leety

Today was my lucky day. Today I found out what the rims are that are on my truck. They came with the truck and you know how that goes. They are old out of production US made Rickson LTS rims. http://www.ricksontruckwheels.com/customers/gm-drw/006/5.jpg.php Apparently, according to Heather at Rickson, these are rare, sought after and some of the best custom built rims they ever made. The small company that made the wheel for Rickson pre-machining was swallowed by a bigger fish and stopped making the parts for Rickson. If you don't know them already, Rickson is a great resource. They handle the narrow market of crossover wheels and tires between the 3/4 ton and 1 ton trucks and the commercial trucks. They make some really nice wheels!!!! Now to get a proper sized spare from them LOL Still have the original 16" spare with the original tire still hanging on to it for dear life LOL I guess I can always roll 1 and 1 worst case. Someone brought to my attention that the studs miss a couple of threads on the nut. Has anyone ever encountered this before and should I be worried?

And there there are the boy racers who come to my mountain with a different tire pressure in each tier and flip their cars over LOL

No worries. What's sad is that very few women are encouraged to even check their oil, by anyone, ever. My family didn't do that to me. They noticed my technical aptitude when I was young and never boxed me in to some gender trap. For that, I am grateful. I still do all the girly things too though. I do what I like.

FYI there are plenty of guys who blow their shite up due to a complete lack of knowledge of everything other than the basic operating go/stop features. For some reason no one likes to talk about them though. In the city where I live, the only people who know about these things are nurds, like us, and mechanics for the most part it's equal dumb dumb on both sides of the isle. The women readily admit to it, and the men play it off like they know stuff, and then they meet me, and all bets are off LOL

Yea well quality control of items made in China by 6 year olds... We get what we pay for. And now for the most part you can't even find much of anything that domestically made, sadly.

I'm a big fan of LED's. So far nothing but good outcomes with them.

It's a reasonable theory.

I shall remain FRAMless

I had a couple of these laying around https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073ZBNBHS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and replace the dome light and the map lights with them. I also repaired the exploded springy map light switch in the truck today (a resent development) with the aid of some crazy glue and a zip tie for extra insurance. I'm sure some of you have encountered that seemingly common failure. Looks like the one on the driver's side already went through the process of fail and glue. I added a zip tie to that one too. I've been using these same LED light bulbs (link above) in something else for about a year and they have held up well. Has anyone else tried out LED lights in their dome or map lights.

Wowsers, that looks like a lot of work right there. Love the gas pump :-)

Thanks, you're thinking what I'm thinking.

Not attached to the look just trying to see if I can work with what I have $$ ya know?

https://www.totaltiresolutions.com/mobile/tires/commercial-tires.aspx?view=cttire&width=-1&aspect=-1&rim=-1&brand=-1&load=-1&ply=-1&category=-1&shoulder=-1&application=-1&position=-1&page=-1&order=-1&tid=Sailun5540996 They are definitely drive tires not a steering tire. They are 16 ply 125 psi. Very hard, also a speed rating of L which is 75 MPH. The price is defiantly not insane. I've been trying to figure out if you could use a drive tire on a smaller truck so this is a good indication.

Doh! That's a drive position tire. As far as I know you are not supposed to use drive position tires as steer position tires :-(

Those are great! I don't think I can run 225 I think I have to stick with 245. That's what someone told me but I need to investigate that further. That seems to be a better size for the 19.5" rims. https://www.tacomaworld.com/tirecalc?tires=245-70r19.5-225-70r19.5 My rim is a 7.5 the rims on for the 225 is 6.7 so one inch narrower. It's the 245 that's killing me. I'll see if they make that tire in a 245.

Excellent. I took my radiator out not too long ago. It was covered with that goo from the crank case ventilation mess combined with dirt. I fixed that with some PVC and a little help from my friends at Mopar1973man.com :-) Your method is similar to the one I learned in a shop in the mid 1980's (posted above), with a couple of differences. I have been working with distilled water on this and I may just run a couple of cycles of distilled once I get the thing clean with the tap using my method. Is our cooling system a 6 gal capacity?

You know! But still you did the composition, not the camera. Well done!

That's a beautiful photo!! Daunting storm. Now that is style!

When I worked at the Women's Garage in the mid 1980's this was how we flushed cooling systems. It worked really well. Theory: The lower radiator hose is generally where the water is pulled from by the water pump into the block. If you let the engine heat up and let the thermostat open so and release hot water out of the system you will get a warm/hot water flush. When the thermostat opens the water will exit out of the upper radiator hose. Steps: 1) Run some fast flush in the system and drive the vehicle a bit to get to operating temp. 2) Let engine cool down entirely 3) Drain the system to get the chemicals out. Bottle them up and take them to a proper recycling location. 4) Nor for the live flush part. Take the upper radiator hose off (at the top radiator connection) and redirect the upper radiator house out of the engine bay (this will be the departure hose for your flush), if you need to add another old hose to it to further redirect the exiting fluid out of the engine bay that's good too. 5) Remove the radiator cap put your garden hose in and turn the water on but not full blast. It's best to have a shut off valve on the end of the hose. 6) Fill up the radiator and then close valve at hose end, leave hose turned on. 7) Turn on the heater full blast, then start the engine and let it run and warm up. Keep adding water to the radiator through the filler opening as the level drops so the fluid doesn't run out. Once the engine heats up the thermostat will open and the dirty water will exit through the upper radiator hose that was set up to redirect the water out of the engine bay. Keep refiling the radiator and let the system heat up again until the thermostat opens again. Let this cycle repeat until the water is exits the upper hose clear. This is more of a live flush technique. I did it on a lot of cars back in the day and it did a fine job of cleaning the entire system out. Would there be any issues anyone could see using this method for our trucks?

Sadly I'm working with LA's finest tap water. I s there a write up somewhere on how to do it the way you are doing it? Found it! In your write up the radiator is out. My question now is, where is the water exiting if the radiator is installed?

I was also looking into the Treadwright tires. Seems like they are the only one making a sort of AT tire that will fit on my big rims. I have 19.5" rims running 245/70R19.5 tires at Crosswind CWA203 (came with the truck) These tires have no business in snow or dirt, probably not even that good in the rain. Has anyone seen anything more AT in a size like this? I hear the size I have improves gas mileage and towing.

Do you do the flush with the engine running or not running? In the old days I used to flush them running with the thermostat in. Just pull the upper hose off the radiator and direct the exiting water out of the engine bay. Right now there's nothing but distilled water and system goop in my cooling system. I've been trying to get this thing clean for awhile (about 8 times I think lost count) by draining, refilling and running distilled water in it. It's still rather dirty. I just replaced the thermostat so I don't see the point of tossing it at this point.

Just south of 100k just got the truck (Nov 2017) fairly sure they are orriginal injectors.

Still with the black smoke. It's not as bad as it was and I think the boost leaks that I had have all be remedied. Intercooler boots replaced, valves adjusted, battery terminals upgraded/replaced, new left pump, installed new BHAF, entire intercooler system checked for leaks, the map looks to be working right. Ran some fuel addictive to try to clear out legacy soot, not sure if that even did anything. I still have some black smoke. It happens just after shifting up to the next gear (NV6500 6 speed manual) if I hit the gas just after a shift. Lots of black smoke, then once the RPM's go up the smoke stops. Before it was all black smoke all the time. There's also something that sounds a bit like a ping when going up my mountain, esp just after shifting up. I'm thinking injectors may be at the end of their shelf life. Any thoughts?

Hi I'm trying to find this article "High-Pressure Fuel Lines Removal/Installation" I found a removal article but not an install article. I'm thinking it the "High-Pressure Fuel Lines Removal/Installation" was in the old UI somewhere. Clearly this is a very important aspect of the project. It would be awesome if you could send me a link for it or something.