diesel4life

I am going through the manual trans woes right now...5th gear grenaded on the wife's TDI the other day. I'm really hoping the damage was contained to that gear only but I'm not real confident . Will get the end cover off in the next few days to check it out but I'm afraid I'm going to be looking for another transmission. Needless to say I am not real impressed as this car only has 130k freeway miles. My grandfathers "junk" auto TDI of the same vintage ran 315k trouble free miles before he traded it in.

Wow Tom, I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. Hopefully it will be an easy fix. Dean called me back the day after you left asking what ever happened to you. I should have made more of an effort to put you guys together but you seemed pretty hesistant to talk to him when you didn't try to call him for a few days so I never pushed the issue... I almost don't want to even tell you this but you are the third person I know that has had work done by Blood that Dean had to "fix". Not trying to pour salt in an open wound, just sayin. Good luck.

Being I'm running a Smarty and mild injectors I won't go above 1100 degrees before I either downshift or get out of the throttle or both....too many variables with the advanced timing and the accuracy of your pyro to risk pushing any harder. 1250 may be OK on a stock engine but advanced timing will increase cylinder pressures/temps, and your not necessarily going to see the difference on your pyro.

My starter is about to give up the ghost, have to hit the key several times before it will engage. I'm getting power to the starter because I can hear the big click when I turn the key forward. I've had a rebuild kit from Larry for quite some time now, time to dig it out and blow the dust off and put it to use.

Are you still in the vicinity of Laramie? I have family in Laramie and could touch base with them if your needing any assistance with anything. I'm trying to picture where about you were on I80 west of Laramie that has that steep of a grade...I know east of town headed over Happy Jack towards Cheyenne is a long 7% stretch of several miles.

I didn't think the intervals had been shortened that much. 5k miles seems awefully short, unless it is being ran very hard or has alot of short trips involved without the chance to get good and hot to cook off the condensation and what not in the oil. Or possibly it falls into that "once a year oil change"...

Daang! Apperently there's no fence around that track. Lucky for him he only clipped it.

Yep, and that's the fastest point in a qualifying lap, not an average speed over the course of a lap. In all reality they are rrunning 30-40 mph slower by the time they exit the corner. I used to work with a guy whose brother was a tire changer on one of the Busch car teams. He was able to get a handful of infield passes for every race (Of course this was pre 9/11 and all the security changes NASCAR made). So I was fortunate enough to hit 4 races with them over a few years. Camping in the infield in a motorhome, with unrestricted access to the garage area and pit road. What an experience that was. Definitely gives you a newfound respect for the guys that get in those cars. My most memorable moment that I'll never forget was standing at the fence on the inside of turn 3 at Michigan During practice. Those cars were coming into the corner at close to 200 mph, and literally diving down into the corner and slowly drift up the track and by the time they come out of turn 4 theyre inches from the wall. They looked like they were on the brink of wrecking every corner. Unbelievable how much those cars really slide on those tracks At those speeds. Michael Waltrip was one of the drivers on the track, and as he came into turn 3 Where we were standing he suddenly blew his right front tire. Plowed straight up the hill and hit the wall head on So hard we felt the impact from where we were standing. Car rode the wall until it came to a stop and was a ball of Fire.Waltrip dropped the window net and bailed. The bank was so steep he lost his footing coming out of the car and slid halfway down the track before he stopped. We walked over to the garage area shortly after and the car was sitting on a flatbed. Completely destroyed. Meanwhile Waltrip and company was already getting the back up car ready to go out and run a few laps later in the day. Those guys have some real guts.

Not quite!

Can you post the results? What was better about it? Why 5k miles? Is that actually the service interval of the CR engines?

Not sure exactly what your asking but you have to run a debit card the same as you would a credit card with the exception of using a PIN vs a signature.

Not true in the case of a debit card where a pin is required. I should have clarified that earlier, I rarely use an actual credit card.

That was the case for me at least. What's strange though is the card companies know the difference between using the card reader at the pump and swiping your card inside the store. There is a truck stop about 15 Miles north of me that I fill up at if I am in the area because they are always considerably cheaper than the local station. One day the card reader was broken so I went in and handed the attendant my card (not the one I had the limit increased with) and told them I was filling up. Can't remember the total but it was well over $100 bucks, went in and swiped it and punched in my pin and went on my way. The next time I swiped it through the card reader and was only able to fill to $100 and the pump stopped.

Pretty hard to compare the dry climate of the west to the humid climate of the east. Bare steel will rust all year long here not just when the salt is being layed down.

Most credit card companies (and bank debit cards for that matter) limit your transaction at fuel pumps to $100.00. I called mine and had the limit upped because I carry an auxuillary tank in the bed as well and can easily top $200 if I'm low and filling both tanks.

Yes it did have the fitting, sorry no part numbers.

^^^^Doesn't mean you still couldn't benefit from it. I don't know why some trucks tend to suffer from steering issues and others don't but it's not solely based on tire/wheel size. My 98 with 34s tracks straight as an arrow down even the roughest of back roads, yet here you have Russ with an extreme low mileage all original never been abused; truck with OEM sized tires and his is all over the road....pretty sure it's not the tires or the driver in this scenario. My 00 with OEM sized tires wandered all over the road as well Even after I went through and replaced every single component under the front of that truck Including the gear box and shaft. I eventually gave up and just drove it. Never knew about the steering brace at the time either.

That is the same thing that's in my picture. My support is boxed in also. I took that second shot from a tiny opening at the end of the support looking down the inside of the boxed support. Hopefully those clips don't have to be installed from the inside, they look like a real PITA. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

I bought those lines from NAPA last year.

Somehow you are missing your clips. They are a bit different from the picture above, the clip is flush on the radiator side. Not sure how that would have come out I believe they are pressed into the front clip. Here is a shot from the front and back side of my truck. The long bolt sticking through in the second pic is the radiator mount bolt.

Good deal Tom! Hey, you sticking around long enough to catch the fair this year? I'm not sure on the exact start date but it's always the first week of August. The last few years have brought pretty decent turnouts for the truck and tractor pulls.

I wonder if your lock up switch could have tripped the trans code? Mine never has but it is a thought....Did all these codes show up at once?

Every once in a great while I will get the 0602 code as well but it has never given me any driveability issues. I clear it and it goes away. Out of the 7 years of running a smarty I believe I have seen the code 3 times and one was when I changed my fuel filters and was priming the system.

Sometimes they can be a real bear to get off! I got really lucky and it only took a couple of good smacks on the end of the wrench with a hammer and she came right off. There have been other times where I have not been nearly so lucky though. You got pictures of this holder Mike? I have a few ideas on making one but would like to see what you have.