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What's "new" these days?

921 views 0 replies 1 participant last post by  Pat Dolan 
#1 · (Edited)
Haven't been around at all for the past few years (haven't been driving the PSD very much at all) and have lost touch with what's working, what's hot and what's not.

When I last spent a pile of time and money sorting out air inlet systems, I ended up with the Ford severe service retrofit with an extra hole leading to the earlier LH fender air inlet. I mention this since it was not until last fall that I FINALLY had to change the original Donaldson blue filter element. When I ordered it from local Ford dealer, the parts guy knew what it was, but says he seldom encounters it at all. That, for the record, was almost 100,000 miles of driving on interstates AND a lot of back (as in gravel) roads and construction sites before the pressure drop at WOT became significant (yes, still instrumented). What is everyone else doing these days?

Second issue: batteries always seemed to be a weak spot for this truck. 18 months ago, I borke down and bought a pair of AGMs (can't remember brand - and truck is stranded up in the bush broken right now). It was around $600.00 (I have better source now!) BUT, I have now been through two SK winters (it is -34 here right now) and a long summer with almost no use at all, and the batteries are performing immensely well. Started with my Miata (OEM was AGM), liked that, did so with my KLRs that gave me cause to try the truck. I won't put flooded cells in ANYTHING any more. That good.

Any other really great discoveries over the past 5 years? Sure glad I held onto the 7.3 rather than becoming a test pilot for FoMoCo and Navistar.

Oh, and for those who were following: The USG 0.855 aux trans project ended about the same time (one of the reasons I lost a lot of interest). While the ratios were perfect for the ZF, and the operation was fantastic, I could not get USG guys to agree that the 1 quart of oil in the box was not sufficient. Overheating would kill it on a long climb, and I could EASILY have solved that by putting a pump, cooler and filter circuit through the side cover, but they refused to do go along with it. After a few failures, they were tired of the custom build (timing was different, as it used some fancy re-arrangement to deal with the different number of gear teeth on ONE gear only). It looks like they have never built the parts needed to fit the later transfer case and have decided to just let the whole thing coast (which is IMHO what they were already doing with aux box and ex brake then).
 
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