1997 Dodge 3/4 ton diesel, with camper
An indulgence. I had wanted one of these trucks since they came out (in '94), but figured I'd have to wait until they were about ten years old before I could afford one. But good fortune intervened, and here it is in its native element (loaded).
The ad. described it as a "Good work truck", which was a bit scary. My brother suggested I look for corked boot tracks on the dash! In this case, it turned out that the term meant that it was not loaded with all the goodies. No leather, no power windows/seats, etc. But, that meant it was nearly perfect for what I wanted! It does not have the squeak-and-leak rear doors, which was the reason the PO traded it in. It has A/C and cruise control, which to me are the only really important options. I have upgraded to a factory (I hate light shows) CD stereo, bought from a guy who upgraded his Jeep stereo.
It drives smoothly, as did my older Dodge pickup. A very car-like ride. Strong and quiet, except for the throb of the engine, which I like. I have a set of Hadley "Bully" air horns on it, which can wake the dead. On its stock tires (not pictured), I routinely got 19-20 MPG. Sometimes a little more. One notable trip from Spokane to Seattle and back on one tank yielded 26.2 MPG! (I was swapping a transmission for my wife's SL, and I was [temporarily] unemployed, and had more time than money. I set the cruise control so the engine was running about 1850 rpm, supposedly the efficiency peak for this engine. This was a little over 60 MPH in 5th gear. I filled up at the same pump before and after the trip, on the same day.)
But the stock wheels and tires looked stupid, like roller skate wheels, and were getting near to needing replacement. Unfortunately with the new, larger heavy-duty tires I bought for use with the camper the mileage has dropped. We get about 14 MPG loaded, which is just fine, but unloaded it's more like 17 MPG. (Hard to tell exactly, since most miles on it are now loaded miles.) C'est la vie. The new tires are wider, which helps with the stability of the rig. My dad had suggested air bag helper springs, which really helped his Ford, but this truck handles the camper great with just these tires and the stock camper and towing packages. I think I'll save my money.
I bought it with about 16,000 miles on it, in late '98. This made it nearly two years old at that time, and the Cummins engine wasn't even fully broken in by many accounts. It still has less than 40,000 miles on it. I drove it a lot in its first year with me, but I drive the convertibles much more now. This truck is for working!
It has had the very common fifth gear nut failure, which was 'fixed' under warrantee. I suspect that it was no fix at all, and that it will fail again sometime. Transmissions are Dodge's weak link, it seems. There is a proper fix for this problem, which I will probably pursue if/when it fails again. There have been no other repairs, other than a sloppy outside mirror that was replaced under warrantee.
I did get the skid plate washed off, as it was covered with oil, dirt, and rocks. I also cleaned off and re-painted the hoop steps, they were looking mighty bad as the black paint was coming off the corroding aluminum in tatters.
I was unable to drop the crossmember, but I didn't really need it out so much as out of the way. I was able to drive it backwards enough to gain access to the rear yoke. (I had to remove the transmission mount. Also, the bolts don't have captive nuts, you have to do the old-fashioned two-wrench thing. All in all, quite the pain, especially when you consider that I hit myself in the face with a rather heavy wrench. Hard. Left a bump, perhaps it'll bruise. Nice.) With that done, and it wasn't quick, I got three of the yoke bolts out, the last I couldn't reach. I had to jack up the rear of the truck in order to allow the yoke to rotate enough to get to the bolt. Of course the truck is very heavy right now and one of the two jacks wasn't up to the job. That slowed things down even more, and involved deploying a jack stand. Sheesh! Anyway, finally the driveshaft could be removed.
The nut retaining the yoke ('companion flange') itself was not very tight, it just came right off without strain. No way it was tight to the specified 130-200 lb-ft. A puller was barely needed to pull out the yoke, I didn't need a wrench to drive it. Naturally it spilled a lot of ATF at that point, so then I had a mess to clean up. I found there is a rubber spline seal that's looking pretty chewed, I had better get another one of those before reassembly. I ran out of time, and then some, but at least the seal is exposed and ready to pry out.
...At lunch I bought the spline seal, about $3. Wow, that doesn't look anything like the smashed thing I took out! Perhaps it and the loose nut was the source of the leak all along? Hard to say.
Surprisingly, the rest all went back together with relatively little trouble. Even that wretched crossmember. (It loosens up if you lift it above its normal position rather than try to remove it downwards.) I got it all buttoned up and the tools put away. Tonight I get to do fluids, I plan to change the engine oil and of course I have to refill the transfer case. Mustn't forget!
I had a look at the old suspect spline seal after I cleaned it up, and I don't believe that mere deformation can account for its different shape. I think it was a different style of seal. It is wedge-shaped, more like a differential's ring gear than the toothed washer that is the new spline seal. I don't suppose it matters, so long as it works. We'll know soon.
...I changed the engine oil, but re-used the filter as I didn't have another. I did dump it out, at least. (I have been lax, it was some 8,000 miles since the last change. That really can sneak up on you, I knew it needed changing, but "I'll get it next time...") I then topped off the ATF in the transfer case, it took two quarts. (Getting the fill plug out is tricky, the 10mm hex hole is starting to hog out a bit. My trick there is to put a 6-point box socket on an allen bit and hammer on it with the wrench up against the plug.) Done! Time to move on to readying the camper itself, we've got a lot to do before tomorrow's departure. (I did wash the truck. I noticed that the paint is finally starting to show a bit of its age, and there are some rock chips in the hood that I need to address.)
Bought new wiper blades. The old ones were peeling apart.
Unfortunately, that was the best news of the day. I was a little concerned to be setting off during the heat of the day, and it was unseasonably warm. 91°F? But we were going slowly. Not good enough, we blew a tire just outside of Dixie. Not a trailer tire like we'd all been worried about, but a truck tire! Very loud bang, fishtailing, and flapping/skidding noises. (I'm glad it was a rear tire, and not a front.) The LR tire blew apart like a cheap retread, leaving chunks of itself all along the road, along with pieces of the truck. (The plastic wheelwell shield and the mud flap.) It wiped out the bottom of bed metal behind tire, just beat it all to Hell. We made a skidding smoking stop on the narrow gravel shoulder, there was no possibility of looking for a better spot; we were stopping now! As we stopped, mostly off the road (assuming that being to the right of the white line counts as 'off'), the last of the air escaped the tire and the truck settled onto the differential case due to the geometry of the situation. Had we still been moving it would have tried to plow a furrow in the asphalt, I doubt that would have done us much good. At least there was fairly good visibility where we were, the passing traffic could see us plenty early enough to avoid us, were they so inclined.
I checked the other tires, and most of them were hot. Oh, that's not so good. I walked back and policed the tire litter I'd left along our path, I even found half of the mudflap and some of the wheelwell shield. The tire pieces were hot, but I balanced them on the cold mudflap while I walked back to the truck.
So there we were, stuck in the middle of nowhere. Do the new cell phones work there? No. Are any of my tools, such as the toolkit or the air horn compressor's tire hose still in the truck? No. CB radio? Also removed by my wife. Do we have a same-sized spare? No, just the factory one, I'm not even sure the new lug nuts will work with its steel wheel. We do have the factory jack, and that's about it. I lowered the spare tire from underneath the truck using its little winch, and it's decent, still has plenty of air from whenever in the dim misty past I'd last checked it out. So, I proceed to try to change the tire. Can't hurt. Daniel is trapped inside the hot truck cab, there's noplace for him to go that's at all safe. We open all the windows.
The jack wouldn't fit under axle in its designated place, something I've found before when a tire is actually flat. I used the trailer jack to try to take some weight off and lift up the truck an inch or two. The handle promptly broke off the trailer jack, the little pivot bolt acted as a shear pin. (It shouldn't have, I wasn't stressing it that hard. Not yet, anyway! I guess it just decided to try to join in the fun.) So there we were, stuck but good. Jill hiked off with my cell phone to see if she could climb into a wheat field to get some signal. (Her phone was discharged.)
Me? I'm far from giving up yet. I got a piece of wood (that, we have!) and used the factory jack to lift up on a leaf spring a few inches. (It only slipped off once.) With the axle lifted a bit I wedged a stout piece of firewood under the axle and let the jack down again. Then the jack would fit where it needed to. Progress! About this time somebody stopped to see if he could help. He had a floor jack, but by then I was confident that the jack situation was in hand. He didn't have a small screwdriver or any such thing to use to replace the trailer jack's handle pivot bolt, so off he went. Nice of him to stop.
I get the axle jacked up and the old tire removed. The rubber is still quite hot, and I throw the tire up on the trailer. It's also got torn steel belts hanging out of it, a real pleasure to handle. I put the spare on, and try on a lug nut. (The new once-shiny enclosed ones intended for the new alloy wheels.) Yes! It does go on far enough to tighten down without bottoming out. We are making progress. I get the tire mounted and the jack and firewood pulled out. I wind up the tire winch. Now let's see about that trailer tongue jack. All we need is a piece of stiff metal to serve as a pin, something like a framing nail, small bolt, screwdriver shank... Hey, my keyring is steel, and is a snap-open binder ring of some sort about the size of a shower curtain ring. I've had it since high school. I wonder... Yes, it fits through all the holes. The new tire's up, there's no real stress on that jack any more and I can wind it back up, keys merrily scraping as they go 'round and 'round.
We are set. Jill got back from her hike, she's managed to contact her aunt and they're going to come rescue us, bringing some tools, etc. We're not going to wait here if we don't have to, so off we go.
The truck pulled hard to the right for a few hundred yards, then there was a loud bang and things straightened out. I can only guess that the limited-slip mechanism in the differential was working hard and then died. That, or the hitch got wedged into a weird state during all the jacking, but there's nothing obvious by looking, and how would that explain a pull? The tires are still hot, and obviously somewhat underinflated for the load and conditions. We make trip the few miles to the next little town at 35 MPH with the flashers on and then stop at the city park to wait. That's much better. We're in the shade, there's water, a restroom, and a place for Daniel to play. No traffic whizzing by. We call the relatives again, and they haven't actually left yet. They don't need to bring so much, I only ask for a tire pump and a framing nail. Some time later they arrive, bringing water and tools. Their car actually has on-board air, as do we in fact, but they also have the hose. We used their hose on our compressor and let it start pumping the spare tire up to 80 PSI, its maximum rating. It's a very slow process, and it turns out that it won't quite make it that high without the hose's pressure relief valve cutting in, but we get about 72 PSI which is probably enough. While we wait we use the manual tire pump they brought to pump up the trailer tires to 40 PSI, about 5 PSI above their maximum rating which is where they all were. (I'd aired up before the trip.) They look a lot happier with more air, as does the spare once it's up. We put about 60 PSI in the truck's front tires and 65 PSI, the maximum rating, in the other rear.
(There's a story there. The trucks 'new' tires, ones I'd explicitly ordered to be able to better carry the heavy camper, are in fact lighter duty than the ones that had come off. I was not pleased to find that out, and I'm embarassed that I had not myself noticed that until long after it was too late to do anything about it. My dad, a more experienced tower, pointed it out to me.)
It is perhaps a blessing that this happened as it did, rather than some time when the camper was on. With such a catastrophic tire failure we could have rolled if the circumstances were right. We decided to take a little stroll around Waitsburg while we waited for the roads to cool off some, it's by now getting late enough that this is not going to take all that long. Finally around 5:00 or so we take off to the next little town along the way, I'm going maybe 45-50 MPH, it's maybe 10 miles or so to Dayton. Our relatives follow along on this leg. I stopped and felt the tires. Hot, but not so hot as before. The cooler part of the day, better tire inflation, and slower travel seem to be doing the trick, I think this will work. We should have been home already, so Jill buys sandwiches and such for our now on-the-road dinner, we wave goodbye to our relatives and thank them profusely for their help, and off we go. Slowly. I stop every ten miles or so at first to check the tire heat and it's manageable. As we progress the evening cools, and the tire heat is no longer an issue. I'm holding it to 45 MPH in part because of the different-sized spare, the differential is hot, but not smoking hot. At 45 MPH I can stay in third gear down the steep hills, using engine braking so that our brakes don't take a beating and we don't build up dangerous speed. On one of the stops I noticed that the air compressor is still running, it's not shutting off right anymore, so I unplugged it. It's been running more and more, I think there's a leak. We don't really need the air horns anyway. We stayed on back roads where we could so that we were not impeding the major highway traffic and we could avoid the freeway through Spokane. The rest of the trip was actually pretty uneventful. But long, we didn't get home until maybe 10:30 or so, which made for a long day. We'd left at maybe 2:00, it's not normally a very long trip, maybe 3 hours.
There are lessons here.
They even put the spare back under the truck.
After I got home I glued another section of the broken liner.
...After work I did some more gluing. It won't be done in time, and even if it was I won't have time to attach it.
A local guy was selling the same systems - I believe he's facing fraud charges and will likely go to jail, for a long - long time.and:He was selling the same type systems that used energy from the battery to break water into hydrogen & oxygen & was claiming huge economy gains. Problem was, the only ones with any mileage gains were those who were driving more carefully after the gizmo was installed.
He took a lot of people for a lot of $$$ before enough complaints caught up with him.
Our company demoed several of these units in our big trucks. The moisture in the intake ruined every engine before 200,000 miles. Nothing we'll try again...I did notice considerable moisture in the line to the intake. He also stated that according to the information he had, a longer feed line resulted in less gains. The cited 'chemistry' sounded bogus to me, something about H2 and O2 recombining over longer distances. Without a catalyst I'd have to call that combustion, and I think it would be noticed. Poly tubing isn't noted for its catalytic effects.
So, is it possible that the gains, if any, are due more to inadvertent water (vapor) injection and not to the presence of H2-O2? A long line would give the water vapor time to condense out before it hit the intake.
Cuz has his on a switch and turns it off somewhat before reaching his destination, so as to boil any excess water out of his exhaust. He was aware of that as an effect.
I definitely need to do some more research.
...Yes, she made it out and topped off the fuel with current blend. Should be fine now.
There is some moisture underneath the driver's floor mat, so I removed it to let it dry. I hope that's not a sign of a windshield leak or anything like that.