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I'm glad it helped someone. I wish I could be more help with auto's but they are a mystery to me.

Guess I need to stare at my truck to see what the underlying issue is. And I know, chirping them is in understatement though I can light them up in 4th at 45mph on dry pavement or 5th at 55 in the rain

I am not a tire expert by any means. In my mind if the truck is sagging at the front, which yes it is IFS 2wd..then that would make the tires taper in and ride on the insides of the tires, that are bald. I would have thought toe would do something else so do tell why it would be a toe issue.

I found if you google load and inflation tables, you find a ton of info. Might do the chalk thing to see what that yields. Those airbags were uh, interesting. Says smash all the air out then plug them, then cram them through the spring coil with a "blunt NOT SHARP, object". Well 10 min later I had one in, being nice to it and using the end of a hammer as a blunt object. By the time I was done, I decided anger was a perfect replacement for "blunt object". I scraped the blunt object and went at the other side with full fury and had it in in a minute

My back tires are bald in the centers which tells me overinflation which I do run 60-70psi in all the time, loaded or not. I know Mike has that calculator but I am not convinced it works seeing as how no load would mean no pressure. The front tires are bald on the insides, which tells me the springs are shot, which I'm sure they are lol. Airbags for the front was only $80 so I will get the front jacked up to fix that issue.However, how do you know where level is? If I jack the front up, how do I know when the tires are perfectly flat on the ground, not leaning to one side or the other? This should factor in tire pressure probably since more pressure will make the center of the tire protrude more than the rest of the tire.I am not looking for any guesswork, I want dead nuts accuracy on this issue. I have some theories on what to do but most of you have more experience than me so I'd like to hear what you guys have to offer.

Would it be possible to have 2 little bitty lights, one set for 10psi and one set for 15?

We got maybe a half inch of snow this morning. Wrecks everywhere and the whole speil we always get. My back tires are bald now and I have no weight in the back of the truck. Every time I took off it would just spin so I just sat there listening to the radio and eventually the truck would start moving. This was in 1st gear idling so the tires were barely turning and once they grabbed I would be on my way. It is a little tricky some times but I've never had to be pulled out of anywhere. With good tires and a few engine blocks against the tailgate, I can get everywhere I need to go. The only issue is getting the truck to move, once it's moving it is fine, this is the reason I leave the idle really low so I can start off in 1st gear idling and it goes so slow that it pretty well has a very slim chance of slipping. Aside from that, it is 10x easier to work on a 2wd truck. I don't have an axle, transfer case, driveshaft, 4wd lever to mess with, it's wonderful. For that alone I would keep my 2wd even in Alaska. They make snowmobiles for a reason.

If you have an edge juice you can see fuel temp and you will see that the heat stays there for hours. In the summer, the block remains hot for a long time and it heat soaks the VP for just as long. If you were to cool it, you would have to cool it for hours and being that peltiers are very inefficient, you would drain your batteries in no time.

Here is a regular tap, the end is tapered so that the threads are easily cut and it remains straight. These are very easy to get started in a hole that has been drilled or a hole that has messed up threads. Problem is, you don't have full cut threads on the tapered part, so your bolt will get tight where the tap started to taper. This means if you have an inch bolt and the tapered part of the tap is 1/4" long, then you better drill it 1 3/8" deep (so the tap has some room) and tap it at least 1 1/4" so the full threads make it to 1" deep. A bottom tap allows you to get the maximum amount of threads without having to drill way down. The same bolt would then need only maybe a 1 1/8" deep hole and you would be able to get 1" of full threads in there. You do this for situations where you can't really drill any farther down because you might drill into something or drill into a coolant passage, who knows. They should not be used to start threads because going from a hole to an instant full thread doesn't work very well, they are really hard to get started straight and the only way I can ever get it straight is with a lathe, so start it with a tapered tap and finish it with a bottom tap. Basically if they don't have a few threads to get them started, they suck.

At 27* you won't have anything down low. I would put it to 14-15 and that will be perfect. Over 15 is for people who tow a lot (spend a lot of time higher in the RPM's). Over 18 is for people with 4.10's who think they have to go 100mph. Over 20 is for pullers (4-5k RPM). Mine is at around 14.5 and it's perfect for me.

The pump is calibrated so that it is ONLY able to be pinned when the engine is at TDC. This is where the pump is actually at the timing specified on the cummins data plate. Your's might say 12.5-13.5*, which means when you get the engine to TDC, you should be able to lock the pump, if you can't lock the pump, the pump is out of time. There is a little flat bladed screwdriver looking thing that comes into the locking window on the pump ONLY when it is at the predetermined factory timing. Meaning if the engine is at TDC and the pump is stock, that thing should be perfectly centered in that window. If it is not, then the timing is not stock. If they locked the pump at that spot and then turn the engine 15* backwards, then you actually just added that to the stock timing, meaning 12.5(or 13.5*)+15=27.5*. This means you are at that 27.5*(or 28.5*) and is why it starts like crap. If you want to do it that way (which is crude at best), you would turn the engine until that window shows the locking flat bladed thing, then lock the pump, then loosen the nut, then rotate the engine to TDC compression/power #1. Then rotate the engine backwards the difference of the degree you want because you are already at the stock timing (12.5 or 13.5), so if you wanted 15*, turn the engine backwards another 2.5-1.5 damper degrees and then you will be at 15* timing. Basically the start of injection happens at 12.5 or 13.5* BTDC. That bladed thing in the pump I guess called the timing pin is set so it will align when the engine is rotated another 12.5-13.5* so that you can easily time the engine based on TDC which is easy to find. The hard though maybe more correct way would be to get to the start of injection then rotate the engine to the desired timing BTDC. Technically you could rotate the engine backwards 12.5-.13.5* from TDC , and you should be at the start of injection if the timing pin lined up at TDC of the engine, so then you could loosen the nut on the pump and rotate the engine to wherever you wanted timing to be in relation to TDC, so 15* BTDC, then tighten that nut and it should be timed to 15* TDC. Keep in mind this is extremely crude..ideally you should be using a dial indicator to adjust timing as shown here. http://dodgeram.info/tsb/1994/18-10-94a.htm This might help you, along with showing the flat bladed screwdriver thing (last pic). http://articles.mopar1973man.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19:p7100-injection-pump-confirming-stock-timing&catid=8&Itemid=106

Your statement is well informed and nobody should be offended by it. When you go to any 24V forum, you read about people changing out VP44's left and right, not exactly a good feeling about something you are wanting to buy. Now part of the problem probably stems from ignorance. A while back the knowledge was not very well distributed about the VP's need for constant good pressure. A lot of people still don't realize it though, and those are the ones who end up on the forum wondering why their VP is dead. It has created a sense of unreliability pertaining to the VP trucks. Knowing the information on how to maintain it is key. I realize with the Ppump you can get in and drive it and be fine with just knowing general maintenance techniques. It is a bit different with a VP since you have to watch a fuel pressure gauge your whole life. I don't think you could convince Mike to throw his fuel pressure gauge away along with all other fuel pressure monitoring devices. Most 12V guys know all about fuel pressure but could care less about a gauge, after all, if our lift pump goes out, the worst that could happen is the truck quits running.. There are instances where the plungers could stick but that seems a little rare. The biggest factor is the reliability of those aftermarket lift pumps (the air dog) that people run on the VP to "fix" the issue. They provide the fuel pressure needed to keep the VP happy. However, I have no idea how reliable those pumps are. It is an electric pump though, not mechanical like the 12V uses, this means there is questionable reliability in something electronic as with any electronic thing. There is a reason the oil pump is gear driven, not belt driven, not electric. Mike takes his airdog apart to keep it running strong, changing out o-rings in it and such. The biggest factor with all of this is that when the truck dies out in the middle of nowhere, you are much more apt to limp home with a 12V than a 24V. The mechanical lift pump will die on you slowly, you will be able to tell because power will decreases slowly (as in several thousand miles). It isn't the fact that either truck might have issues, it's the fact that the 12V gives you more time to let it know that it's about to break something. Lately it seems like a lot of 24V ECM's are going out, the 12V doesn't even have an ECM, you can drive a 5spd 12V home with no batteries or alternator whatsoever. But what ways are there to fix the ECM issue? Like I said earlier, it isn't the fact that the 24V has some issues, it's the fact that the solutions are still questionable. How do I know the airdog will last 100k miles? How do I know the ECM isn't going to die? If we say that those issues are resolved, we still get back to the fact that there are a lot of unknowns about the VP. Nobody has a clue what the timing is on a VP other than a chart which I can't read the numbers on. That chart doesn't show how the IAT or ECT effect it either. This actually isn't really an issue other than the fact that if you were in Antarctica with a screwdriver and pliers and it was -100F out and the truck died, you could probably rig up something to get the 12V to the south pole warehouse whereas you can only do so much to a 24V without needing very advanced tools. Personally, I see no advantage to owning a 24V over a 12V.....in Florida. If you live somewhere that gets under 32F regularly, it is definitely nicer having a truck that can easily be rigged to warm itself up (3 cyl high idle), maintain 800RPM idle automatically, and do all the other crap that it does in the winter. I do hate the knocking they make in the winter but apparently the IAT fooler smooths that out. You seem to be set on converting to a 12V and although I can see it both ways, I still have that thought that if I had a 24V, the VP would just die on me. But then again, what's to say Mike's truck's VP won't last forever now that he has modded it all to perfection? We only have doubts because we have personally seen all the posts on forums about people's VPs going out. Mike's hasn't gone out yet after I think 100k miles on the same VP, so if everyone's truck was set up exactly like Mike's, whats to say the failure rate wouldn't be the same as a Ppumped truck? If you do convert it, I'd like to see pics

Here is info for the EGT gauge http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/3792-thermocouple-install There is a 1/8"NPT plug on the intake manifold that you take out and put your boost line in there. Here is a pic http://mopar.mopar1973man.com/personal/2002/gauges/boost-gauge-install.jpg You can see it is right behind the fuel filter.

The target we sight everything in on and thanksgiving dinner, a week after thanksgiving :banghead: Shoulda shot them all out of spite.

Mine is 6500.

I forgot you had the switch, leave it off if it's over 70-80F out as the IAT will just be seeing the same temps as the "fooled temp". I think I would just leave it. Mike told me the highest he has ever seen out of his truck for as long as he has noticed IAT temps was 174F up a long hill or something. According to his chart, 173F is 1200 ohms, so I'll just say 1150 ohms for the extra degree. Calculating it out, your computer would be seeing 755 ohms which I am betting is 200F based on his chart (only goes to 184 @ 1000 ohms so I based it off exponential guesstimates since the curve is very flat at that temp). I really don't think you will ever see a problem. I'd like to hear what everyone else has seen for max IAT temps though. If that is the highest most people see then I would leave it all how it is, you shouldn't be using it in summer anyways. The worst that could happen is it throws a code.. I don't think the VP44 trucks have a limp mode and if they do I have yet to read about a person have it go into limp mode.

You are fine for the time being. If you had a switch between the resistor and the stock IAT wire (taking it out of parallel operation), then it would work like normal. The resistances are not going to change much with it in parallel, it will be close enough to what you are aiming for to make it work. The only problem is in the summer when you hold it to the floor on a 100F day.. In other words, they *should* be separate, but don't take off work just to do it. I wouldn't even touch it until it's 70F out again next year. Just be sure it is indeed parallel operation, if it is in series then you will not gain anything and actually the engine will think it is even colder.

I'm going to say it would work the same as having it fooled the entire time. When you parallel resistors, you end up with less resistance than the lowest resistor. If one resistor is 50000 ohms and the other is 2200, then the computer will see 2107 ohms.. Not much difference. If you happen to have 2200 on the real IAT sensor as well, then it will actually be 1100 ohms. No matter what you do, the computer will never think it is any colder than what 2200 ohms is (143F). Now should the actual IAT sensor get a reading of lower than 2200 ohms (say you keep using this setup in summer), then resistance will be lower than that IAT sensor and eventually you could trip the computer's limits, but I doubt it, the actual IAT has to read over 150F to end up at a computer reading of possibly 200F or more. If it is 13F (56000 ohms), your setup will make the computer see 2116 ohms which is around 140F. In other words, your setup is fine and will work until it throws a code in the summer (if it even gets that hot).

Think again..

Theres a lot of threads on valve lash on here. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with them [*]http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/4209-Valve-Lash [*]http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/2869-Easy-way-to-set-valves [*]http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/4240-How-to-adjust-your-valves-video-edition [*]http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/2298-Valves [*]http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/350-adjusting-valves [*]http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/3718-Actual-Degrees-of-Valve-Actuation [*]http://articles.mopar1973man.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20:engine-valve-lash-adjustments&catid=8&Itemid=106

There are a lot more cummins owners like that than you will ever believe.. Same as your old 12V, even down to the individual valve cover gaskets. Only thing that really changed was the injection pump.

It has to be under 60F to work. If you got diesel fuel into that connector then it is likely shorting it out (making it think its hot), though it has a seal so it shouldn't get in there. Use a multimeter and check the resistance between the 2 sensor hole contacts in the IAT sensor. I am am not sure on specifics but I think it has to be at least 9000 ohms or greater to signal it is 60F or colder. As temps drop, resistance increases.. http://articles.mopar1973man.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=102:grid-heater&catid=34&Itemid=115

You would love riding with me then. Every single light is on, even some I hotwired to come on (4wd light) My oil pressure gauge is on the fritz and goes to 0 all the time, sometimes for a longgggggg time. People who ride with me start freaking out and I always tell them "oh it's fine, as long as it jiggles once every 10 miles it has plenty of oil"

I'm thinking it was just a crappy clamp. I have started to develop a hatred for impact guns because when they tighten (impacting) they beat the crap out of the threads. Nobody notices that since they might only do 1 bolt for the bolt's lifetime but I take that clamp off on a weekly basis to do my antics.. I usually tighten it fast with the impact then tighten it the rest of the way by hand but I was feeling a little lazy last time and I guess that finished those threads off. It had been holding 45psi fine up until then so I'm pretty sure of what happened. I really just wondered about if the stock boots were even worthy of still using but nobody has said anything and I haven't read anything but what you said just gave me basepoint so thanks! BUT! I learned something from it lol. I went another 5 miles with it completely blown off, no boost whatsoever, had to see what happened knowing me haha. Aside from the insane amount of smoke since I have absolutely no smoke control other than my foot, it was very interesting. At 65mph with that trailer (maybe 1500lbs enclosed TT) I was running 1200F. I couldn't go any faster or it would go over that. After putting the boot back on I was back at 650F at the same speed, amazing what a turbo does. As if that wasn't enough, since it was stripped I couldn't do much and the guy with me was egging me on to pass someone "carefully" as to not blow the boot off, well it blew off again but partially. Now I had a 10psi max boost, above that it was just blowing out the hole. That was very interesting because EGT's really didn't make that big of a difference, maybe 150-200F higher. I judged that based on doing 80mph uphill where it was normally running 20psi, so at 10psi it was running around 900F where the same speed/hill woulda been 750F. I actually ran it like that for at least 100 miles until the leak got bigger and eventually ran me down to 5psi max at which point I was starting to have difficulty going up hills and keeping EGT's in check. It finally blew completely off and eh yeah, fixed it and kept it under 15psi. It does make me wonder if it would be more efficient if it had a bigger turbo that would be running lower boost yet allowing the engine to breath better. I run low EGT's and a hotter engine is more efficient so if I could get them to maintain 1000F the entire time I wonder if I would get better mileage. It seems to me like I have unnecessary boost that is controlling EGT's a little too well and since it takes power to drive the turbo to make boost..I see it as wasted power. Probably overthinking this but I can't help it.

Yeah the clamp is junk. I didn't know if the stock boots weren't good enough for higher boost than stock but I guess they are fine. I have no oil whatsover in the boots. I'll get a new clamp and call it good then.