War Eagle

I use the power stop slotted and drilled rotors on my Ram 3500. However I run the EBC LTS pads (green Box). I also run 19.5s in the spring to Fall time frame when I'm towing or hauling so I put a pretty good load on my brakes. My towing is a 14K trailer or hauling a 4k slide in camper. I have used the brake and rotor combo since 2014 and have over 60k miles on it. No noise, great stopping power and I haven't seen any non-normal wear on rotors or pads. Still the original EBC pads I installed and they have tons of wear left on them. I also have a pac-brake so that helps to minimize brake wear too.

I looked at many brands for both sizing capacity (BTU output) burn efficiency, auto start capability, fuel burn rate, stove style and cost. There were lots of brands that have auto start features as well as many styles to choose from. I tried to get as much technical info as I could about them to help me evaluate other features I was interested in. To make a long story short I chose the Harman brand because it could burn multiple types of fuel (such as wood pellets and/or corn ) and it could be throttled down to 3/4 of a pound per hour burn rate and still stay running. There were other brands that could burn multiple fuels but no other brand that had a rating of less than one pound per hour burn rate. That for me was the final deciding factor in my choice. That meant I could keep the unit running and still throttle it down without running you out of the house if you only needed a little heat. So when my mother in law came to live with us I used the wood stove all during the winter because she wanted to keep the temp above the 70 degrees that we kept the rest of the house at in the winter. We did that for over eight years until she passed away. During that time Harman had some sort of problem with one of their safety switch features so they replaced that switch in each of my stoves at no cost. During the 8 years of running I started having a starting problem with the ignitor on the stove that I ran for my mother in law. Every now and then the stove wouldn't start and I had to reboot the control panel and then the ignitor would work for a while then it would repeat the problem. Turns out that Harmon knew about the problem and redesigned the ignitor and had a fix available. It was beyond my 3 year warranty period so the cost was on me. The new ignitor was $90. I bought two of them and replaced the one that was acting up and just kept the other one on the shelf for when I might need it for the other stove. It's still sitting on the shelf because the second stove never developed the ignitor problem. No other expenses or problems in the 13 years I have had and operated the Harmon stoves. For the last 3 years I have ran the stove in the kitchen and family room area 24/7 during the winter time because of the atmosphere a burning fire creates. I have it throttled down to it's lowest setting and it burns slightly less than 5 bags a week. I clean the stove ash out once each heating season and the temp stays right at 70 degrees and my heat pump for that portion of the house hardly runs during the winter now.

I have 2 Harman Pellet stoves that I have installed about 13 years ago. They will heat the house completely and keep it at what ever temp you want. The main heating system for the house is water source heat pump which supplies heating and cooling for the house. The pellet stoves were installed for back up heat in the winter so that if I was to loose electricity or the pump for my water source I could have heat for the house. My mother in law came to live with us in the last few years of her life so I installed a battery back up system for the pellet stoves. When the stoves are running they do not require much energy. It's about 40 watts to run the feed auger and that cycles on and off. The distribution blower is not much more than that. The power hog is the ignitor, but then that only runs to start the fire then it is off for the rest of the burn cycle. So a good sealed battery can operate the stove for nearly 12 hours. If you were to set the stove up to run constantly (rather than on and off cycle controlled by temp set points) you can run for days.

With only 50 hours on the tractor then I'm guessing she is still under warranty. If that is so then I would highly recommend you follow the pre-defined service schedule for lube, fluid changes and filters and make sure you keep good documentation on product used and hours on the clock if you are doing all the service yourself.. Heaven forbid and you ever have a warranty claim you can bet Kubota will look closely at the service and products used to maintain that machine. Super UDT-2 is good stuff and actually will dampen some of the noise from the HST.

This article is broken and I don't know why. If you look under Gen 3 Articles, Truck Exterior, LED light...., then you will see the article with all the pictures. If for some reason that link doesn't work for you then PM me and I can send you a copy of the article with pictures to your email.

This article is broken (under Gen 2) and I don't know why. The photos were not in PhotoBucket so that is not the reason they aren't showing. I think it got broken when everything was move to the new site software. Look under Gen 3 articles and Truck Exterior and you will see the LED lighting article with all the pictures. If for some reason that link isn't working for you then send me a PM and I'll send you the article with pictures in a seperate email response.

I have the Oregon permit and yes if you get the Idaho enhanced permit it will meet the Oregon requirements with the exception that you also have to have a letter from your local sheriff stating that you have no mental problems that would keep you from owning a gun. Easy to get by just going into your county sheriff and they look up your record and pen you a letter that you take to the Sheriff in Vale. In Vale you give them a copy of your enhanced training certificate, the no mental problems letter (from your home town county sheriff) give your finger prints, picture and $60 bucks and then they do their own background check and send you the Oregon permit in the mail. The Oregon permit is good for 4 yrs then has to be renewed. Oregon does not send out reminders when your permit is about to expire so you have to keep track of when the permit expires so you can renew and not loose it. When I got mine only 2 counties were giving permits to Idaho residences (Malhuer and Jefferson). The county seat for Malheur is in Vale so that is the obvious place where you would apply for your Oregon permit. You have to make an advanced appointment (online only) and then show up on the appointed day and time. When I made my appointment they were booked 2 weeks out.

Best of luck to you on your surgery and your recovery!

Interesting that the topic of chainsaws has come up. I just bought a Stihl MS271 (Farm Boss) with 20" bar two weeks ago. Stihl has a sale going on and I needed to remove about a dozen 18-20 inch diameter trees on my place. They were advertising $30 off this model and if you purchased a 6-pack on Stihl brand 2 cycle oil they would double your warranty. I have an Echo CS3400 that I have used for years to trim trees and take hunting to cut fire wood and remove downed trees on the road etc. I have really liked the Echo because it is so compact (handle on top rather than out the back) Arbor guys use this style when up in the trees because it is easier to handle. The Echo is too small and would take too much work to remove the trees I want to take down so you can see the reason why I needed a new Stihl, right? The job of felling those trees was pretty short work with the Stihl. I was impressed with the speed I could chew through those trees.

I use the EBC yellow pads. Designed for heavy loads of RVs. I've read all the pros and cons for drilled and/or slotted rotors and just finally decided that the only way I'll ever know the truth about it is to run them myself to see how they work with my style of driving and loads I carry. I first ran slotted rotors of the front of my gen 2 Ram (disk brakes only on the front on gen 2 trucks). I have had them on for several years before I bought my gen 3 Ram. No abnormal wear or any cracking, No squealing. Liked them so when I decided to do brake upgrade on my 3rd gen I went with the drilled and slotted rotors on the front and rear. I put those and the EBC brake pads on a little over 3 years ago and I am very happy with the setup. No perceived abnormal wear and no squealing and no heat cracking or any problems at all. I've had to anchor the truck a couple of times when I was heavy loaded and my stopping was very satisfactory.

I have a PacBrake on my 05. I have a beefed up tranny (triple disk low stall converter, billet input, modified valve body and a bunch of other goodies inside). I can use the exhaust brake in the top 3 gears because it will lock the converter but the slowest speed the brake will control to is slightly under 20 mph. That won't be good enough on steep mountain back roads. Good brakes and rotors will be a plus but dropping the transfer case to low will be very useful to control your speed without a lot of heavy brake use. I use heavy slotted rotors and have had very good luck with them.

My vote is with the GPS. Doesn't make any difference what tire size you are wearing or gearing you are running. Adjust the tire diameter input as needed to make the speedo match the gps reading and you will be good.

First thing I noticed was that my OH computer started to tell me the outdoor temp was 130 degrees F. Now every time I check its 130 degrees F. Then a little while later it started to reset the ave mpg every time the truck started. So every time I start the truck the ave mpg reported is 0. However, as you drive it appears to be working to calculate the ave mpg but it now starts at zero. The miles driven are being reported the same as the odometer. Any one have any similar experience? If I wanted to fix the problem, what needs to be fixed? Is there module or computer or something that needs replacement? If I choose not to fix it am I risking something else not working right in the system? As an example is the overhead doing or reporting anything to some other system on the truck that is now negatively affecting some other operation?

You drill a new vent hole in the tank at the high spot. Then install a new bulk head fitting and then run the vent hose from the new bulk head fitting up to the fill spout and connect it to the place where the stock vent hose connected. I just took the stock vent hose and shortened it and the plugged it off and just zip tied it to the filler neck so it doesn't bounce around or dangle. The other end of the stock vent hose is still connected to the stock vent location on the tank. I didn't have any better way to seal off and abandon the original vent hole in the tank. Obviously you need to drop the tank to do this mod, so you'll have a few hours tied up in this project.

I have had a hand full of really good tanks over the years of driving my third gen. On one trip driving to Florida In January I got a couple of tanks that were way above normal. Got a picture of one that provided 460+ miles to the half tank level and one with 200+ miles just getting off the fuel tank gauge post. On other trips I thought I should have gotten more than I actually did and I can't always tell why either one of these conditions occurred (even when I'm trying to drive for good mpg's). I start with a little more fuel on board than most. My tank holds 37 gallons of fuel (I have relocated the vent tap at the highest point on the stock tank) so this allows me to fill my tank faster and allows me to put more fuel into it.