AH64ID

I am quite alright losing 14° on the run from the main return to the master bedroom, which is the longest run I have. The furnace is in the garage and the straight line run is about 30' from the main return to the furnace and then about 50' to the master bedroom. My house is 2450 sqft and the furnace has 5 or 6 returns and only one of them is in the room with the stove so I may be losing less heat to the ducting in the attic/crawl space and more to mixing of air from the other returns. My ducting also has the standard low R value 1-2" wrap around it, but that should be plenty of insulation with decent airflow. We spent the weekend at my folks cabin on the Olympic Peninsula. It's a wide body single wide with a added room on the side of it. IIRC it's a 14x70' home and the room is 14x30. The room is unheated but is inuslated and doesn't have a door between it and the home. There is a wood burning stove in the "new room" and on Thanksgiving we moved the main furnace return to the ceiling above the wood burning stove. The ceiling is vaulted and about 14' tall where the return is located. There is about 20' of duting between the return and the furnace blower. The rest of the ducting is below the home an the insulation is in sad shape but it is 40 years old. With the new room temps about 75-77° we were able to keep the main house at 69-71° with the furnace off and the furnace fan on. The outside temps were in the high 20's and low 30's and there was no sun hitting the home. The windows have all been upgrade from the original mobile home windows but the insulation has not. I'd have to say the furnace fan did a great job moving the heat around, but having a short return run with a single return is a big factor.

Get it balanced? 8K.. wow!! I just hit 20K on my rebuild yesterday and I have had it back for almost 2 years (2 years on 12/10).

If all you changed was the turbo and didn't mess with the fueling I am not sure what you were expecting. A drop in EGT's means you have increased your airflow for the same fuel and that is the improvement you should expect with a turbo change. Turbo's don't make power they simply effect the amount of fuel you can run. You may know that but you would be surprised how many people don't. Without seeing the compressor maps it will be impossible to look at total power potential changes. It is possible the smaller compressor wheel can outflow the bigger one but who knows. Just looking at the specs the Super B should spool a little slow with the larger turbine wheel and same turbine size, as well as both being journal bearings. You can increase spool with turbine size by going to a BB turbo but generally speaking the larger the turbine wheel the slower the low rpm spool. At upper rpms the larger turbine should spool faster but generally we are looking for spool at lower rpms (assuming the smaller turbine wheel wasn't excessively undersized).

The local D&B Supply does a sale about once a quarter where pellets are 20% off. It makes the American Eagle Pellets I buy $3.98/bag or $199.00/ton. Pretty cheap and they have a very high BTU content and minimal ash. They are also a local pellet company. If I have to buy pellets when they aren't on sale it is $249.50/ton. We do have a forced-air furnace that we use to circulate the air. I have a Honeywell 9000 WiFi thermostat that has a circulate option for the fan that runs the fan about 30% of the time. The room the pellet stove is in has vaulted ceilings and the main return is in the peak so it picks up very warm air. Because the pellet stove is on a thermostat the peak of the ceiling doesn't get as hot as it would with a wood stove and we generally have the ceiling fan on pushing the heat down and even with that the furnace fan moves the warm air quite well. I measured the temps last winter on a 20° day and this is what I came up with. Thermostat/Stove Room Temp: 68° Return Air Temp: 82° Master Bedroom Discharge Temp: 68° Master Bedroom Ambient Temp: 62° I think that's pretty darn good considering I would be running the fan either way. Yes my wood cost would be much higher than yours. It would be an all day even for each chord unless I bought a trailer which would add to the cost even more still. Without a trailer I would be looking at 6-8 days and the associated cost which is probably more than I spend on pellets. I still get about 1 chord a year for camping and I figure once the shop gets built I will need around 2 chords a winter just for it, maybe more. I am able to load up to 2 tons at a time in the truck if I need to and the entire round trip and unloading (CSS :-) takes less than 2 hours. When I plan ahead to make it from sale to sale it's very cost effective. Yes at the end of the day fire is fire and a much better heat! What kind of whole house blower do you have? I can't even hear mine when I am in the room adjacent to it.

I don't know.. I have done both as well and pellets are far cleaner, take up a smaller space (3x the BTU's per sqft of storage), and if the stove is the right size it is plenty of heat. One of the things I dislike most about a wood stove is how quick it takes a house from comfortable to too hot which wastes energy and isn't comfortable. A steady temperature is much more comfortable and uses less resources. The cleaning is easily done with a shop vac in 5 minutes once every 10 days or so, and about 30 minutes once half way thru the season and once at the beginning. Wood stoves certainly have their place and when I first bought my house I priced pulling the pellet stove out and replacing it with a wood stove but that will never happen now, the pellet stove is just a better stove for home use. I am shopping wood burning stoves for my shop thou. Agree, but there are other things than heat that require power. I am not about to let multiple freezers full of food go to waste because I don't want to deal with power. Water is also another one. I would guess, based on where you said you live, that you also have a well. So no power means no water, and no food storage.

Very nice. Are stove EPA regulations different around the country?

Those voltages sound about normal for engine off and decent batteries. The grids have a huge amp draw which drops the voltage accordingly. You will never see 12V at the grids with the OEM batteries/alternator and the grids on.

Only if you take 1/4 mile to engage the clutch. What SBC and other recommend is simple 3rd gear start, which doesn't create hot spots but can smooth a grabby clutch.

Only free standing wood stoves have cooking surfaces and even then most newer models are baffled to the point where cooking is slow if even possible. We were in a Yurt a couple weekends ago with a free standing stove that I couldn't fry an egg on with it roaring full with a stove stack temp above 600°. I have a propane stove/oven which I can use the stove without power and the oven with minimal power, so cooking is easy. Without power I don't have water so I will have power and the ability to cook.

The dampening springs in the clutch plate are VERY stiff and take a lot of use to soften them up. The truck vibrated so freakin bad below 2000 rpms in 4-6, especially with a trailer, that it was literally unusable. SBC said it was normal, despite my thoughts that I bought the wrong clutch. After about 1000 miles and a few WOT romps with the trailer attached the clutch broke in. It still won't let you lug like a stock clutch or the OHD will but it's not bad. They can get grabby depending on your use but a few 3rd gear starts with some slippage will get rid of that.

I bought a house last December that has a pellet stove and a propane furnace. Based on the price of propane I use the pellet stove for the bulk of our heating needs. It's a Quadrafire 1200-i. From December thru May last year we used about 2 tons of pellets and only 300 gallons of propane from December thru September and the propane also fuels the hot water heater and stove. Either way our fuel costs were not bad for nearly a year. Very little propane was actually used for the furnace on a standard day I would guess the furnace ran for about 15 minutes at most, sometimes more if we were out of town or forgot to fill the pellet hopper. Our house is 2450 ft2 and we keep the main living area at 68°-70° with the stove which keeps the bedrooms about 58°-62°. I was not happy with the thermostat that came with the pellet stove so I installed a Honeywell WiFi thermostat which took a bit of work since it needs 24 VAC and the stove is 12VAC. I put a 24 VAC transformer on the stove circuit and ran thermostat wiring from the stove to the wall next to the furnace thermostat. I then added a 24VAC coil relay so the thermostat opens and closes the relay with 24VAC but the pellet stove is still on it's own 12 VAC circuit. I also added a break on delay relay to the thermostat side of the relay to have a minimum of 10 minutes between call's for heat so there is a smaller chance of a misfire at startup. All in all the pellet stove is a great way to heat the house and based on my experience with both I will take a pellet stove over a wood burning stove for a house anytime. While it is possible to get wood cheaper than pellets ($199/ton) that is where the advantage stops for me. The pellet stove starts and feeds itself as long as you throw a bag of pellets in. The stove maintains a set temperature and can work while you are gone. The pellet stove still has the feel of a wood fire but a lot less hassle. Pellet stoves are also a lot more efficient, the pellets take up less space, and they don't waste fuel because they turn off when the house gets warm enough. They also maintain the temperature in the house while you are at work which takes less energy than reheating a house that has cooled off quite a bit. I currently have 2 tons of pellets stacked in the garage which takes up about 73% of the area of one chord but has the BTU's of 2.18 chords of Lodgepole or 1.92 chords of Douglas Fir, which are the two most common firewood trees around here. Pellets have about 3 times the BTU's per sqft of storage space, which is why I only went thru about 2 tons last winter. Figure about a bag a day on average so 1 ton will last ±50 days. There is my 0.02. My wife LOVES the pellet stove. She can handle a 40lb bag with ease and if she wants a fire she turns the thermostat up and waits 2-3 minutes. They do make some fan noise but we hardly notice it anymore. I do really enjoy wood stoves too, but IMHO they are better in a shop/cabin and pellets are better for homes.

I towed with mine within the first 200 miles, with permission from SBC who said towing was actually a good way to beak it in. Even still my clutch took almost 1000 miles to break in to the point where less than 2000 rpms was useable above 3rd gear.

What kind of condition are your batteries in? Weak batteries could cause a significant voltage drop as the grid's cycle and that could have some issues with the ECM.

I drove the truck this morning and it was nice and cool at 15°. Without any wind last night the engine only got down to 29°, so there was some temp I could have lost quicker if it had been windy. My winter front is at my dad's in Seattle (ooops, packed it in the wrong truck at elk camp) so I am still full open. I idled the truck at 1,1000 rpms for about 3 min while I cleared ice off the windshield. The coolant was about 85° when I left the driveway. The ambient temp quickly warmed up to 18° and generally stayed at 18-23° for most of my drive. I encounter 3 stops and 3 slow corners on the way to work and speed limits are 50-55 for nearly all of the roughly 17 miles. Even with that it took almost 9 miles for my thermostat to crack open and even after the next 8 miles into work the oil wasn't quite up to temp based on idle pressure. It just takes a long time for these cold blooded girls to warm up!

Yes and no... While the potential to backfeed is there the generator wouldn't last a second before tripping the circuit breaker or overload protection due to the HIGH draw that everything on the line would be drawing if the MAIN breaker was open. So while it could backfeed it won't happen with a 5.5KW generator.

The OFE has had at least one redesign in the last 5-7 years so that could be the change. Hopefully your clutch is a 2nd revision and you don't get hard stopped shifting common to OFE's, which is my only complaint. My my next clutch will not be an OFE, but rather the OHD as it's a much quieter clutch than the OFE and has nearly all of the same holding power. I am pretty sure mine looks like yours Dave. It was installed in the spring of 2011 and was a semi-recent redesign. The previous model would warp easily under minor slippage associated with trailer backing and 4wd use on back roads. The warpage cause the clutch to not fully disengage. OFE is the primary part number. I have seen the same clutch referenced with Con and 1947.

I haven't ever burned much birch, is it a hot enough wood? Are all the bedrooms closed? We heat with pellets and it does wonders for the house especially with the bedrooms closed. We also sleep better with the bedrooms in the 50's and so do the kids.

I'll be honest.. I am not sure you want to price out the size of battery bank you would need to run your standard house, even a small energy efficient one, on battery power. You would be a fraction of the cost for a gen-tran and a good size generator. To do it correctly would take at least 6-8 6V or 6/12 2 V's and they are $$$$$ plus a side of $$$$$. My well is also a 220V 30A connection but I have no doubt that it will be just fine on the 5.5KW generator as long as I am not trying to shower in 3 baths, do dishes, laundry, and water the lawn. My well is a variable rpm pump thou and yours may not be. I need to get a gen-tran for my house but it did occur to me yesterday that I have 2 30A 115V RV plugs side by side outside the house that each feed off a separate bank. I could make my own 220V plug with pig tails to each RV plug and just shut off the MAIN breaker and power the whole house. It will take some careful fridge/freezer practices but the main thing is that we would have water/heat.

To me grinding would be wheel bearings before brakes as brakes squeal more than grind.

I hadn't... and kinda forgot. Now to find a few min to dig thru the FSM and the pics again. Thanks. It is different than my 05 which isn't what I really expected considering there aren't really any ECM/wiring differences other than fuel pump location. Okay, back into the FSM for the 2004 for now. The 04 FSM talks about the ECM relay control output from the ECM just like the 05+ FSM but it appears it may not use a relay. It lists the size at 18ga which won't hold a lot of amps but if the run is short?? It seems to me that would overload the ECM but I guess not.

Absolutely! The wind, even if very light, pulls heat out of the engine bay very quickly. Even on a no wind night I can tell a difference in the block temp with different numbers of flaps closed on the winter front.

Come on now... you should know better than to let facts be influenced by opinion.

If the time is adequate to allow a full cold soak and the temperature inside the shed is the same as outside then the blocks will be the same. In the shed it will take a lot longer for the block to cold soak, but it will eventually happen. So yes the heat transfer is slower when you are in a no-wind condition but the total heat transfer is the same given the proper time. Similar to opening a bathtube drain 1/8 of the way or fully open. The tub will drain to the same point but one takes longer. This still isn't windchill factor thou, even thou it's from the wind. Windchill: a still-air temperature that would have the same cooling effect on exposed human skin as a given combination of temperature and wind speed.

Sorry... don't buy it for one second and actually find it laughable that you are throwing every single heavy equipment tech in the pot with you as I know for a FACT that it's false. I personally wouldn't trust a tech that tried to convince me wind chill factor effects non-living things as it's a sign they don't have great comprehension. Windchill is a man made factor, nothing more and nothing less. Mother earth didn't create the windchill factor, two men did. Paul Siple and Charles Passel developed and coined the term in the last century. Will a engine cool off faster in a wind than a no-wind condition? Absolutely but that's the only thing the wind does, there is no PFM or mother earth interference. A cold soaked engine will start the same in a heavy wind as in no wind, assuming that the cold soaking is the same. Put a jar of #2 in a 60mph wind on a 25° day and see if it gels. #2 commonly gels in the 15-18° range and in those conditions the windchill would be 3° but he #2 won't care and will still be 25° and un-gelled. Same thing with water on a 35° day blowing 60. The 17° windchill will have no freezing effect on the water.

That's because you are a living thing; however, your truck is not living. If windchill factor was real it could be measured. The reason it cannot be measured it because it is a calculated factor. Put a thermometer in a 60 mph wind on a -20° day and it will read -20° that means it has zero effect on non-living tissue. The reason we have a windchill factor is the wind wicks the heat away much faster so our body has to work harder to maintain it's temperature, which makes it feel colder. The same is true for a truck engine in that the wind will wick the heat away but it cannot make it colder than the ambient temp; therefore, a 60 mph wind will not have an effect on a truck that has cooled off to the ambient temp.