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Have you got any call back on ford charging you to do things they haven't done or has too much time passed?
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May 22, 2023 19:04
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tinned owl posted:Have you got any call back on ford charging you to do things they haven't done or has too much time passed? I wanted to do a chargeback. My spouse stopped me. I should have called and screamed at corporate. Probably would fall on deaf ears. I left them a pretty terse review on google*. They skipped checking the tcase and rearends. Didn't grease the front end, which I found a trackbar balljoint should have been replaced too. A few months later I find out that the modules weren't updated even though there's TSBs to do that asap to prevent turbo destruction. One of the tsbs include some programming loving error these geniuses made that can cause the turbo to spin backwards and blow the ceramic bearings. The review: quote:
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May 22, 2023 19:17
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Honestly surprised you gave em 2 stars.
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May 22, 2023 19:19
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cursedshitbox posted:The next morning: hell of a pic csb. I'd throw those other pics up along with the 1 star review. gently caress dealerships.
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May 22, 2023 20:11
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El Jebus posted:Honestly surprised you gave em 2 stars. 2 stars hurt worse than 1; almost all of the metrics filter out all 1- and 5-star reviews.
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May 22, 2023 20:43
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babyeatingpsychopath posted:2 stars hurt worse than 1; almost all of the metrics filter out all 1- and 5-star reviews. That was the purpose. a 3 star is so so. 2 star is seethingly pissed off. The photos above are a part of the review and these that weren't originally posted. Don't charge a customer a grip of bucks for a flush and 10 gallons of coolant then leave the god drat reservoir empty.   Front diff:   Rear diff:   FoMoCo could learn a few things from Land Rover. This is my last domestic that doesn't require an airbrake endorsement.
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May 22, 2023 21:05
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cursedshitbox posted:That was the purpose. a 3 star is so so. 2 star is seethingly pissed off. Rising from the bus and to the bus they shall return? We're dealing with a van here, from a dealership, that was supposed to carry the youngest child through a summer of traveling. 250 miles later, dead transmission and a hosed head. Insurance is debating if they'll get a new engine and transmission, or scrap the whole thing. loving dealership saw them coming. It would have been cheaper have the kid drive the Roadtrek at this point, even with four new tires.
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May 22, 2023 23:59
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cursedshitbox posted:Side note: the wider flatbed makes a great workbench. This was something I wanted to implement with the farm truck. Flatbeds are THE best. So with that garbage pipe, while I get the "keep it stock and serviable anywhere" mantra, if you weren't in the middle of nowhere is there like some aftermarket bro-truck replacement option that isn't slapped together garbage like that OEM part? Not to chase more power or anything, just to not be junk? Snow pic is fantastic.
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May 23, 2023 04:54
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madeintaipei posted:Rising from the bus and to the bus they shall return? I'm not hard to persuade here.  (Nelson Ghost Town) Dead head and a transmission? You didn't buy a mopar product did you? BuckyDoneGun posted:Flatbeds are THE best. I wanted to do this metal try that would clip on to the bed side. This is sooo much better. There's a literal pile of CAC tube options for this in the general range of what the Ford part costs. They're all some sort of metal. I would have gone this direction if it were possible to get it to the top of this mountain. This truck has about as much aftermarket as a 90s civic....but with costs unlike that of Honda aftermarket. Theres entire intake replacement kits that make it a 10 minute job to get access to the turbo instead of 4 hours. However that poo poo requires deleting. And well turbos aren't service items like fuel filters. Right Ford? Someone has a cp3 pump conversion that drops in where the 2nd alternator goes for pushing north of 750hp. it's pretty wild what's out there and what people do with this longblock. But much like my interest in two wheels, diesels I prefer mechanical as possible. I was reading this post yesterday about someone with this engine needing valve cover gaskets and the upper oil pan gasket. 14hrs to do the vc gaskets and 12 for the upper pan. Gotta pull the cab for the oil pan or pull the transmission. $8k service @ $170/hr, half of that is one-time-use-parts.
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May 23, 2023 17:45
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I would call that dealership and see what they say about all that work they didn't do. If they don't answer nicely in a way you like I'd chargeback that poo poo. gently caress them.
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May 23, 2023 18:16
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cursedshitbox posted:I'm not hard to persuade here. You've detailed the thinking behind which engines and transmissions would work for the size truck you have now. What would change for a bus or larger cab/chassis? Does having had the Jeep for a bit now open up options you wouldn't have though of? Lol. 2011 VW Routan. TBF, I did advocate for a similar vehicle. I also said I could give decent advice about what to look for: year, equipment, condition, etc. No one asked. gently caress me.
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May 23, 2023 19:49
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The jeep is a scout vehicle, little more. Its role is to gather parts, supplies, and provide navigation. It's prevented some navigational errors like what happened near Bend. Going bigger it would still do the same roles. I would probably throw it in a trailer at that point though. Powertrains, etc Going into airbrake land? I prefer a stick, he's uh not good with crash boxes so it'd have to be some kind of semi-electronic engine with an ultrashift/Allison 5-6 speed. Think DT530E/ISC/ISM/ Detroit 50 series. The RTO915 in the gillig had a wacky pattern. I was fine with it but I probably wouldn't select that box building a vehicle. I'm not super interested in running 2 stroke detroits in 2023. Though if I had to pick one, it would be a 671 for simplicity sake. The 4104 had one. Easy to service. Then there's the H50EP hybrid box that'll allow a ISB(think 24V cummins) or the like to work in conjunction with it to do regenerative braking, stationary generator, parallel hybrid things. This is all extremely heavy and best suited to a truck with a tandem drive rear. But then it simplifies the power side of the upfit with almost 400V-DC on tap and a huge on board generator. Taking the bus The rub of going back to a bus is getting off the beaten path. It takes a literal crane to drag one out once it lays frame. Most of this thread is from places a bus can't reach. I'm posting from a spot now where high clearance and rwd + locker would make it when it's dry. Let alone now when it's pouring rain. Ones that I could 4wd are practically front engine schoolies only and 1980s front engine wanderlodges. The cab over style schoolies are hell to work on. Dog noses come with their own problems, mostly less floorplan space. FEs are kinda terrible to drive and hell on NVH compared to their rear engine siblings. The operator sits right next to the head of the engine with just a thin sheet of aluminum/fiberglass separating the two. They're usually total bastards to work on, and you guessed it, I'm working on it myself. The 550 isn't even exempt from that and it's one of the worst diesels I've ever had to work on. I've learned from this new truck that I really want an open engine bay to work in. Be it a good tilt cab which is hard to pull off with an overhead bunk, or a conventional tilt hood. I tend to like the overhead bunk like class Cs/truck campers do. I've seen one bus implementation but not the details of a bedroom whose bed could raise and it pulled tables up from below to convert into an office. It packaged partially into the cargo bay space below however. The overland adventure route I would like to lean into the whole plus sized overlanding weenie rigs. So far the small/medium stuff has not been able to cope with my bullshit. The buses did, but I also didn't wheel them. Some links I found this morning after buildscharacter prodding me(again) about manufacturing these kind of vehicles. I would run these for myself, but not sell as a business. Not without a lot of understanding from the customer as well it's a 40 year old chassis and Things Go Wrong All The Time. The class 5 domestics are becoming the goto for current heavy slide ins and overlanding builds. ER has been using them for a decade and a half. There's at least a half dozen cottage industries running these platforms now. Just announced is a 150 based variant that starts at $325 with 150lb of payload left on the table. The modern class 5s drive good, the parts are all new, there's a warranty, etc. That's a lot easier to justify as a manufacturer. Especially when there's a six figure price tag. These plus size rigs start at around 500 now and go deep into the millions. It's not unheard of to see $8000 per square foot here. https://reno.craigslist.org/for/d/dayton-1989-chevy-4x4-brush-truck/7623173247.html https://westslope.craigslist.org/cto/d/durango-1983-gmc-4wd-fire-truck-brush/7622125047.html Pull the fuel pincher, the transmissions, the upfit. Flatbed. Modernize the powertrain. Plop a sips built camper on the back. Not opposed to 5 tons/lmtvs but I'm throwing 90% of it away which makes it kinda pointless. No thanks to the engine. The electrics are dodgy. Drivelines tend to vibrate apart. Axle leaks, etc. I love a cabover for visibility though. The 550's giant front end makes it hard to park sometime. https://denver.craigslist.org/cto/d/canon-city-1999-m1088a1-for-sale-titled/7623619289.html https://denver.craigslist.org/cto/d/boulder-truck-lmtv-m10781/7624059377.html https://denver.craigslist.org/cto/d/boulder-truck-lmtv-m10781/7624059377.html Another option could be to sell both trucks after the shop is done and they're fixed to roll that into the next build. Converting an old International cab over to 4wd/awd isn't that much costlier than converting an old F350 to 4wd. With the screeching I see of emissions years diesels and its related hassles while sitting on a rust free mostly restored presmog turbodiesel... it's entirely possible to trade that set of problems for a new set of problems. The 350s in a weird area where it's useful but also slightly too small to do everything I envision. Rebuilding it into a class 5 truck would end up with some really wacky looking modifications that would be akin to florida mudtruck poo poo. The 550 can and would, but it's a princess that makes bmws look rational. Nearly everything is built up of plastic quick connects or one-time-use hardware. tldr: big rear end awd overland weenie mobiles is where it's at. Buses were good, but childhood exposure to camel trophy and dakar have ruined me. Oof on the VW....A 90s Roadtek Dodge absolutely would have been better. They actually have *really* good wetbaths for what they are.
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May 23, 2023 21:07
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cursedshitbox posted:The jeep is a scout vehicle, little more. Its role is to gather parts, supplies, and provide navigation. It's prevented some navigational errors like what happened near Bend. Going bigger it would still do the same roles. I would probably throw it in a trailer at that point though. A couple of thoughts. 1. You want to target a group of folks where you can market something that they will see it and go "holy gently caress yes that is amazing I need something like that that will survive the zombie apocalypse/liberals owning guns/people in cities having genders/whatever weird thing it is that tweaks people and makes them think it makes sense to spend a million dollars to go camping when they could just get a plane ticket and a shitload of air bnbs." Part of the appeal is that you have done it and are good at it and embody a lot of the very traditional masculine traits that (look I'm so sorry and I don't know how else to say this but I don't mean it in a bad way) boomers say they value so much. So to the extent you also have technical writeups on how whatever platform you choose works and field-troubleshooting the primary potential problems I think that would be an extraordinary marketing tool. What you're selling isn't just the built rig that is well thought out and works well, what you're selling is the dream that someone can be you. Like the ads for the 1200GS, everyone wants to imagine they're a handsome man with delicate grease markings that show how hard you've worked and some eye candy making a sandwich while you effortlessly swap an engine on the side of the road. But nobody actually wants to do that because it's horrible. And they're ugly. Poor folks. Let them dream. But I digress. For the folks who do want that many of them may well know what they don't know so having a "hey, here's common electrical problems and how to fix them" and "it's your glow plugs, just cycle them twice before starting when it's cold" would be quite helpful in terms of making them feel like they really can take on the world. 2. As part of that appeal, you want to be able to say that the vehicle can go around the world so you need to avoid anything like adblue or similar. Or you need to lean hard into what everyone else is doing which is just saying "new truck only and build on that" because then they know if it's a ford problem then the customer can go to ford to fix it (  ). Then they can figure out the DEF situation. Maybe consider gas. I know you don't want to but... just think about it. You're not footing the fuel bill and gas is available everywhere. 3. Consider some kind of consistent cab-off engine swap where you can get a good frame and then some engine+trans in and have modular boxes you drop on top. That's really a question for you though. Buuuut, it seems like the real thing that makes this possible as a business is having the experience with the living, running all the wiring and knowing what works and then breaking something so you know what's actually required. None of it will ever get the work that you're building for by anyone else and that's why nobody else builds to that but I think we both know that if you build something ridiculous to purpose that folks who aren't going to use it for that purpose will absolutely eat that poo poo up. At absurd prices. You need a story at first and as I'm typing this.... 4. Consider modular production for boxes initially. And I know you've thought about it so you have ideas about how to arrange a box of whatever size on various chassis. That's super helpful for someone who wants to just buy an F550 5. In the meantime, I would like to see a bus that has a couple of hydraulic jacks bolted onto the frame so if you get stuck you can just jack it up on the trail and obviously the jacks will have little wheels on them so you can roll it over the rocks. I also still want to see the bus with a sunroof that you can open up and the bed raises up (on a gimble so you're not sleeping at an angle). In future iterations, you can add another motor to the frame of the bed to rotate it. No, I am not taking questions. Thank you in advance. 6. Hilarious t shirts. Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising.
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May 23, 2023 21:49
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cursedshitbox posted:turbos aren't service items like fuel filters. Right Ford?. Yeah it's more like oil filters
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May 24, 2023 00:01
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builds character posted:A couple of thoughts. Sometimes, the actual real devotion to the effort and hard work to things of this nature exceed the media's concept of "masculine." It's what happens when you deep-dive into whatever goes wrong, and do what it takes to make it right: education; a willingness to fail, then to learn; physical endurance. These are human traits. This thread is full of them, because remarkably persistent intelligent and clever folks are solving some really big logistical problems. The process can be exciting but is almost always dull as old toast to anyone not involved. But media can write some great copy and call it "Manly!" (roll with the marketing) PainterofCrap fucked around with this message at 01:16 on May 24, 2023 |
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May 24, 2023 01:14
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builds character posted:A couple of thoughts. quote:1. You want to target a group of folks where you can market something that they will see it and go "holy gently caress yes that is amazing I need something like that that will survive the zombie apocalypse/liberals owning guns/people in cities having genders/whatever weird thing it is that tweaks people and makes them think it makes sense to spend a million dollars to go camping when they could just get a plane ticket and a shitload of air bnbs." Part of the appeal is that you have done it and are good at it and embody a lot of the very traditional masculine traits that (look I'm so sorry and I don't know how else to say this but I don't mean it in a bad way) boomers say they value so much. So to the extent you also have technical writeups on how whatever platform you choose works and field-troubleshooting the primary potential problems I think that would be an extraordinary marketing tool. What you're selling isn't just the built rig that is well thought out and works well, what you're selling is the dream that someone can be you. Like the ads for the 1200GS, everyone wants to imagine they're a handsome man with delicate grease markings that show how hard you've worked and some eye candy making a sandwich while you effortlessly swap an engine on the side of the road. But nobody actually wants to do that because it's horrible. And they're ugly. Poor folks. Let them dream. But I digress. For the folks who do want that many of them may well know what they don't know so having a "hey, here's common electrical problems and how to fix them" and "it's your glow plugs, just cycle them twice before starting when it's cold" would be quite helpful in terms of making them feel like they really can take on the world. I think part of what you're getting to here is why The Rover Shop did as well as it did. I was into them and had a vested interest in making the rover work so that they can be enjoyed. I always had a 'service truck' that Looked The Part and it could show up nearly anywhere to bail someone out that got in over their head. Sometimes so remote it would take a sat phone to reach me. Donk in a similar way I could see dragging people into the whole 'they aint build em like they used to and man I wish I could do that' but also donk was kind of bad at it and it stayed broken under my watch. It looked the part though and that's what sells the dream. The original Earthroamer was a short bed excab second gen 2500 ram on 22.5 semi truck tires. You're spot on with documentation and manuals for how to keep the thing running. So much so the board I've been tasked with developing is going to have redundant backups should software controls go down. ie: a physical switch somewhere. RV controls are trending towards tablets much like the automotive realm is. When they go down, there's no back up to see holding tank levels or run pumps. Land Rover of old provided electrical diagrams on their own sheet as a part of the owner's manual binder. Iirc it stopped in '94.5 with the soft dash rangie. It's a great point to hit off of imo. It's actually something I really enjoy generating. I could go as far as offering a service to generate these diagrams like I've done above for other people's builds. Something with the rover shop that was a big perk for me was to teach people about their rig. People like having a guide. They see a mess of hoses, but with a little guidance can abstract the noise away and get to what is important. Notes on masculinity: Yeah I can play that part. Not who I am but I can do it. Well, the big burly goony body I've been poured into sells it so I don't have to. PainterofCrap said it best. I have opinions on traditional gender roles in that they can be flushed with the black tank. I understand where you're going and you're right. quote:2. As part of that appeal, you want to be able to say that the vehicle can go around the world so you need to avoid anything like adblue or similar. Or you need to lean hard into what everyone else is doing which is just saying "new truck only and build on that" because then they know if it's a ford problem then the customer can go to ford to fix it ( The powertrain they want is the powertrain they get. Sure there's limitations because I'm not gonna be on the hook for a 6.4 PSD powered dumpster let alone some overlanding truck. I am not opposed to putting a blown 8.1 in a lmtv if that's what someone wants. The godzilla would be harder to bolt against an allison 3000, sorry boyos, that one has to go into a 5 ton with its 6R140. The point of this subculture is to get to the sticks and stay in the sticks, not truck fuckle all the fuckling time. Sure truck fuckling comes with getting to the sticks but maybe knock out the easy stuff like plastic CAC pipes. This truck is marketed as such but in actuality it's more fragile than a 2003 discovery II that's been run low on oil. But in years past we fixed 2003 discovery IIs with pinning liners and a new front cover so the oil pump wouldn't shatter. for RTW ops with a 6.7? Stanadyne DCR. I can't legally do anything about LSD packing dpfs or the lack of adblue. Supposedly the dpf will survive a *little* while but not long term with LSD vs ULSD. This is a viable direction to turn as even the biggest players in this segment do not build things that are resilient to hard use. The class 5 trucks is the gold standard for large North American integrated campers and the hauler for 2+ slide truck campers. I even went this direction and I'm slowly crushing the thing into the ground. But that's a point of entry for a fix and a product. quote:3. Consider some kind of consistent cab-off engine swap where you can get a good frame and then some engine+trans in and have modular boxes you drop on top. That's really a question for you though. Buuuut, it seems like the real thing that makes this possible as a business is having the experience with the living, running all the wiring and knowing what works and then breaking something so you know what's actually required. None of it will ever get the work that you're building for by anyone else and that's why nobody else builds to that but I think we both know that if you build something ridiculous to purpose that folks who aren't going to use it for that purpose will absolutely eat that poo poo up. At absurd prices. You need a story at first and as I'm typing this.... I believe this would be better to offer as a service but with the caveat it's a completely custom project. aka this can overrun budgets and allotted hours. I think restrictions here like not putting old engines in new frames should be upheld to prevent potential months of fuckery with integrating the two different systems. The dream to sell here is reliable proven systems. Yes, the upfit can heat water off solar, Yes it can drive a welder to fix anything in the field, yes it can run a $20 Mister Coffee coffee maker out of the parking lot at Joshua Tree. Ice cream at the perfect consistency in death valley... Nobody will ever abuse the equipment like a product tester. If I can't break it myself, no customer stands a chance. Nobody will ever do that and building it to 80% of my needs would be overkill for them and they'd be all the wiser about it. The morning latte is more important than being able to run a welder. But having the comfort of running these sort of tools sell the dream. quote:4. Consider modular production for boxes initially. And I know you've thought about it so you have ideas about how to arrange a box of whatever size on various chassis. That's super helpful for someone who wants to just buy an F550 This is where to start. Actually one step prior. Modular upgrade parts for existing rigs. Like the boondocker.io board for starlink. Eventually roll our own sips build or any of the linked below then upfit with our floorplan, power, water, etc. I've learned a lot with using a floorplan. Some offerings out there have a counter that is 99% sink and induction cooktop. With nowhere for ingredient prep or a big enough table for dishing out the calories. This removes the restriction of whatever chassis I'd need to go through and yeah just bring a chassis here, I'll bolt an upfit to it and do the integration between the two. Sips https://www.bearvehicles.com/ https://totalcomposites.com/pick-up-campers/ https://atoverland.com/pages/aterra-xl-flatbed-camper (btw I really love the dodge in their main site here) https://www.mototechtrailers.com/new-truck-caps fiberglass I see these used often for telcos. They would be great with a powerboost 150 or Lightning. https://compositetruckbody.com/composite-body/model-385-8-truck-bed/ Finished examples: https://lepetitcampeur.ca/en/ https://earthcruiser.com/vehicles/terranova/ https://www.bahncamperworks.com/products/campers quote:5. In the meantime, I would like to see a bus that has a couple of hydraulic jacks bolted onto the frame so if you get stuck you can just jack it up on the trail and obviously the jacks will have little wheels on them so you can roll it over the rocks. I also still want to see the bus with a sunroof that you can open up and the bed raises up (on a gimble so you're not sleeping at an angle). In future iterations, you can add another motor to the frame of the bed to rotate it. No, I am not taking questions. Thank you in advance. RV leveling jacks with wheels on em  Schoolie with an og bay window bus upper half set up on slides like a caboose topper that moves for stargazing. quote:6. Hilarious t shirts. Merchandising, merchandising, merchandising. Tshirts. Stickers. magnets. 3d printed magnetic trinkets, broken vehicle parts turned into art. That sorta poo poo. Easy to make and I don't need to stock it. But what? Stickers are easy and fun, this rig has killed so many components at this point it deserves to have a gorester style rap sheet. kastein posted:Yeah it's more like oil filters I was going by the published service intervals not the real world intervals.
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May 24, 2023 19:30
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Love the idea of the M1088a1 with a crane to get the spare up and down and lift the bikes up to their spot between the cab and box
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May 24, 2023 20:06
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Will say your saga and a few others makes.me.wishbthatbthey still made just regular two door trucks, and not extended or crew cabs that could easily be like donk. I think you can still get fleet options but it's just dumb that almost everything that used to be simple two door and easy to convert to a 4x4 is now almost unusable in that way. My parents got a side by side recently and absolutely love it, and I'm going out with my dad this weekend to ride in it. Makes me wonder how much he would like doing something like donk as he gets closer to retirement, especially since he has the garage and tools to work on stuff like this. As is he's also had a truck, drove a sierra for a decade then a Dakota he ran into the ground, great trucks that just worked even as rust slowly claimed them. Every one he's owned gets a plow and that bed is filled with scrap or debris he's built up while working on stuff. Favorite memory of that old sierra was it with the plow on, bed filled with scrap metal, hauling a trailer with the rear end end of a civic in it. Just pure dad  thing never gave a poo poo, just don't let it get below 1/8 a tank because it got pissy and the fuel gauge was stopped working around then. And it ate like a gallon per 10 miles
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May 25, 2023 05:39
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I mean the reg cabs are out there. Just not common. Crew cabs are everywhere. Just absolutely everywhere. Especially in the 350 class of things since the platinum and narcissist ranch trims move more units. This one looks a little beat and the upfit doesn't come with it. https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/ctd/d/glendale-2017-ford-f550-regular-cab/7620468808.html Bulls and Bricks are still relatively cheap for beaters like square body and W body dodges. Anything remotely rust free or clean is creeping up there in cost. Especially diesel. LMC truck has most everything for this era of truck now. They make decent projects. Painless does not yet support the bricks. Soon I hope. It's a squibb thing to always have a wrong fuel gauge. Had a 454 3/4 ton square body burban that ran out of fuel in my driveway as I was setting it up to take it in for smog.... with a 1/4 tank of fuel indicated. Back in 2008 when I was making $10/hr as a bus mechanic and fuel was $5/gal. Growing up around those fuckers definitely left some nostalgia.
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May 25, 2023 18:32
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I actually saw a 350 regular cab, long bed, SRW a couple weekends ago and could hardly believe it. Pretty new and looked like XLT trim or so. Chrome grille, not fleet white, chrome wheels. It was just A Truck and I couldn't think of the last time I saw a Super Duty in between the extremes of fleet/work truck and "I like to look like I need ranch hands" trims.
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May 25, 2023 20:22
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Since it's raining again and i'm indoors procrastinating on my projects till I'm older and wiser. The first night of snow came with warnings of up to 75mph gusts. The external panels and starlink were just left out as they always have been. One blew away. Not far, but it whacked the side of the camper on the way out. Damaged the connectors but the panel itself survived just fine. After that we started staking them into the ground. A lot more improved. The new to us truck isn't all bad. It actually has numerous strengths over the old bricknose. One would hope with twenty years of refinement and some help from the Brits, the Swedes, and Japan influencing Ford's designs. The old farm truck with the stabilizer jacks stowed, I could rock the entire rig just moving my leg or rolling over in bed. Walking around? forget it. Had to move at a snails pace to cancel out my movements or it's looking like the bridge of the Enterprise D when some foe threw a high top shoe at them. The 550 doesn't do that. The winds shook the camper some but at no point did we feel like it was going to roll. The winds were stout enough to punch the stabilizer jacking blocks into the ground leaving the truck doing most of the stabilization. The truck still did not care. I keep an old surfsuit from my kayaking days rolled up in the bunk's overhead shelf on my side for those times I wanna go dunk in very cold streams and lakes. It has been my indicator for how rough the camper is being treated from the vehicle and its terrain. The F350 had a spine busting ride even with this three ton camper on it ever since the Portland shop changed the truck springs out. It rode pretty good with the air ride but it was not a steady planted feeling vehicle. It road like a 70s malaise era land yacht. It didn't inspire confidence in 30mph + crosswinds and slinging the setup into hairpins at speeds too fast. The 550 literally does not care how its driven. Crosswinds under 40mph I don't even detect in the controls. The 2000s era extended cab will sure vocalize it though. Headwinds? The 550 doesn't care. The 350 would lose ground speed based on headwind speed. The worst was with the old engine pulling rolling hills towards The Dalles at the Oregon/Washington border, flat out doing 50mph. The 350 pretty much tossed the surfsuit and literally everything else with practically every drive longer than twenty feet. The 550 doesn't do that. Both of the pull out pantries have been tossed completely off their rails with the 350. It's yet to happen with the 550 in the same terrain. The camper's rear overhang has kind of always been a problem because it's literally one of the longest to exist and it's a massive lever arm on a wood-rot superstructure. The generator, propane, and holding tanks hang under said overhang multiply the strength of that lever. With the stabilizer jacks up the bathroom door would stick sometimes. There's a bulkhead on both sides of the camper that tie in the floor and wall structural elements right where the overhang starts. I mixed up fairing filler and covered all of its joints together when we left out back in 2020. All of the fairing filler cracked showing stress risers. On the 550 those gaps closed up since the 550's bed is a foot longer and the support is better. The bathroom door no longer sticks. The new truck in my opinion extended the lifespan of this camper by 3-5 years when its original predicted lifespan was 5 years on the 350, which we are about halfway through. Then there's the brakes, suspension and power. The brakes act on absolute authority, even without the integrated exhaust brake. On whatever pads and rotors this thing came with it out-stops the 350 by a far margin. It stops like a European car. Not like that of a class 5 truck. Under braking in the mountains it polls the imu and lays the exhaust brake on and proactively downshifts accordingly. Sometimes throwing down two gears and spinning the engine up to 3500rpm. I still love that party trick. It makes it driveable for him and it's something to keep in mind for future builds. With its extreme rearend width and inch and a half thick sways its able to effect moose tests while loaded. Useful in Arizona where people high on bath salts merge while jacking their garbage on facebook. The 350? No fkin way. Let em eat the quarter inch thick steel rock slider. It can effect U-turns in U-turn lanes. The 350 has a turning circle of a planetesimal's orbit. The 7.3 put up with everything and anything provided you were patient in how it did it. It wasn't a passing engine but one that pulls. It'll pull anything but it sure as gently caress isn't passing anybody without a lot of planning. It's extremely loud at all times with quite overpowering turbine noise and a cacophony of angry hammers that'll be in your head for three days after a 100 mile drive. But it always got to where it needed to go. Mostly the scene of its next breakdown. The 6.7 is a huge princess but when it works it works brilliantly. In some rolling hills a passing lane presented itself on a 6% grade. I had all the temps lined up to do a pull. And passed four semis. The 350 never did that through this area. It'll leave the jeep on grades at a cost. This engine? No turbo noises. Barely any clatter. There's almost no perceptible vibration once its all dialed in and happy with itself. Lotta loving complexity for reducing driver fatigue though. That's a lot of rambling about poo poo probably nobody cares about. Here's a dump of photos from the second passing of the snow storm. Death Valley is known for being a hot, dry place with enough sun to bake anything. This is not that. This was the coldest most extreme winter weather camping we'd ever done. The camper did incredibly well through it all. Before the front moved in this area was really busy down in the valley. It cleared out. We were the only ones left at altitude. Bun tracks  Food for warmth.   The start of the snowfall.                6-12" of snow fell depending on how the wind pushed it around.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb1t6LE5Wgo About a minute after starting. Still very cold.  ECT1: primary cooling system, ECT2: secondary cooling, EOT: engine oil temp, EGT11 is the probe closest to the turbo. The rest are downstream. 13 and 14 are flipped. DPFinp is DPF restriction and its respective Voltage output. EBP is exhaust back pressure. BoostTPEval is the monitor for boost. CAC is the charge air cooler outlet temp. CAC12 is another CAC temp, FANDC is % fan duty cycle command and the fan rpm is next to it. Load is calculated load, FRP is fuel rail pressure. I change the gauges out regularly. I almost always drive by them on hills but generally don't pay a lot of attention to them otherwise.  Neither vehicle cared about old mining roads covered with snow. Dual wheels and all it didnt care. The photo really cements in how wide the rear track is. To Beatty!
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May 26, 2023 22:05
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Is it a pain for you and your spouse to have to drive separate right now? I'm assuming your not towing the jeep while you are in regular roads. Ngl I get that the 550 is a princess like you said but god the improvements your describing sound like it was worth it so far, especially for stability and stuff. Let alone the frame not becoming a new twofer like we keep seeing on other trucks.
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May 26, 2023 22:51
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Nah not a problem at all. We have radios so that we can communicate back and forth. Driving alone is fine with us. Part of that is also we just throw the truck somewhere on a pull out and I jump in the jeep to go scouting. Cuts an easy half hour off the logistics there when dealing with flat towing or trailering. I've joked about a trailer to stuff the jeep in but with a JKU we're talking 20 feet or better which would kill any ability to do anything more than cracker barrel parkinglots or very well maintained fire roads. The chassis is that good. It's exactly what I was trying to convey. I learned a lot off breaking the bricknose in half and did not want to go through that again with a modern 3500. It just never got baselined like I thought I paid for so We'll do it on the road the hard way. We're absolutely going to break it much worse before anything remotely starts to get better though.
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May 26, 2023 23:24
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With all of the telemetry available, are you data logging all / some of it? How much data do you log and at what frequency? I'm assuming it's all through OBD instead of straight CAN sniffing? If so, are there any plans with the data? Predictive analytics? Fancy grafana dashboards? Edit: Did I miss this in a previous post? Edit 2: The reason for asking is semi selfish. I just stumbled across this: https://grafana.csselectronics.stellarhosted.com/d/hXdWa0VMk/css-playground?orgId=1 McTinkerson fucked around with this message at 23:51 on May 26, 2023 |
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May 26, 2023 23:47
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McTinkerson posted:With all of the telemetry available, are you data logging all / some of it? JFC I love this dashboard. I legit want to roll some of grafana elements into the trek themed display. I showed this board to him, we're totally using parts of it. Guess I'm coming up with artwork for it too cause the thumbnail vehicles rule  The hab has two IMUs + gps, both offline at the moment. One thinks we're flipped greasy side up with a solid nose tilt up. The other needs some work wrt dead-reckoning since the antenna isn't pointed nose forward. The flipped one had some wonky bus(i2c) errors so that's something else I'll need to work around. That's no big deal, I'll write up a script borrowing parts of the rover project's imu and once he's done with the devops I'll deploy it over Nomad. we will be using grafana, influxdb, and loki. There's a data timing mismatch with the ext solar mppt controller compared to the other two mppts thats just sending trash over the VE Bus. The Victron inverter is still in its own little silo but there was a basic grafana dash for it. Power|water|tanks|lp|heading|location|fuel|maint is all done loving manually. Once his devops project is done and ready it's getting automated. I'm using a huge spreadsheet for this for graphing and predictive analytics. Power, locale, heading is updated daily. fuel when fuel needs, maint when maint counters say so or it breaks. LP, water, holding tanks is done when they are addressed. The predictive analytics work great in some areas but horrible in others. PV, water/holding tanks, heading, yes. Vehicles? not really. Fuel mostly for predicting breakdowns, which the last major one showed up without warning, thus making the prediction worthless. It does catch things like filters. maintenance is for scheduled intervals reminders, issue tracking, and breakdown logging. It could be a lot better than it is. It tracks number of issues across a 5k-mile increment, breakdowns across 5k-mile increments, cost per mile and cost per month. maintenance and breakdown costs are split. It could use a third column for improvements like the fog lamps. I'm using an old(new) elm327 for the truck. It causes problems if I leave it plugged in and if I plug it in before the engine has been running for 20-30 seconds. It does HS can only. I actually have a bin of the elm ics themselves. There's no connection yet between the truck and the camper in this regard. I need to come up with a modpart that links the two when it's safe to do so and disconnect otherwise. There's an upfitter wire I can tap into for parking brake and I think gear indicator. If in park or brake set, disconnect, otherwise, link and send data to the server. I think the tablet with forscanlite will do logging then I can interpose it using timestamps. It's labor intensive but so is literally all the above. I'll check. The truck has an imu and a gps module. The gps module hasn't been really talkative. I suspect the antenna is missing or isn't plugged in. The truck knows the incline and roll it's working with. Since this is a stripper XL I don't have a disiplay for it but the data is there. Pretty sure that's on LS can too. Something like this would be extremely useful in tracking intermittent problems. Which this truck has no shortage of. That's a lot of rambling. tldr: We build it, it sorta works, break it all down with what we've learned, and rebuild it again. No idea what iteration this is.
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May 27, 2023 00:54
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Honestly I'm happy that besides some goofy Ford poo poo it's not nearly as much a hassle as donk. I get that it's a princess (and it's only been a bit) but it sounds like it's been much less of the hassles you were dealing with. Now when something does go that's a different story of course, modern engine designs are as compact and buried as possible. And yeah I figured trailering would be something you wouldn't want to do. And while the f550 can handle it I bet donk would have utterly keeled over or been like the donkey it is and tell you to gently caress off.
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May 27, 2023 01:11
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Wanna sink my teeth into those cookies
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May 27, 2023 02:42
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Those linked graphs are neat, I like how it links the data to the map too, good for quick review. "Wait a minute, why did my temps spike.....oh that's right, hauling up that hill..." Funny tho, I'm impressed how there's a school of thought that looks at all the ballache you're going through finding a rig that suits your particular needs and wants (which are many and varied), and then somehow connects it to "the same, but for paying customers". I can't imagine how much worse that would be. At best, sell 'em the habitat and systems and integrate with the chassis they bring, with firm data provided on what you will and wont work with and why. (No I wont sell you this to slap on the back of your F150 for any amount of money etc) Like yeah, there's a bunch of people with money to throw at a honking great overlander rig. Many of them may well have similar ideas on serviceability and such, but by and large the guys dropping the big cheques also probably expect one number to call to get a solution. The guys more along your line of thinking? They're probably just as into building it themselves too. On some of the tougher jobs on the 550, like you mentioned 14 hours for valve covers. Is some of the reaction to that a "sticker shock" thing? Like yeah, that's obviously a long and stupid time, but is it needed regularly, or are they a solid piece that only needs doing every 100k miles and you're in there doing other stuff too so actually who cares? (I know this is probably a dumb question and they're pissing oil already, right?) On the driving alone thing - from watching some vanlife/boatlife Youtubers, I don't care how good your relationship is, I'm sure it can't hurt to have the odd bit of enforced alone time like that, fire up the tunes the other half hates or whatever. Edit: The desert snow is always fascinating to me and I don't know why, cos I know it's a thing, and hell, even the closest snow to me is found in what's basically a desert (although scientifically speaking it's not because it gets too much rain to be a real desert, but close enough).  BuckyDoneGun fucked around with this message at 03:02 on May 27, 2023 |
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May 27, 2023 02:51
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It was a very surreal experience for me to drive through Cima Dome in the Mojave Natl Preserve and experincing snow and hail. I see a lot of Jeeps being flat towed behind grandpa in a Class A, what’s the trade offs there? This thread and our current road trip (Sedona, Joshua Tree) keep us thinking about what kind of RV to get. I really like the idea of off-highway capable camper plus tender, but I’m not ready to give up the ability to switch drivers every couple hours and listen to music/podcasts with my better half.
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May 27, 2023 05:57
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Glass Cockpit Looks like the biggest upgrade for you was the frame and DRW. I'm constantly blown away by how hard the 6.7 is to work on, hopefully you have it fixed up enough to give you at least a few thousand miles of reliability. Did you get up to 8MPG after cleaning things up?
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May 27, 2023 15:08
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I just want to chip in with how lovely (to look at) the desert snow pics were.
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May 27, 2023 15:09
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The cookies are a staple. Prob why I gain 20lb every winter. The 350 wouldn't have tolerated hauling the two adventure bikes on an open aluminum trailer to the tune of ~1700lb total. The 550 has the inverse problem. I wouldn't notice it back there. Buried engine designs, don't worry, we're getting there. BuckyDoneGun posted:Funny tho, I'm impressed how there's a school of thought that looks at all the ballache you're going through finding a rig that suits your particular needs and wants (which are many and varied), and then somehow connects it to "the same, but for paying customers". I can't imagine how much worse that would be. At best, sell 'em the habitat and systems and integrate with the chassis they bring, with firm data provided on what you will and wont work with and why. (No I wont sell you this to slap on the back of your F150 for any amount of money etc) It's actually not too different than the rover shop was. But yeah the integration bits are where to start. Just like the rover shop. I was one of the first doing gently caress gently caress games with the P38 rangies. rebuilt blend door motors, 4 wheel traction control conversions, audi heatercores, jarviks heart deletes, that sorta stuff. service | parts | support. Sometimes people need a 10 minute phonecall or they need some rare one off part or they need a pump driver replaced in the middle of bfe. The guys that dropped the big checks funded big projects. the regular guys kept the bills paid. I'm happy building parts as I am doing builds. The way the design seems to me is that VC gaskets are a 'once in a lifetime of the engine' sorta job or whenever the injectors are out do em. It also integrates the intake manifold in a way. Note that the vc covers don't have to come off for glowplugs and injectors like pretty much all the PSDs that preceded this one. Nice enough the cab can stay on. But the passenger side battery tray and fender liner come out. Gorgeous shot. Still looks desert-y and wanna spend time there. luminalflux posted:It was a very surreal experience for me to drive through Cima Dome in the Mojave Natl Preserve and experincing snow and hail. I love that area. And this thread is uhhh 2 maybe 3 posts from camping in the Mojave and sharing my own findings about Cima. Jeeps flat tow well is the big selling point. Some run brake controllers that push the brake pedal during braking. I would argue for one if it's gonna be anything smaller than what I'm running weight wise. ClassB? Small C? Some Bs run pretty decent wet baths. A C will get you dry. Pay attention to the bath and kitchen and how you'll spend time in it. I wanted to go to a split driving style where we could trade up but that's probably a future build because being able to get into the coach would be nice too. Much like the class A/B/C. The shorter ones will do better on gravel/fire roads. Over 30' gets problematic with the national parks. SpeedFreek posted:Glass Cockpit lol Garmin reuses parts of their software cross platform so when I come into remote small towns I'll get the same aircraft bonging noises but it's warning me that there's a speed limit reduction ahead. It's for some reason funny to me. Which uh routing on these is pretty decent. It takes the physical parameters and its mass then routes accordingly. It *usually* gets it right. I was pleasantly surprised with sideloading forscan to it and it works half as decent as it does. Like it won't reset codes but it'll clobber the pcm with a reset when it acts up. I suspect the deep-dive that forscan takes during connecting could be causing some of my pcm quirks when I connect it all too soon after starting. (or i've a sensor flaking out) The frame is huge. And that massive rearend. The 350 had a narrower rear axle to preserve its wheel track through the turning circle due to ackermann geometry. It was a thing of the era, even the yugo did this. The narrow rearend made everything sketchy in ways I didn't like. The outer rear dual tire sits as wide as the camper body, not narrower than the cargo bay body. 5-6" wider per side now. After death valley and the CAC pipe the egr valve started to jam causing more poor economy and dpf plugging fun. I'll be stopping at a junkyard to take one completely apart. After all this was about 100 miles of the best it ever ran. Then came the scr system fault that shut the truck down halfway between vegas and kingman. I'll go into details in the upcoming posts. [some time later] Currently sitting at 8.8mpg after pulling lots of hills. got it up to 10 a couple of times. I don't know what it gets for mpg on flat land because I avoid flat land. Regens went from about 80 miles to the last complete one of almost 400. (to be fair it had two short interrupted ones somewhere in the middle since it went into regen literally 30 seconds before pulling off to dump the truck and go scouting.) The lure is that it should need repairs less often. So far it is technically holding true. Despite spending 9 hours doing a road-side turbo replacement. That's maybe 4 posts out. The 7.3 was a lot needier with 72 entries in its maintenance log across 19000 miles and 25 months. The 550 has 7 entries in 5 months with 2500 miles. Restricting the 350 to the first 2500 miles of the trip contains 12 entries and 19 within the first 5 months. Cost per month is cheaper than the 350 but purely due to the low miles accumulated so far and well, the above issues, its cost per mile is higher than the 350 for now. mekilljoydammit posted:I just want to chip in with how lovely (to look at) the desert snow pics were. Ya should have been there. It was truly magnificent. The photos don't do it.
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May 27, 2023 18:11
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makes you wonder if its just maintenance debt, bad design, or the ford dealership doing none of the work you paid them for also.
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May 27, 2023 20:58
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UCS Hellmaker posted:makes you wonder if its just maintenance debt, bad design, or the ford dealership doing none of the work you paid them for also. With ford you can have all three! Stopped over at the remains of Pioneer, NV    It's really slushy back here and there's active digging going on. I didn't poke around much. Laid over in Beatty. The hole in the wall is a little more welcoming in 2023 than it was in 2019. I'd still not live here. Into the tip of DVNP looking for the next campsite.   Don't think I'll get the truck back into this. Motor graders and dozers were actively clearing the road. Random ebike???  The jeep needed its magic button here. Note the awd sienna in the distance. (parked off of a larger road)   Found the tracks, he followed em for about a mile in before turning around. The Sienna is equipped with a bike rack but is missing a bike. Driving towards vegas, new codes.  There's a 6.7 in the yards, Let's go yarding soon. vacuum coolant filler ordered and ordered two used ebay egr valves. one with the complete egr cooler. Just In Case Lake mead, lower than ever before. Way back when I kayaked to the island. Now I can nearly walk it.   Back at Callville bay.      I'm gonna avoid this campground next time. Last time through here it was post coolant pump and a bit of a zoo. Two years later it's still a zoo. A wild Subaru Justy camper in the flesh  Eagle cap on a 3500. Really should have opted for the 4500.  X19 still alive.  Waiting for dude to show up for a craigslist deal. Nice LS  Another 6.7, this one skipped leg day though.  The cold took out the fork seals on his bike. Local shop would take a week and 200 bux to get it sorted.  Craigslist bike stand to the rescue. Lake Mead Recreational Area has a mup. It's decent enough.  Out getting the jeep serviced. Of course naturally the PO cranked the filter cap on so tight it'll break the oil cooler so it's getting an oil cooler too. Shortly after the jeep also gets a roof rack. The roof panels still come off. It's good for 200lb dynamic and 750 static.   Driving back to camp post outing for the day.  Stopped off here on the way back.   Hoover Dam. And its ever decreasing water levels. One of the lowest I've seen.  
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May 30, 2023 17:48
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So a rural firetruck adjacent chassis is what you're really looking for? What would those be classed as? DHS money did filter into fire fighting so there may be some sweet setups around in the 15 year old mark that can get you what you want while having decent automatics and 4WD. Too bad 4WD cabovers are not really a thing here, an Isuzu NQR/ Mitsubishi Fuso 160 or the next size up would probably be a good start and allow a larger livable space and decent long term durability.
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Jun 1, 2023 03:08
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DJ Commie posted:So a rural firetruck adjacent chassis is what you're really looking for? What would those be classed as? DHS money did filter into fire fighting so there may be some sweet setups around in the 15 year old mark that can get you what you want while having decent automatics and 4WD.
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Jun 1, 2023 03:19
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DJ Commie posted:So a rural firetruck adjacent chassis is what you're really looking for? What would those be classed as? DHS money did filter into fire fighting so there may be some sweet setups around in the 15 year old mark that can get you what you want while having decent automatics and 4WD. Oh, gently caress yes. I drove a Mitsubishi Fuso with a six cylinder and 20ft box as a bread truck. Bread is bulky, but takes up a lot of volume. The trays weigh less than the bread in them, too. Loaded to the tail, that bitch would go sideways in 2nd gear. Rode a lot better than any of the NPRs I drove. Quick turn in, decent steering feel, and the brakes would put you through the window. Power everything, good AC, and comfy seats. 180,000 miles in poo poo Tampa Bay traffic and she just kept going. The owner quoted $1000 a year between regular and scheduled maintence over a 10 year period.
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Jun 1, 2023 03:55
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FGs are hard to find here but they do pop up. This company makes a super single wheel to run the same toyos I do. A while back I happend on a D80 front kit for the fuso but it's escaping me now. The fuso runs comparable weight classes to north american medium truck counterparts(3-5). They're a bit weedy on the power though. The cabs are mostly set up for short hop city truck duties rather than covering vast distances of broken American infrastructure. Probably can fix that however. Found a 6.7 in the Las Vegas you pull it yard. One I know all too well. I get there and can't find it. Because the truck got a little toasty.   Nothing useful here other than learning about how it all work. The two hose connections on top of the egr cooler are for the aux cooling system. Pulled the egr valve and cooler as an assembly then broke it down.  The passenger bank fuel rail and injectors are visible. The intake runners and primary system coolant ports integrated with the valve cover gasket. If you think about how the primary system coolant enters and exits from below it is now apparently why the truck's cooling system needs to be vacuum filled. A simple service port on the egr cooler housing would solve for this. Thanks, dickheads. Driver's side fuel rail. Bonus vacuum brakes on a 2016 diesel truck. loving Ford.  CP4.2 that's completely ruined and the turbo mounting plate behind it.  The egr cooler core looks pretty clear. However the cooler is stuck with the housing. The housing is for a 18ish month run of 6.7s and is incompatible with mine.  The EGR cooler bypass valve still works despite being cooked to medium well at 1375*F for 3 hours.   The EGR valve itself is mostly melted. The drive motor is gone. The actuator was the actual reason for going.  The CC trucks like mine use a cast iron valve. All the rest are aluminum. This melty cutaway is a great learning tool. This is a pretty large valve. The valve guide itself is in good shape. And it still works.  See how there's a lower valve plate and an upper? I'm betting there's soot ingress to the valve guide jamming it. My ebay finds were a mixed bag of random appropriate and inappropriate parts.  This wound up being a brand drat new egr valve from Texas. Note it's for a pickup. I got the CC cast iron valve from British Columbia.  [Some undisclosed amount of time later]    Decent amount of buildup but the valve still moves through its full travel. The bypass valve mounted to the cast iron egr valve is jammed. It's discarded. The truck was likely 'deleted' with the egr valve intact plugging this component. The actuator. It's a brushed 540 motor acting on a simple planetary set. It's not too different than one someone would find in a 12V cordless drill.  For position sensing it's using a MLX90316 rotary position encoder with 12 bit resolution. Communication with the pcm is handled via spi.   
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Jun 1, 2023 16:58
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Getting away from the insanity that is Las Vegas I return to an area I've not been in years.  Last time I came through here I bent the frame on a klr650. This rock has some history. Long before I even came along. Local glyphs and a small waterfall is nearby.  Nostalgia, etc. over a decade ago now.    Small dam nearby with a cool mural now painted on it.  The view out into Moapa valley from the muddy mountains. There's an impressive amount of solar being installed.  Somewhere in this area during transit the camelbak bags pulled the coat hooks out of the wall by the entry pulling the shoe rack and everything else down. It damaged the wall in the process. More poo poo to fix. I've never actually climbed the rocks behind us. Did the needful.    My posting points out to me I am in a cooking rut. I should do something about that. It doesn't help I can't find ginger and buying meat is like buying alcohol in alabama. WTAF? Meat theft is a big thing in Vegas apparently. Like.. They give you a ticket. You take that up front with the rest of your groceries, pay for your poo poo, then they bus the meat from the back of the store to you. It's very time efficient you see. (the below strips)  Stew since winter won't go away.  With jalapeno laden cornbread muffins.  800 doing 800 things  Speaking of poo poo to fix. egr actuator is definitely crusty and chunky. Cycled it several times through the extents of its travel and its smooth again.   Post all the problems I set the truck up for stationary regen to try and solve for all the sooty lousy running potentially harming the dpf.  It actually wasn't as bad as I thought. I'm in the first banding for its particulate buildup. Nowhere near an emergency. This poo poo is way overblown by morons on the internet. Banding two is 120%-200% then anything over 200% the truck shuts down. It uses a function based on exhaust back pressure to determine buildup. Later systems use an optical sensor. Video during regen. warning it is extremely loud. The pcm commands the fan to full drat on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTwh_1-r2dw I bought this bike stand on CL locally. Now to fix his bike.  But not before some random rear end old people decide to just drive up like they own the place. They stuck around for about 15 minutes then waddled off.  It's a pretty easy job all told for a lower service. I love these bedsides like drat. They make great work benches. Which turns out is going to be kind of regularly.   Leaving the area now and headed towards Kingman. Routing around the east side of the Grand Canyon is the idea since going in from the west is still snowed in. Ok I swear it was a lot rougher last time.  11 Over hoover dam like an absolute champ. The width really plays well here. The Bridge has warnings for high clearance vehicles to only use the inner lanes else risk getting blown off and about 880' down.  The truck is running fantastic. The best its run so far. pulling down about 10.5mpg. cruising right the hell along. I feel like I made a huge win with the egr valve finds and running the stationary regen. But... Wait what?  Ugh poo poo. Uh, Excuse me?   Oh hell no this is my circus and I refuse to die here in the middle of nowhere.  And it broke down. Well. On my terms cause I got the gently caress off the road before the counter reached 0 and it locked itself into idle only mode. I'm halfway between nowhere and two feet from hell.  Story time: the '11-12 6.7s have one NoX sensor. The later system uses two. one before the catalyst, one after. This is how it determines scr effectiveness. Think of it like pre and post cat O2s playing in catalyst efficiency for gasoline engines. The early management system only has one sensor so it uses short term vs long term learned values from a post scr catalyst sensor. urea crystals build up like barnacles on the mixing plate and on the injector. The mixing plate is the swirly thing you see below. The injector is mounted just before the scr mixing plate.  Under normal use barnacles form and can influence the short/long term SCR monitored values. Running stationary regen runs the system HOT. Like 700C hot. It's the trounce it all with a mallet approach. It'll bring back a completely oil soaked dpf from the dead. This cooked off enough barnacles that it now thinks the scr system is broken. its new values are way out of line with the old values and oh no! It's broken! (it's not broken you doofus) Two solutions. Go through the drive mode to reset the scr system before it reaches 0 miles. Like setting obdII monitors. hard reset the pcm. Not available in post 2017s. I hard reset the pcm and hey would you look at that. No codes. Let's see if it'll make it to kingman...
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Jun 4, 2023 18:23
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| # ? May 24, 2024 07:04 |
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Made it to Kingman, AZ without a hitch. However the roads that access federal lands in the area are blocked with no tres signs and boulders. Shame the 350 isn't around, its winch would make quick work of the boulders. Going westward towards Laughlin.  Rytheric is that you?  Some guy absolutely sending the hell out of this civic. Caught up with him later running in deep sand. The civic wasn't getting stuck. Eat your heart out, jeep bros.  Please don't feed the burros. They acclimate to it and will hang out on the roads.  Since there's next to no camping options in north west AZ we turn west towards Mojave NP again. This 3500 is not enough truck for what they're doing.  In the park. Shame this isn't for sale. There's several lots here that are. Which we're checking out.  There's a couple hantavirus warnings on the inside of the cabin. It's a long way down.  Rain begins to fall. It's still winter somehow. Almost to the campsite.  It's a pretty off the beaten path area that is visible from the road but only if someone is looking for a rv. A series of really tight switchbacks that were over undulating terrain took out the plastic bumper extension. I'm surprised they lasted this long.  Truck does pretty well in deep sand. Running full against the steering lock with 4wd + the helical lsd will result in the steering wheel being yanked out of my hand. Years of driving offroad; thumbs always on the outside. The extension wasn't too far away and landed safely out of the track width of this wide truck.  loving Ford would use push clips to hold this sorta stuff on.  The colors on this cactus rock.    Top notch infrastructure on the drive in.  Driving back to Kingman to get groceries. When AZ says bump. They mean it.   I got to see a class-C rv get airborne headed westbound when they decided not to heed the warning. Twin I beam suspension is a favorite of prerunners but uh don't do that. More gaming.  Climbed the hill behind the rv.  Interesting inclusions. Maybe brecciated quartz.The vantage point from here is nice.   Rock House   Old cabin. Back door was kind of beat in. It was in generally good shape. Had 12V lights inside. During our time here the winter had badly damaged the infrastructure within the park. Cima road is closed. That killed two fuel options and our intended exit. We were also here at the same time as the major train derailment just south of Kelso station which caused further problems with getting around within the park. Because of this, the resulting one fuel stop that's available, and the distance to get groceries, we're passing on buying within the preserve. This is too remote. Dust storm incoming.  Made some chilimac  To put the bumper end cap back on the reinforcement has to be removed. It's fiddly but not too bad.   The same bag of hardware I got for the 350's inner fenders work to hold the bumper extensions on quite well. They're not falling off this time.  I try to do work symmetrically whenever possible. This reduces future frustration since the tools and hardware are already out.   I then find these awesome apprentice marks on the rather expensive visiotronic fan clutch. Thanks, fuckhead.  Headed out towards 395.   Since the truck's fuel range is about a 70 mile radius of any one fuel stop, we back tracked to Fenner where I pumped in just enough to make it to Baker since fuel is $8/gal.
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Jun 11, 2023 23:55
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