rickeieio

Heat rash is better than road rash.

gkbikers, WELCOME!!!! It's nice have some new faces here. Tell us more about your rig and experiences.

Rest assured, she will......... My wife's probably been under the truck more than I. She's pretty good at taking pictures with her phone, handing it out to me, and asking, "Where do I hit it?"

I noticed that the drums that were not in the shadow of a trailer or fender tended to rust/stick more. Having a bed on the truck helps. Having a commercial trailer that sits low relative to the tires helps. Parking under a roof really helps. I never tried draping a tarp over the wheels, but would imagine that would also help.

Hey now...I resemble that statement!!!

Georgia, I'll add that if you drive a Volvo that was prone to the injector harness fiasco, a spare ecm is a good thing to have on board.

This reminds me of back in the '70s, when Ford ignition modules were prone to sudden death. I always kept one in the toolbox, as did dad, and grandpa, and....... I now have three of those modules, still in the (beat up) boxes. But,, I never got stranded again.

Thanks. I'll try that.

Chet, the issue isn't posting to the forum. I can't get the pics from my phone to my laptop. I had no problems with my old computer. I up loaded hundreds of pics during my bed build, and posted them here quite easily. But I am growing to dis-like Windows more and more with each "improvement". W-11 really sucks.

I can't seem to load pics. I got a new laptop with Windows 11. and it wants me to put my pics on the cloud, rather than just download them into the memory.

Big Red, have you had any success? Inquiring minds and all........

It was my old 1972 John Deere 7020 that "inspired" me to learn how to work on a/c. I sat down with the shop manual and studied how it worked, and within a couple days, it did. Did I do it correctly"? Of course not. But there's nothing worse than sitting in a greenhouse atop a hot diesel motor, trying to decide whether to open the windows to let the heat out/bugs and dirt in, or jut bake in 140f (measured) temps with the fan blowing clean air. We spent a lot of money repairing the a/c in the Volvo. Corrosion will do that. So far, the a/c in the kw is pretty dang nice.

I used a heat gun. Clamped the sheet to the flat area, applied heat to where I wanted the bend. When it got soft, I used more clamps and a narrow piece of wood to secure it. I've learned that to bend some plastics, you need to go slow. Plastic is a good insulator, so it takes time for the heat to soak through. Likewise for the cooling.

That's what led me to put the slippery stuff on the trailer side. I could fasten it easier. Got it done today. It doesn't show well in oictures because it's black, same as the hitch. I formed the plastic to the "shoe" of the hitch, then drilled holes to match the shoe mounts. If I were doing it again, I'd trim around the bolts and use smaller screw to fasten the plastic to the vertical surfaces. I doubt you'll find a source for uhmw-sts. It's not sold in small quantities, but rather used for industrial applications, like conveyors and material handling. I just got luck, walking into the office cold, and met the president. He gave me a piece of scrap to try. Funny side bar, he banks with our daughter, just up the road from his plant.

Verbal preview: We have the MorRyde rubber snubbed pin box. It has two bolts, fore and aft, that hold the shafts the plate rides on. My plastic skid will be formed to follow the angles on the ends of that pin plate, thus allowing me to secure the plastic with just those two bolts on each end. Pretty simple, if it works. If it doesn't? It will. I spent 60 years applying and then cleaning off grease on farm machinery and vehicles. I'll lube the pin, but that's all.

Those of you who know me, know that I tend to go down a different path than what's generally thought of as the norm. So, watching my bride fight with the crappy little plastic fifth wheel lube disc, I thought to myself, "Self, there's got to be a better way." One better way is to emulate what the commercial fleets do, and cover the truck hitch with plastic, or imbed pieces of plastic into the plate. Dan Habermehl has done this and it works well. I think Mark Blatchford has done it as well. My way is to source some 1/8" UHMW-STS and cover the trailer hitch. What's UHMW-STS? It's UHMW that's impregnated with silicone. The STS means Slicker Than Shi......Stuff. That's straight from the fellow who developed it at Crown Plastics, in Harrison, OH. I got most of the way done with it today, may finish and snap some pics tomorrow.

Cross Fires are not a true tire monitor system, but rather a system where you have a hose going from the tire to junction at the hub, where it equalizes the tire to tire pressure of that set of duals, down to a certain point. At that point, the color bar in the balancer changes so just by walking around the truck, you can see if one set of duals is low. Not a bad system.

Carl, you bring up an observation I missed. Indeed, lack of water in the filter is not a good indicator that there's no water in the tank. Take a peek once in a while to be sure. Most of our farm equipment has a drain at the low point in the tank, where we can crack it a bit and see what comes out. Our trucks do not. And if you're worried about algae, sure, add some biocide occasionally. It won't break the bank. My point is, it's pretty unlikely that any of us will ever run into this problem. But never say never.

In my 50+ years of owning/operating diesel equipment, I've experienced algae 3 times. First two were in a tractor that had been using nothing but treated ( by us) fuel. Can't remember on the third. This from small tractors to large 4wd and harvesters with 250 gal. capacity. But, all my equipment has sat for many months at a time with less than 1/2 tank, usually over winter when the worst condensation should occur. Never any appreciable water in the filters. Therefore, my thought is, why bother? My old fuel supplier said all his fuel was treated, so don't be double dosing. Now I'm down to just 4 diesels. Less to worry about. Like it says on the fuel cap of many old tractors, "Buy clean fuel. Keep it clean." BTW Vern, my cholesterol and sodium levels were getting out of hand, so I switched to watermelon. 😁

Not today, but in the past week..... While doing ,my pre-flight at AV8R3400's home field, I was poking under the hood and discovered my coolant reservoir cap was a.w.o.l. Larry was kind enough to loan us his car to run down to the Kenworth stealer and ransom a new one for only $51.xx. While there, I really blew the budget by dropping another $115 on a windsheild fluid pump. KW is proud of their stuff.. So, we got home Monday and while unloading tools and such, I put some assortment and repair kits on the tailgate of my pickup, so I could just back into the shop and put things away. Well, since we've retired, it seems the squirrel population has exploded in our shop. No matter what I'm doing, a squirrel gets my attention and "POOF", I forget what my immediate task was. Sure enough, I got distracted and drove home and arrived minus my vehicle electrical repair box. All my crimpers, strippers, tone generator, specialty bits for WeatherPack connectors, gone. But, over the years, I've likely found enough tools along the road to be breaking even. Still, it will take a while to assemble another box with all that stuff. I wish I had taken an inventory to make it simpler.

Oh Carl, I'm so tempted to make a crack about how Donna hasn't replaced you......but I won't.

Installer positioned Jackalopee below the 7 wire run, so water followed the wires down to box. Shame on them for not drilling drain holes.

Oh, the fun working on "work" trailers. Before retirement, we had a 25 ton rated tandem lowboy, aka drop deck, that needed a new floor/ 20' of wood deck, 8' of tread plate in the rear, and no bed over the truck axles. We had sycamore sawn to 2 1/2" x 12". Cut all the boards to length and painted them with used engine oil. Of course we did this in December, and got light snow and freezing rain in the middle of the project. Susan worked under the trailer, laying on cardboard to stay dry-ish. We eventually got it done, and sold it a week later.

Well Dang. I just popped up 3 bushels of popcorn, expecting a double feature tonight, and it done. This is gonna take a lot of water to eat by myself.

Welcome!!! Nearly all of us use ramps for loading a smart, three wheelers no so much. Wife's three wheeler (Can-Am Spyder) goes in the garage.