When I left off in May of 2022(is that possible?), the truck was running good and I had a few things to button up. For one, the front passenger axle seal was still leaking. I had replaced it twice and I tried one more time before I had to admit defeat and take it to a shop. I took it to the dealership because I also had 2 blank key fobs I wanted to get programmed. I no longer have a leak, nor do I have to manually unlock my doors like a peasant.
The oil pan was leaking again, so I went through and one at a time took every bolt out, cleaned it and retorqued it with Blue Loctite. It has been leak free for the past 22 months.
Where I had thought that the rear differential was leaking, it was just oil blowing from the oil pan. I changed the fluid anyway and put a new gasket in. The gears all looked pristine. I was planning on changing the fluid and gasket with my last big project, but had forgot with everything else I did. Also, the transmission was getting a little difficult to put into 1st or reverse while stopped, so I changed the gear oil and put in new gaskets, so she shifts much easier.
It seemed a little laggy when I was trying to accelerate, so I did a boost leak test. To do this, I clamped a special boot on the inlet of the turbo and hooked up my air compressor which I set to 10psi. As soon as I did this, I heard air hissing out of the large snap ring that holds the main cover on.
On reassembly, apparently I didn’t fully seat it into its groove. Tapped a few times and it made a loud click and then the leak stopped. Took her for a drive and it felt better.
Drove her all over for the next few months and then it became obvious that the 100hp injectors with the Edge programmer were too much for the stock turbo. It was making a clicking noise and when I pulled the air cleaner it had excessive movement in the shaft and I could see where the compressor wheel was scraping on the side.
Well, guess I need a new turbo. With a manual transmission, I was worried about getting one that would take too long to spool. looking at options, I narrowed it down to Diesel Auto Power (DAP), Savage Fabrication, and Power Driven Diesel (PDD). They all offered similar drop in turbos that they all said would work really well for my application. All 3 were right around $1,300, but then PDD was having a sale and theirs was $1,000 so that’s the one I went with.
The stock HX 35 is 57/78mm compressor and 60mm turbine exducer, compared to PDD’s 60/80mm compressor and 64mm turbine exducer. It is designed to fit where a stock one does, so I didn’t have to change my exhaust manifold. Since I had pulled the stock turbo before to rebuild it, doing it again was easy. I did have to swap the rear piece that bolts to my exhaust and loosen all of the bolts that hold the turbo together so that I could align the oil fill, oil drain, and the air discharge pipe. Oiled it and spun the compressor wheel to ensure a good coat on the journal bearings.
I drove it some but took it easy for a few months to give the turbo a chance to break in. Then I took it on vacation up to my mom’s house by Pittsburgh. We put about 1200 miles on it and while I was happy with the performance, I wasn’t blown away like I expected to be. Still a lot of fun to drive though.
While we were there, I started to get a coolant leak from the A/C drain. Did some research and apparently this is a heater core leak. It was October 2022 and it wasn’t too cold, so I ran the 2 heater lines together and had no more leak. This didn’t cause any issues until the day we headed home and it was 30 degrees and cloudy. The truck was COLD. My wife was miserable and I was sitting on one hand until it warmed up and then swapping with the one on the steering wheel. Good times. When we stopped for lunch, it took awhile to warm up. Once we dropped out of the Allegheny Mountains, it was much more bearable.
Disassembly
In order to replace the heater core, you have to remove the entire dash. I bought a replacement dash from LMC along with an instrument bezel, because mine had a cover, so I figured underneath that, it was cracked. I then had my first genius idea that “As long as I’m in there” I might as well replace the 22 year old carpet, it was really ragged and stained.
It was easy enough to remove the seats and seat belt bolts.
Now it was time to remove the dash and I was not surprised when I peeled the plastic cover off of my dash that underneath it was shattered.
This was a job I had never done before, but following these instructions and this YouTube video it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. (Sidenote: The truck in the video is gorgeous, I love that color.) I became concerned about the lower dash when I put my electric screwdriver on the HVAC control screws and the plastic behind it exploded. I had heard of some people that pulled the dash and found the lower part to be unusable. I hoped that wasn’t going to be me.
Changing the heater core was simple enough, I bought one with swivel lines from Geno’s Garage, all I had to do was put some foam tape around the outside and struggle with the lines to get the angle right until it somehow slid in. I have since heard of people having leaks from where the swivel joints are and wish I had known about a solid brass one that’s available. Even though it costs way more, if the one I put in leaks, I will buy the brass one, this is not a job to do anymore than absolutely necessary.
Now it was time to remove the upper dash from the plastic lower dash.
This was easy, because half of the upper dash was already gone. Problem was the lower dash kept breaking, no matter how careful I was with disassembly. Once I got the two halves separated, I bought a plastic welder so I could repair the lower dash. I tried to save it, but every time I fixed one section, another place would crack. I did not lose my cool, all I could do was laugh as the new cracks kept appearing. Out of all of the projects I have done on this truck, this is the first one that made me actively hate Dodge.
I finally had to give up and buy a used one off of Ebay for $1,000. It irritates me to type that. Once it showed up, it was solid and I was able to screw it to the metal frame with no problem.
It was at this point I had my second genius idea: “As long as I’m in there” I never did like the gray, why don’t I paint it black? So I removed all of the interior plastic.
As soon as I had all of the plastic pieces pulled out, I felt like G.O.B. from Arrested Development, “I’ve made a huge mistake“. The gray wasn’t that bad, was it? Oh well, nothing to do now but keep going. I bought some black plastic paint and adhesion promoter from LMC that had been recommended by people on the Cummins Forum. First, I washed all the plastic pieces with dish soap and once they dried, I wiped them down with rubbing alcohol.
Immediately before painting each piece, I wiped them down with rubbing alcohol again and gave them a good layer of the adhesion promoter. Once that dried a little I gave them 3 or 4 coats of the black paint. This stuff laid down amazingly well. It looked as though they were black and not gray painted black which I had feared.
Now it was time to paint the dash itself. I had received it three months prior and had only opened the box enough to verify the color and get an idea what the quality was like. When I pulled the whole thing out, my heart sank. The little point of the dash was snapped off.
I called LMC, fully expecting to have to buy another dash. I told them what happened and explained that the box was undamaged, so I might have broken it, but I doubted it. I also told them that it had been sitting in its original box for three months and I hadn’t pulled it out until today. They had me send them a picture and once they reviewed it, they sent me a free replacement. Honestly, if they had agreed to sell me one half off I would have been ecstatic.
While I was waiting for the new dash, I pulled out the old raggedy carpet. I had ordered a vinyl carpet from OC Auto Carpets a few months ago and still had it in the box.
It was a lot of work to get to this point and now I had the task of putting everything together waiting for me. That will be covered in the next installment.
For music, I will post one of my favorites to listen to while I’m in the garage, Shooter Jennings.
Wife complains that I always buy the same shoes and the same boots. Why fix it if it aint broke, right?
Just now she was standing over my shoulder talking and suddenly stopped mid-sentence.
“Are those your Glib friends?”
“Why yes, my love, they are.”
“Of course that guy is wearing the exact same boots you have been wearing for 40 years.”
“It shows we have excellent taste. I married you didn’t I?”
I got a shoulder slap for that one.
*Ok, she can only see the foot part but they do have an uncanny resemblance*
Those are Red Wings, I buy a new pair of the exact same boot every five years or so.
I have been doing this since 2000.
Fun read, Ron. Iโm an old fart and new car (anything after about 1975).intimidate me. Iโve restored an old car from the ground up but always thought the newer stuff would be impossible with all the plastic. You seem to be doing real well – Iโm inpressed.
Dealing with 23 year old plastic is stressful, but other than the dash, it’s all holding up.
Looking forward to seeing the final installation.
Umm … have you considered buying a newer vehicle? Possibly one not UAW built?
Seems like you’re doing a metric crapton of work to keep this Dodge on the road.
He’d do anything for love, and he WILL do that!
*Chef’s kiss*
Umm….NO.
I have about $30,000 in this truck total and would not be able to buy a newer one in this good of shape for that much.
Not a surprise that a 23 year old truck needs occasional work, but I drove it on 2 separate trips to PA this year with no issues.
I just inherited (he’s not dead yet) Tres Sr’s Geo/Suzuki/Chevy Tracker. Its 20 years old, immaculately maintained, and I think 120K miles total.
Im already shopping for a lift kit, wheels and tires.
My brother had one in high school, he insisted on calling it a truck.
In fairness, since its body-on-frame, its “kinda” truckish?
My 1st new car bought for ex Ms Cool (of course) was a 1992 tracker drop top. I had over 200K on it when I sold it. Hands-down the best 4WD Ive ever had. Despite all my attempts to get it stuck, I never coul.
And she only got 1 DUI in it. The 2nd was in the Jeep Cherokee I paid for. While I was paying for her to go to grad school.
Luckily Im neither bitter nor nostalgic.
When you grow up on a farm, that thing is not a truck.
He was a city boy at heart though.
That short-wheelbase 4WD will out 4WD almost anything you put it against.
It reminded me of this guy: M422 Mighty Mite
I’m looking forward to seeing the final result. I like the older trucks and in the long run they are often much cheaper per year to run than newer stuff. I also do a lot of my own repairs, but also (usually) know when to take it into the shop.
I have a landscaping business and prefer the older Chevy 3/4 and 1 tons for daily work. All 6 of them are old body styles between 1994 and 2003. They have a much sturdier frame, thicker exterior metal, sit lower to the ground, and the transmissions are unbreakable. They are also much easier to work on myself and many parts are interchangeable. I recently got rid of a ’74 one ton with a grain box only because it would be too expensive to keep it DOT’ed. That had the smoothest running engine of any vehicle I ever owned.
Three or four years ago I bought a loaded ’08 Sierra 1/2 ton with a 5.3 and 290,000 miles on it for personal use and light work (little trailering). I paid 5 grand and have put about 12 grand into it. Put in a “new” engine with 120,000 on it, replaced most of the front end, new shocks / extra leaf springs, tires, new rocker panels, and other stuff including some cosmetic things. I’ve done a little each year and all that’s left is a few rust issues to fix up and a seat tear to repair. The truck looks and runs great. I get lots of compliments on it and people think it’s much newer.
Although I love the looks of the second generation Dodge, old square bodies are the coolest looking.
I like those Dodges also. I’ve stuck with the Chevy’s because I know them and all the main problems. Been running the same type of trucks for over 25 years.
Serious question, what happened to my titles and alt-text for the pictures?
I thought I had both for every pic.
Using on phone, when I long press the pictures some sort of caption comes up.
I tried using that functionality myself a couple of times. Never could get it to work. Yours are not working on my PC with hover over, long touch, anything.
I see it on my phone when I press on a picture.
Damn. Are you sure you aren’t Latino? ๐
No stupid….then he would have a VAN.
!estupido!
Ese no va!
I had a Nova in high school. Kind of a piece of crap, but, bench seats.
Que?
ไฝ๏ผ
Hats off to you! I always hated working on my daily, it stressed me out too much.
Although I have been thinking of buying an early New Beetle to play around with. Had an ’09, fun car. Except if the headlight went out. Not to hard to fix, but there was a wire clip that was good for one reuse, and then you gotta replace it. Seriously irritating.
I hate working on the daily as well.
The truck is my weekend and vacation ride, not a daily, so I can take my time with the projects
Seems like knowing the right places to find parts is vital in this endeavor. Glad you’re about to keep it going, your saving the planet not than the people buying new EVs.
Ebay for hard to find used parts.
Geno’s does Ram Cummins, and LMC specializes in old trucks.
Ron, you have way more patience, knowledge, tools and desire than I would ever have. No way would I even think of changing the light bulb in the glove compartment, that’s a shop job.
On the other hand my 2003 F150 looks almost new, a little wear on the seats, maybe, but everything works the same as the day I drove it out of the showroom. A brake job a couple months ago is about all the maintenance required so far. 110K, I have all work done in the Ford shop, including oil changes. I’ve saved a lot of money by paying some else to do my work.
Thanks for the article and reminding me that I do better with a garden tiller than a socket wrench.
Love that LMC stepped up.
Interior stuff isnโt hard, but itโs so fiddly. And the more modern it gets the more the clips are hidden and one time use.
I put an auto stop start eliminator on my wifeโs Acura and spent 20 minutes fighting with two pieces of trim. It had under 1,000 miles so I really didnโt feel like breaking anything Iโd be looking at for a long time.
Stellantis claims another victim. Get one of those Calvin pissing on a Dodge logo and put it in the window of your dodge.
Holy crap. Much respect.
The FJ is kinda noisy. I looked into what it would take to quiet the cabin, and it involves installing noise suppressing . . . insulation? after completely disassembling the interior (like you did!). You also need to take out the headliner.
I noped out on the โcompletely disassemble the interiorโ part.
Headliner will be at a later date.
My dash is so dry and cracked, it fell in. *sigh*
Can I be the 1st to point out euphemisms ?
I’m right behind you.
I don’t know how much it would cost to get someone to replace it, but they make covers for them that glue on.
That’s what mine had when I bought it.
I could give you my cover if you want it, just need to glue it on
I’ve thought about it. They’re not expensive, so I’ll just get one from Amazon if I decide to do that. Thanks, though!
Working on the daily for me was nothing but stress cause much younger Tres didn’t have an option.
When I do a project with Tres 2.0, he says “Dad, how did you learn to work on cars?” Other than knowing how some things work, Ive never learned to work on cars. But my answer is still:
“When its noon on Sunday and you need to get that POS in the driveway running long enough to get you to work tomorrow, you learn. ”
In the days before YouTube it was Chilton’s. The Highlights for Children version was “Clymer”. And if I was ambitious to do it on Saturday when the library was open, they had a whole set of “Mitchell’s Mechanics” manuals to review (but not check out).
Chilton was OK with cars that used SAE or Whitworth.
If they were metric it was 50/50 the manual was crap.
I had a Chilton’s for a Datsun 210 I had, and it was true to form with everything in metric. As I recall.
I still buy a Chilton or Haynes for all my vehicles.
For this truck I have the factory service manual on my tablet and home computer.
Shockingly, since Tesla wants independents to help with service, the full service manual is online and free.
Chilton/Haynes seems to have stopped publishing recent models. Not really surprising.
My first car was a VW Bug and John Muir’s “How to Keep Your VW Alive: The Compleat Idiots Guide” was my bible for the Bug and my later VW Van.
https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Volkswagen-Alive-Step-Step/dp/1566913101
That was me just being tongue in cheek. They were good for domestic and old British, but weaker on Euro and Japanese brands.
The one on the 240/260/280 was way weaker in content than a Chevy Nova, for example.
Can you use this doll to show us where the Chilton manual touched you?
*Holds up stuffed Bart Simpson
I had a Chiltons for my Datsun Roadster, which was 50/50 metric SAE
The Tragic Tale of Hunter Biden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9KO1u6z4WM
I’d have replaced “tragic” with “predictable”.
*Looks at amount of auto-work involved. Maintains eye contact…slowly backs through the bushes…peeks back in*
I DO know how, and HAVE, changed my own tire on the side of the road without any help. Nothing major has ever come up, really. I’ve always had cheap cars that we purchased knowing they’d be driven til the end. Grandpa was an insurance guy for Ford for 40-some years. He’d work on and ‘fix’ just about anything. These skills were not passed on to me. More likely, I was remarkably unreceptive to it and anything involving patience.
Full of envy, am I. It makes me think again: A ‘physical’ hobby, hopefully with a physical, tangible endpoint, would greatly benefit me. I can cook when I wanna, but Sunday Soup Day is perhaps the closest I’ve come to a similar, project-based activity. Popping hopper of thoughts.
Oh yeah, I got a substitute teacher job offer today. There’s only two months left in the school year here, but maybe I’ll get some teaching time. When I was in school, the joke was that the job of the substitute teacher is to push the “play” button on the VCR.
I am happy for you. Keep it going, there is always summer school.
Can confirm the latter. Also, do not believe what most students tell you the regular teacher lets them do, nor any of the students who tell you they’re sick and need to go home unless they actually puke in your presence. #GTEscapedTeaching
You guys got VCRs? I mean, my district wouldn’t stoop so low as to spend money on students. We got handouts from the mimeograph. I still remember the fumes…
Once you smell mimeograph, you never forget… And that bizarre purple ink…
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083929/mediaviewer/rm652985345
Easier to get a job when you have a job. Good news.
Thanks for linking the great substack article this weekend. It really made me think about some new ideas.
I had already started making some big changes before the last Presidential election. I dumped Facebook and all TV, radio, and print media. I made a conscious decision to not allow legacy media to enter and infect my mental space any longer. I check some of the headlines and links here, but otherwise get all my news from podcasts and alternative print like substack. This had a bigger impact on my overall happiness and attitude than I ever expected
I also passed it on to one of my best friends who left Reason about the same time as us, but never made it over here. It really hit him hard. He was a bit of a Facebook junkie. He’s eliminated everything from his feed aside from real friends and his business page. Now that he has more free time, hopefully he makes his way over here.
Like you, I’m going to start supporting some of the people over at substack, since that’s where I get a lot of my best information. I already throw some cash at some of my favorite podcasters. Thanks again. That’s one of the best think pieces I’ve read in years. I still have a lot of things to unpack from that article.
Good for you PP.
Looks like poor folks don’t want to be railroaded into handing over wads of cash to rich folks, under specious and opaque fine print conditions. Bye bye, Royals. Chiefs will probably be heading to Johnson County across the state line in Kansas.
What did I miss? Did public financing for a stadium go sideways?
Rejected by voters.
Some dickwad on twatter is whining that those no votes were from people who didn’t go to games so should count. Yeah, but you’d happily tax them just the same, asshole. And anyone passing through who makes a purchase.
๐ ๐
I believe today they voted down a surtax to fund it.
Respect!
https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/election/article287287535.html
Good dog.
https://www.instagram.com/dog/p/C3tCqG1xiLm/
Cute. But when that happens here I usually say “shaddup and lay down”. Save your energy for real people.
๐ฅณ
Not quite in the vein of fixing a long-wearing truck, but I did something right today.
I attached a surface mount MSP430FR2355 to a circuit board I designed to translate its pins to two rows of pin headers. This chip is tiny as in I could balance it on the nail of my little finger with room to spare tiny, but has 38 pins I did verify all the electrical connections from pin headers to pins, and there are no solder bridges.
Congratulations, you’ve done a job that scares some professional mechanics. Nothing funner than pulling apart something you know isn’t going back together the same way it came apart. Dodge seemingly invented that disintegrating plastic, but by mid 2000s, GM embraced it as well. Either way, congrats on keeping the beast rolling. There’s a sense of satisfaction accumulating miles on an old vehicle when everyone else grumbles about car payments.
Ron, I can’t imagine doing what you have done. I don’t have the “handy” (not a euphemism) gene. Very impressive.
Very nice Ron. Since your last installment, I’m no longer in the old truck/high mileage club. Mine wasn’t as nearly cared for/rebuilt as yours but it ran pretty well (did use a little oil) and the exterior/interior still looked good. And then the lady pulled out in front of us from a cross street. Still get a twinge when I see the old style but I got my money’s worth out of it right up to the very end.
Props to you, Ron. I will do some very basic mechanical/fixit things, but leave most of it to professionals. Our main vehicle will have 200,000 miles on it in a year or so, but when starts to have serious problems (knock on wood), it will time to replace it.
Nice work, Ron. Did you go with the same gray for the carpet? I had a ’94 Mustang that had a mostly gray interior – the dash was two-tone black and grey, the headliner was black, and the seats and carpet were gray. I swapped out the grey carpet for black, had the seats reupholstered to black with grey inserts, and was much happier with the look.
Went with a dark gray, my wife thought blak would highlight the dog hair.
My wooly Husky loves to ride in the truck, and he likes to leave evidence he was there.
Damn Ron, that’s a lot of miles!
Morning Glibbies.
โ๐
More rain today. Lame.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f8hT3oDDf6c
๐ถ๐ถ
Morning.
So much stuff to do in the morning. Next up – commuting. See you when I reach the office.
Yeesh, what a depressing song to start the day. Rainy weatherโs not that bad.
Good morning, Sean, U, and Stinky!
Morning.
I just realized this morning that the soldering I did last night is one of the few times where I’ve envisioned something in my head and after I build it, the finished piece is exactly what I’d originally thought up.
Most of the time I have to make changes as a concession to reality or my own skill/lack thereof.
I love it when a plan comes together! ๐
(Well done! ๐๐)
*cues up A-Team Theme*
*lights up cigar, takes one puff, coughs uncontrollably, quickly snuffs out cigar*
Congrats, U! When it comes to soldering, what I envision is a trip to the ER.
It was more than just the soldering. I had an idea, deisgned the circuit board, assembled the parts and did soldering of a sort I’ve never tried before – and the end result matched the original idea.
And for the most part unless you’ve got a palsy or some other motor control issues, soldering isn’t that dangerous.
I wound up being good friends with the director of the ER at our local hospital. I watched a Super Bowl there one year after nearly chopping off my finger with a potato slicer. In 2016, I watched the election while waiting for confirmation that I indeed had a kidney stone. Morphine made the butthurt all the more enjoyable. So, given my history I’ll leave things like soldering to the professionals.
These days the ‘professionals’ are mostly robots. Professional hand soldering is largely a thing of the past.
Mornin, reprobates!
Music for yet another rainy day
Good morning, ‘patzie!
Good morning to all. Been up for an hour but takes a full cup a Joe to get the head/body coordinated. Looks like the weather is finally winter free and the last of the snow will disappear over the next couple days.
About 20 cute little pepper plants smiling back at me, a little too early to start tomato/cabbage, another couple weeks on those. It’ll be close to June first before they can go outside to play. Too early they just languish and wait for warm up anyway. Bees arrive next month but everything is cleaned up and waiting. We’ll set up the hive boxes in about 3 weeks or so.
Even with this nice winter I still want to get outside and track in some mud. Tired of funerals, I was a pallbearer yesterday.
Are they hot?
These are not, the missus has her special ones upstairs where she can see them. She told me not to grow any for her, lots leftover from years gone by, frozen or dried.
Good morning, 4(20)! Happy Spring!
Mornin’.
Tired of funerals, I was a pallbearer yesterday.
They get all too frequent as time goes on. I just purchased a new suit for weddings and funerals. Or, should I say, wedding and funerals, my goddaughter is getting married in October, and that is all.
I had to rush out and buy a black suit last week. Fortunately I didn’t need it. But I will, and before I have time to grow out of it.
One hen turkey hanging out, she has a suitor but seems like she’s waiting for a better looking guy. The boy friend is doing his best, struts around, showing off, like a teenager with a new driver’s license.
Server squirrels ate my comment. Look up the YouTube video “Forget the Gaffes, What About Biden’s Lies?”. It’s grotesquely amusing.
Morning! Supposedly snow starts this afternoon.
๐
Real life โLadyBallersโ
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13266245/KIPP-Academy-Lynn-Massachusetts-transgender-athlete-rowing-harassment-suspended.html
Don’t know if you’ll see this Ron: very nice write up. I have an 06 1500 with around 250,000 miles on that I keep maintaining. About every 2-3 years I try to fix everything that’s broken on it. Last summer was one of those times since I had a broken spring on one strut and the CV axle boots were torn (06 is when Dodge went to strut/CV shaft for the front suspension and 4WD). Of course the CV axles were stuck and were a major pain but what really tripped me up was braking off a bolt in the passenger side seal cover for the CV shaft. A 10.9 stainless steel bolt. I had one chance to drill it out without work-hardening the bolt and I wiffed it. Took 2 weeks of grinding with a 1/8″ carbide but I finally got it out. Fun times.