing on info from a lab techs POV. Other than fuel conditioners I know of no mine companies around my area using the oils. Petro Canada oils are very High quality and are what major mining companies use for synthetics and syn blends here in the state. I know many farmers using it also. At our mine we use mainly chevron oils at the last mine they used primarily exxon products but they use such a large quantity they are looking at the price along with quality. They are constantly trying different oils to see what the samples look like over time.

I have worked on many 2 stroke detroits from the 53 to the 149 series and they are high maintenance although simple they are not a powerhouse for their size and are extremely noisy and like 2 stroke gassers are not efficient. Guys like to hot rod them because they accelerate very quickly and can be built up for power but they do not hold up very long. They convert fuel to noise and the noise is what propels them.

Visual inspection is the best bet, if the housing and wheels are ok and no leaks then no worries, most times they self destruct and break a shaft when they go. We see this probably once a month at the mine on one piece of equipment or another. Most of the time it is due to a plugged air filter that causes it to over speed. It confuses a lot as to how a plugged air filter can over speed a turbo so I use a vacuum cleaner as an example. I ask people what happens when they plug the vacuum hose with their hand, most respond that it works harder to which I respond, does it sound like it speeds up........................blank stares and then a meak "Yes", that's because it has no air to pump thus speeds up due to a no load situation, This is the same concept as a turbo, plug the air filter it creates a vacuum condition and having nothing to pump in a virtual vacuum it overspeeds and gernades itself.

Ah, sounds about right then if it was in rough shape.

I have been the landlord for my moms twin home as a rental for 11 years and in that time have had only 2 renters the current ones have been in it for 8 years, the first ones were in it for 3 years and he retired from the RR and moved to a condo instead were they didn't have to move snow or mow grass.

I am just the messenger repeating what a CAT SOS oil lab tech told me.............He is a lab tech and non mechanical so he has no skin in the game either, just what they see from sampling every oil on the map in about every application one can think of. I can tell you that any lube product with Moly in it is a killer in more than just oils, we have tons of water pumps on the mine and the Gorman Rupps absolutely do not like any amount of Moly in grease, it wipes out the contact seals instantly. I love Moly grease it has made me a lot of money over the years "just like scotch locks" repairing bearings / spindles anything that rotates the moly will separate from the actual petro lubes and you wind up with a bearing full of dry clay.

This one had 3.73 gears same as my 05 but was very strong under 2k rpm and then flattened out at about 2k and into 4th to OD. Unless you are talking tranny gearing splits?

Nope it is 100% stock, I don't know what to say that thing even being as heavy as it was was a blast to drive, the acceleration was unbelievable I couldn't believe it. I worked on it for him too so I looked it over pretty close. This was a simple SOP judgement, I didn't drive it with a trailer on it to judge but it did have a heavy dump bed with about 1k lbs of material in it.

In the ND oil fields with the shortage of housing there are farmers renting out old abandon houses and buildings that have been vacant for decades and for a lot of money to boot, so being up to code in that area is not something that is even a remote factor.

I drove my land scapers bone stock down to the DPF 08 6.7 cummins 4 door 1 ton dually with a dump body on it with an auto and about 120K on the clock, I could not believe the power it had compared to even my 05 with smarty jr set on high/ not even a close comparison. Good luck and nice find! I think you could have done better for what you got for your 02. In my area it would have sold for well over 15K yet no questions asked. I see a lot of 2nd gen 24v's selling in the mid to high teens daily. The 2nd gens are selling for the same price if not more than 3rd gens in the quad cab setup, 3rd gen mega cabs with over 100k miles seem to be selling for what they sold for brand new, everyone with one of those think they are driving a gold brick with wheels.

Yep, this was probably true in the 80's and earlier engines when gasket materials were subpar to start with and the use of the crappy oils like the older Penzoils and quaker states ect that coked up behind piston rings would break up and flush out thus accelerating the issue that was already there being the rings were worn out already and then you wash out the coked oil from behind them and ta-da no more compression. Anything built in the last 25 years should not have any issues at all.

Our biggest issue at work with all the bulk fuels we get is water in the fuel. It is a wide spread issue and not just with our operation, seems everyone who gets it in huge bulk deliveries have had this issue the last 5+ years. Problem is the volume we go through diesel in the state with all the ag, oil and mining our fuel is trucked in from all over the country. We have 2 diesel specific refineries being built in the state as we speak, it can't come soon enough. First new refineries to be built in the USA in nearly 40 years they are saying.

I am a shop foreman at a coal mine so I deal with a lot of oil samples every week, I am in contct with the lab techs at our local CAT SOS lab and one day we had a general conversation and I asked him which oils he sees the most issues with from a labs perspective. The one and only oil mentioned by the lab tech that they wouldn't touch is any Schaeffers oil, said they have way too much moly in them and it breaks down too fast and the wear metals are always way high in the samples they see with this oil. The only other red flag was any Rotella oils, they did say they have gotten better but years ago Cat and Cummins both released public statement bulletins stating not to run Shell/Rotella oils as they did not meet the specs for thier engines, they have since improved the quality but is still not a highly thought of oil from the manufactureres standpoint."I actually heard this from 2 insider sources from CAT". They did have good things to say about most synthetic oils as they rarely if ever see any breakdown of the oils just the depletion of the additives like zinc with the use of bypass filters and extended run intervals. He did commend Amsoil as a top quality he said the only thing that has most lab techs wondering is the oxidation is a tad higher than normal on their samples but it is that way naturally and never climbs though, they don't know what or why the additives amsoil uses is like that but it was not a bad thing.

X2 on the schaeffers fuel conditioner, they make an awesome fuel conditioner ,I ran this for years, but stay away from their engine oils at all costs! http://www.schaefferoil.com/soy-shield.html