flagmanruss

I'm shopping for new skins for the Avenger 225/55R17. 42,000 M on OEM Continentals. 1 broken belt otherwise might run them until the first snow. They don't really look much like an All Season tire but they've actually performed adequately last winter. I mostly drive easy, want good service life, good traction... live in the sticks! I'm leaning toward Cooper CS5 GT which is a 80,000 rated miles tire. Recommendations?? Avoid??

Sorry I didn't think of this sooner. Brake lights & turn signals ARE the separate parallel sides of the same circuits. Brake lights will come on without any other power... they will in your truck too. Truck running lights (markers, tail lights) power up with parking lights or head lights positions. So you tried on 2 trucks. The trailer is NEW. I wonder if the adaptor you are using isn't connecting the correct leads. It's too late for me to dig in the shop for the pin out of the 7 blade RV connector tonight (after midnight). I had a lot of trouble with cheap china trailer connectors that would not properly seat in my truck OEM trailer connector. The one I bought at NAPa works fine. The ones I had trouble with... looking at the trailer side of the connector... the chromed contacts extend side to side beyond the opening... I think they'er made on metric machines & my truck wouldn't mate with it. I found this after I wired it all up! My previoius thread on this: http://forum.mopar1973man.com/index.php?/topic/7538-new-rv-7-pin-plug/

Let me just make the observation... bulbs will light in either direction... LEDs have to be polarized correctly. Trailers typically have a lot of non-standard wiring. Colors can be anything etc. I just put side lights in my enclosed trailer. I tested polarity when I installed LED tail lights & ran the side lights off the tail lights on each side.

I got my best MPG runnning light, commuting on state secondary highways... running 40-45... in Drive. If there wasn't traffic that made me slow, I could pull the minor little grades locked in high. (Remembering I'm stuck with 4.10 ratio). I was able to get 18s which is pretty good for this ratio. (bad choice).

Typically "senders" are a variable resistor... to ground... so the power is feeding TO the sender.

Seeing a story about a concret dome house that was burned over w/o damage... pretty incredible. http://abcnews.go.com/US/mans-concrete-home-survives-raging-wildfire-washington/story?id=33286398

I see all the fire news on TV... Of course they play it all up... but very scary things happening. Thoughts & prayers for you & your crew & everyone on the fire lines.

Long ago, in a previous life, my brother had the regulator go out on his Dodge Colt. By the time he got to the shop the battery was smoking. We could smell it by the time he shut it off by the shop. We used bolt cutters to cut the cables & hold downs off of it. Pulled the battery & set it on a couple of cement blocks. It was still hot 3 days later. All the water had boiled out & then it shorted internally. Scarey stuff. Simpler system. Replaced alternator, regulator, battery & good to go!

Dealer "can't" or won't?

I have an 01.5. I live in the road salt capitol. The exhaust rotted out & was replaced with a SS kit. My doors rotted out & have yet to get them fixed. I had to pay a fabricating shop to build & install the cups on the front axle housing where the bottom of the coil springs sit into (not available as a separate piece). Dodge said nedeed to replace the axle housing... yeah, right! I had the steel plates the rear U bolts go through, rot out so the rear axle was walking around. One side pulled right through. The plates were available, U bolts were too. The spacer blockswere got used. Exciting to say the least. Check these spots with a hammer & punch. The rear bumper is thin & prone to flex & crack the chrome if bumped... then rots from the inside out.

You can install a pipe T to retain the OEM function & give a tap for an after market guage. I used to see this often on flybridge cruisers with 2 sets of guages (upper & lower) stations. The "sending unit" was actually a variable resistor to ground... power was fed from the instruments to the "sender". There were some that had the same resistance values & others that were not. No master list I'm aware of. Eventually, I've had sender diaphrams fail & leak oil... The switches don't usually leak but can still fail. The oil light switch is just a grounding switch.

My buddy uses a coal forge (and coal chicken coop heater) for his little blacksmithing shop. His neightborhood has gone yuppy... the neighbors call the FD every time he lights the forge. He's grandfathered so they can't stop him. He uses wood to heat in the house... doesn't smoke nearly as much. Mostly the coal smokes when getting going. When he cranks the blower, the fire gets more air & burns cleaner & hotter. and uses coal faster... fire dies down while he's hammering on the anvil. I think in a stove where the draft includes the chimney (not an open hearth forge) it burns much cleaner. Oh, yes, my broither burns coal in the steam locomotive (if his boss will get the bearing fixed).

I don't think one could get a meaingful system on a Fire Service Tower. There's one just over a miles from me, (as my location is surronded by the biggest wildlife area in the smallest state (LOL)). From what I've read with high tech & cameras many forest service towers are being used remotely for fire purposes. The days of manned towers is pretty much over. The cameras can see better than the eye & can zoom in on any suspicious indicator. The solar power panels would be used to power the remote electronics. I heard with these capabilities they needed fewer locations because of the increased range. I'm sure someone with more knowledge will chime in.

Yeah, I saw thetruck was upside down but I figured "What the Hey! Mike was driving!" But then wouldn't all the water fall out? Seriously, stay safe!

Why set a teepee on fire?

Wife had a Subaru wagon. Head gasket failed very early... repaired in warentee. Went a long ways before it failed again. Had it repaired locally. 6 months later faled again. Shop had charged us for planing the heads but had not. Don't you just hate fictious charges on bills? Shop wouldn't stand behind it so we GAVE the car to her sister who's finacee trailered it to his shop in Bangor Me. (His family actually owns the machine shop & if it had been planed previously, the dimensions would have showed it.) He planed the heads & she's still driving it. Body is in good shape. It seems that Subaru redesigned the engine by boring it without enlarging the casting... resulting in less gasket surface & prone to failure. You'd have to research which years it is.

Trailer has a huge roof with most of it's area sloped forward... We thought all the water would run off the nose. We had a new rubber roof applied (painted on) which improved it greatly. The rubber roof runs up & over the vynal insert in the edge extrusion (screw cover). Undoubtably the camper putty failed but removing theextrusion is a one way street... to the junk yard. I'm really hating this type of construction. We were getting rain water in the window tracks whch I now suspect was running inside the walls, entering the window channels & flooding the window tracks. After drilling additional the drain holes in the window tracks, the window tracks werestill flooding until we did the rubber roof... seldom overflow now. The shop used vynal siding edge pieces as rain gutters over the windows... wedged into the aluminum siding seams... I need to add some more but it has pretty much stopped the water from running down the exterior & into the window tracks. BUT We are still finding water in the interior wall surfaces & runing into the storage compartments underneath. There's still water running over the sides... despite the slope of the roof. How can this be? My only thought is when the rain is heavy enough, it does indeed build up on the roof & come over the side edges. It's only the height ofthat extrusion. The rubber roof does completely cover that extrusion... as far as I can tell... Thoughts: If water gets under the vynal cover strip... it can run the length of the extrusion until it finds a screw hole to leak in. When the water comes over the side extrusion... it is wicking back under the extrusion? The roof has a redicious mini-gutter system... cannot handle the water flow... can also get plugged with pine needles & debris. Water can back up from this mini-gutter system, between the gutter & the extrusion, and into the walls? I can not go on the roof. Wife thinks she can caulk this with Marine Life Caulk.

I'd say a short somewhere. Besides the minor fuses, there are fuseable links & circuit breakers under the hood, driver's side, a panel with a cover over it. Possibly a relay failure? Codes? Read the codes.

My truck came with the insulation package... I tried to tighten it up but it was just super mouse habitat. I ripped everything off the hood & the upper cowl box...

I just checked mine. There's an indent where the edge of the door comes in... a little 1/2" x 1/2" step if you will... the light color rolls onto the horrizinal surface of this step. The main color comes down the verticle surface to meet it.

Can't keep cats outside. Coy-dogs get them in short order.

Mine is a light color on a dark red. I bought it off the lot & never cared for the color scheme. When I do it over, it'll be old school, flat black rockers & lower body panel. Or maybe something tough like bedliner. What I did was some stick on stair tread stuff on the door threshold as if anybody used the back seat (kids), they get up at the front doors & walk back on the flat threshold surface. I don't think the lower body color comes inside at all. I can take another look when I go out to move the truck later.

I tried & failed with a 4" 45* elbow. I think the issue is the flange on the BHAF is "soft" & compressible. What is needed is a firm stiffener (like Mike's exhaust pipe) to go inside so the clamp has something to compress against. The draft (taper) on MY BHAF flange makes it hard to get a good clamp. I note the OEM filter box flange has tabs to engage the turbo inlet boot. Maybe a few screws through the parts would prevent any slip off.

2012 Hyundai Accent with cowl removed. Disconnected the washer hose. The wiper arms came off easily. There were 4 push fasteners holding the cowl... one at each end... & 2 in the gutter near the center of the cowl. It was hard to see just where the parts separated... but I started at the ends & opened the seam as I went. I just had to get a thin pry tool in there... which wasn't easy. The end fasteners were blind & broke when I tried to remove them. The more center ones were expanders & I could reach under the lip but in the end they broke off too. Like most modern cars, the cowl lays directly on the edge of the windshield glass & is retained with clips... just slid forward once the fasteners were out. Once I had it appart, I got the wife to work on her car. She chose to shop vac the debris from the cowl trough. I had bought Scotch Brite SS scrubbing pads at Home Depot for $2.39 (3 pack)... In the cleaning aisle, not with the steel wool. They are smaller than I remember. I think the only part that counts is the part in the drain hole but she chose to leave each pad in one piece even though most is in the trough. The reassembly was uneventful. The cowl cover clipped onto the windshield edge. Reconnected the washer hose. The center pair of fasters, I replaced with 1/4" nuts, lock washers & bolts... I stuck a magnet to the bolt head & it held the lock washer up for me while started the nuts. I'm going to pick up push fasteners on Monday for the blind holes at the end. I should have bought replacement push fasteners before starting... the holes are a bit over 1/4". The cowl cover / bowl seam is hidden underneath... it would have been more clear IF it had been apparent. Took it slow & didn't break anything besides single use fasteners.

Does your truck have an oil/water cooler? Known to fail. Think they're on transmission...