leathermaneod

Thanks for the reply! Yes I know about the wandering. Thanks to all my recent steering upgrades(4th gen tie rods, bluetop steering gear, new intermediate shaft, sway bar bushings and links, steering stabilizer, and Rock Solid Ram Column bushing) my wander is very minimal and my dead zone is also very minimal. Problem(if it even really is one), is that the wheel does not totally return it self to center. Especially after making a 90° turn at low speed. I have to bring the wheel back to center, only the last couple inches, but still. At high way speeds, if I make a correction, I have to return the wheel to straight or it will stay very slightly to the one side. It not a huge deal, just trying to figure it out. I'm really wondering if my reman ps pump is weak and not putting out enough pressure. I need to call Ryan at Bluetop and ask for his opinion since I just got the steering gear from him. He has been extremely helpful so far so maybe he will have an idea. As far as caster, I have never touched it, but the truck was aligned not too long ago.

Well I tried replacing those rivets with bolts. They were a lot harder to get out than I expected though. It was a lot of work and didn't seem to help much. I think I also damage one of the u joints in the process as it was not moving very freely anymore so I replaced that shaft with an OEM one off eBay, only slightly more expensive than the doorman. After this I would not recommend the doorman version to anyone. Best bet is the OEM if you can find one on eBay. I also finally got my steering brace put back on. I think that removed a little more of my dead spot. It's weird though because it also made my return to center just a little worse and made my steering wheel slightly off of perfectly straight. How complete is your guys return to center? Does it bring the wheel all the way back, or only within 45° - 90°?

Well I'm a little concerned now, I started my truck this morning and I think I got a faint wiff of antifreeze....from some previous reading I've done it sounds like that would indicate my heater core is leaking I think....does that sound right? Or could it be something else since I just changed antifreeze?

I see what your are saying @dripley, unfortunately I filled it though the rad with the t stat installed. So I could see how air would be trapped in that case. Hopefully it will work its way out. My t stat does have the little holes and wigglers(don't know what they are called lol) so it should. Based on what @IBMobile said, sounds like that shouldn't be an issue. Hopefully not anyway

Thanks guys! I guess there's nothing to worry about then. I'm still hoping it sucks more from my overflow tank, it's a few inches over full because I expected it to suck a lot out lol

See I didn't do that....do you think I need to pull it back out and do that? Or just give it more time?

Did you fill the block through the thermostat or just the rad?

I do have one of the float testers, and some of the test strips as well so I will check it. I just wanted to get some opinions on how critical the ratio is. I'm also still wondering why it hasn't sucked anything out of the overflow tank yet. The block can't be full just from filling through the rad....maybe it just hasn't had enough run time and hot/cold cycles yet.....

I set the heater to heat before hand yes, around lunch time. Then the truck sat till about 6:00 when I drained it. And it was on during the flushing. Should I have filled the block through the thermostat housing? I though it should pull coolant in fine from the overflow tank as needed....

Being that he wants the mega cab I don't think he'd be ok with a 2nd gen....it's a nice looking truck. Low miles may be good or bad, makes me wonder how long it sat without being driven, sometimes that is really bad for a vehicle. Personally I'm scared of all the emission stuff on the newer ones. That also seems like an insane price tag for that. I would check really thoroughly for rust too knowing that it came from Massachusetts. Sometimes you find it in crazy places! I'm sure you know all this already just trying to point out some things that would concern me :-) good luck!

Hey all, so finally got around to changing my coolant. It went fairly well. Started with draining as much as I could through the rad drain. I parked my truck facing on my slight downhill slope and then jacked the rear up as much as I could. Unfortunately I only got about 4-4.5 gallons out. Anyway, then I closed the drain and flushed with garden hose for a few mins on high idle until the water coming out was flat and no longer foamy. Open d the drain at the end just to flush that a little as well. Then shut off the water and let the truck run for a few seconds til water stopped coming out the upper rad hose. Then shut truck off and allowed to drain. Next put thermostat in and closed everything up. Next added one gallon of straight coolant(green from Napa) to the top of the rad. Then mixed coolant 50/50 with distilled water. Anyway I've only got in a total of about 4.5 gallons so far and that's with the overflow tank almost full. I ran the truck at 3 cyl high idle for a little when we first got the rad filled to try and get the temp up to open the thermostat, but it was registering on the temp guage very quickly, I assume because there wasn't enough water on the sensor yet. So I stopped that and just let it idle for a bit continuing to add coolant to the rad as I could. Then went for a drive. Temps were fairly normal, a little more fluctuation then usual but I was able to watch the thermostat open by the temp on the scan gauge. This was on Thursday evening and I was hoping it would suck more coolant in from the overflow and allow me to add some more coolant to get a better ratio, but even after a few hot/cold cycles it hasn't sucked the overflow down much if at all. Is it normal for it to take a while for all the air to get out? Do you think my ratio is good enough being that I must have had about 1.5 gallons in still and only did one gallon of concentrate before doing the 50/50 mix? Sorry for the long post, thanks in advance!

How much were you quoted to get your AC fixed?

One more learning point lol. Rent gauges from autozone, buy freon from Walmart.

Thanks again! You and everyone else have been very helpful! I picked up another can of freon to hopefully wrap this project up. I got a cheapo autozone one this time to use with the manifold gauge I have rented from them. Definitely should have gone that route the whole time instead of using AC pro. Would have spent a lot less money.

Thanks @Haggar. I think I'm starting to understand the principles of this fairly well. My only remaining questions at this point are, 1) are you saying I should only go up to 1000 rpms for testing? By this I mean that is the highest point at which the compressor needs to stay locked? Or should it stay locked at all rpms up to 2000? My reason for that is, if I'm cruising down I81 my rpms are at about 2000. I wouldn't think the compressor should be cycling more than once a minute or so at that point, if that much. And 2) is that why I was seeing some ice on the low side then? Because pressure was too low and so the freon was cold enough to freeze the condensation? 3) why is it that I shouldn't use max? I'm still a little confused on that one....

And what about the low side like getting a little icy....

I'll gladly try that, but doesn't the low side pressure need to be high enough to keep the compressor from cycling more then time per minute in all positions?

Alright so now I'm really getting annoyed with this. We let pressure out and let pressure out and it kept staying locked at 2000 rpm. Finally got down around 20 psi low side and the comp kicked off. I figured no big deal just put a shot back in. Well we ran to the store and got a can. Get back and the darn think won't even stay locked at 1500 rpm. The new 12 oz can ran out without even getting it back up to 25 psi. Now it's sitting at about 24 psi at idle and 150 or less on the high side. air gets to about 42° which I'd be happy with, but rev it up at all and it kicks off and on. It gets so cold at idle that the line iced up around the low port. What do I do??? Put more in again??? Looking back now I'm wondering if the switch was stuck from being over pressurized and that was it wasn't kicking the comp off before. Maybe I really do need to just add more. Just don't get why I went through a whole can withought getting very far. Also what kind of freon do you guys use? So far I used AC prob because I heard good things about it, but I'm up to $100 in freon now and still not done. Starting to think I would have been better off just getting someone to do this....

Very curious as well!!!

Well so far from what I'm finding, it looks like messing with the blend door will be way harder than trying to get the system pressures corrected and see if maybe it is overcharged. Since my high side is already a little too high, I think I'll do that first and see if it helps. My dash is sooooo brittle already I really hate to mess with it at all. I cant afford to be replacing a dash and heater core and evaporator right now lol. Nvm all that, I see what your talking about now. You dont have to take anything apart except the motor off. Thats looking a little more do able now.

Can you watch it open and close to see if it's working properly?

Thanks again guys! Looks like I'll have to see if autozone rents the manifold guages. Not at the in-laws anymore lol Is the blend door located behind the glove box? I mean how exactly would I check it?

Thanks for your input guys. Right now I have DAP checking to see if they can get just the nut from BD and if it is long enough. Otherwise I may be giving source automotive a call. Actually though, I just had an idea! Maybe I can just put the bearing on top of the steering brace, rather than have it hanging from the bottom! I feel like I may have seen that somewhere before. That should make the nut from Vulcan plenty long. I'll have to give that a try.

I have one of those sitting in my garage. It used to be on the truck, but I took it off to replace the gear box. The sector shaft nut threads disintegrated as we tried to re install it. I'm now in the process of trying to get a replacement nut so I can put it back on. Unfortunately that process is made more difficult by the fact that I do not know who made this particular brace. I tried a nut from Vulcan, but the shaft is too short. Where did you get your brace?

Well thanks once again for all the help guys. Looks like maybe the only thing left for me try without a crazy amount of work is to let some pressure out of the system incase I did overcharge it. Any specific way to do that?