gogmorgo

Yeah, although whatever it was seems to have fixed itself, or my horking around on things getting that clamp off and then back on again with zero tools fixed it, cause it was running fine when I was done with the fix. I've also just discovered that the nasty rattle that I've been associating with the exhaust banging around is actually a cracked flexplate. While not likely a cause in and of itself, I can see that messing things up since the cps reads off of it.

Make sure your coolant's full and not leaking. Also, if you have a big enough leak, especially towards the top of your rad, eventually your cooling system will stop sucking coolant back in from the overflow bottle. That was my experience this summer.

Hmm... my brand new motor mounts are only five months and 3000 miles old... but I'll check the exhaust. Do you know proper torque spec?

You'd be looking at the Olds 4.3L LT7 diesel V6. 85bhp, 165lb-ft. I have no personal experience with them, but like all Olds diesels, they're not exactly known for their reliability. Whether or not they deserve that reputation though depends on who you talk to. The V6 is supposedly much better than the V8's.

Push-starts aren't hard to rig up on older vehicles. Take the wires that go to the ignition switch, and patch in a switch for the "run" position and a push-button switch for the "start" position. Common sense tells me not to put them in too obvious a place or make it glaringly obvious what they do. You may however encounter issues with steering wheel locks.

I'll also add, along the vein of Eagle's warning, that you should have some kind of fire extinguisher present if you're running it and suspect fuel leaks.

Well, it wasn't quite up to temp, it had maybe been running for five minutes when it happened. But the serp belt doesn't drive anything crucial to staying running, does it? The engine cut out after running like $#!&, making no power for ten seconds. I suppose the alternator could do some weird stuff when it's stopped suddenly, but that would correct itself and not kill the engine, right? But there was definitely coolant on the belt... like I said, it was pretty well everywhere. Plus it was still squealing a bit when I got to school, an hour late for a fairly important test. I'm leaning towards a short somewhere... the entire engine bay got a pretty good bath, and there was a cc or so of coolant in most of the spark plug wells. "Topping up" involved almost a gallon. I'd still expect a short that disabled the engine to at least blow a fuse, or even throw a code, but everything checks out...

On the way to school this morning I pressed the gas to accelerate to pass someone on the highway, and my MJ backfired a couple times then shut off. As I was coasting over to the side of the road I started to smell antifreeze. I stop, get out, and there's coolant literally everywhere. All over the engine bay, on top of the hood, on the windsheild, and down both sides of the truck. It took me a long time to figure out where it was came from (no hoses off, all freeze plugs intact...) eventually I fired it back up to see if it would start (it took a while, acting like I'd run out of gas) and discovered that one of the heater hoses had a 3/4" split about an inch above two inches above the water pump, and was spraying onto the rad fan. So my question is, did the truck shut off due to lack of coolant pressure or did the coolant short something out? I'm not blowing white exhaust, there's no coolant in the oil, and there were no warning lights or codes. The truck wasn't even overheating. (if anything it was still cold) I cut the end off the heater hose and clamped it back down, topped up the coolant, and it's running fine now. Should I be looking into this more?

:doh: Yeah, don't do this... You might get away with it a few times, but the load dump will fry things. If the truck dies, it could be because you just hit the ECU with 100 plus volts. Much safer to have the alt bench tested. You'll need to pull it anyway to swap out the brushes...

There are some very interesting tunnels behind locked doors in the basements of my university. You can get into just about any building on campus from underground, although the National Research Council's buildings all have cameras and motion sensors set up in their tunnels...

I saw a very similar 918 (same colour) going the other way down the highway a couple days ago here in Saskatoon. Highly doubt it's the same one, but I'm pretty jealous you got to see the prototypes.

Insulation will make a huge difference. My parents' attached garage is heated by an electric construction heater set fairly low. It's only a tiny little box, maybe 1 cu ft. but it cranks out the heat. I think they try to keep the garage at around 40-50F, but that heater can crank the air temperature up to t-shirt comfortable in about a half hour. Mind you, their garage is pretty small (my lwb MJ is a tight fit), but a couple years ago the 40 year old electric furnace kicked the bucket during a -35 snap. We propped open the door from the garage into the basement and turned it up, set up some fans, and it didn't do too badly keeping that big old drafty house liveable for a couple days before the new furnace showed up. Couldn't tell you how much power it uses, but the electric bill is pretty massive during the winter months... Also, the (albeit very limited) experience I've had with electric heat is that power-wise, it usually takes less to maintain a temperature than to leave, turn the heat down, and then try to bring it back up when you come back the next day. Especially when you have lots of stuff in the room that will act as a cold sink (like brick walls or concrete floors) that can take a lot of energy to heat up and will suck the heat out of the air. But there is a sweet spot on lowering the temperature (five degrees or so) that could get driven down pretty far with an uninsulated space, as you'd be losing a lot of heat to the outside.

What size tires are you running? I've got a very similar condition on my '91 to what you describe, also when turning left, and I know my driver's side tire rubs my lower control arm. and possibly also my fender liner/ mud flap (they're starting to fall off) at near full lock, so I'm hoping that's all it is. I'm running 235/75-15's on (sagging) stock 4x4 height. But I'm on a starving student budget and I need my MJ every day and don't have much free time, so I haven't wanted to dig too far into it. I've picked up that corner by the frame and nothing seems loose, although the bushings look pretty worn out. My u-joint on that wheel does have a tiny amount of play, and my front driveshaft (1-piece pass axle shaft in a CAD housing) has 10-15 degrees play in the diff (with clunking sounds when turned back and forth) but I'd expect those to show symptoms on right lock too, not just left.

That's just a regular horn. Not any louder than stock.

http://comancheclub.com/topic/38265-how-to-make-your-posts-look-awesome-pics-links-videos-etc/ Then become sure :)

Fiberglass is nasty when it breaks... but it might work. You and Oyaji may be onto something. That L piece of steel and then a u-bolt or something into the bed rail (I mean, the holes are already there...) would probably be decent support. That way, you've got the bed rail providing side-to-side as well as rearward support. I'd still avoid highway speeds with a flag in it, as you will tear it to shreds, and I doubt that pole would support a flag of that size at much above 30mph, but for a parade you should be more than fine. Just make sure that pole's actually steel before welding it to anything... Also, for a removable pole, you could use that L piece and a couple u-bolts or similar at the bottom and it'll be strong enough, and you'll only have the bracket in there if you take the pole out. Honestly, you could probably bolt down the bracket and then zip-tie the pole to it (and the bed rail with those holes) and be okay for a parade. Although I'd avoid drilling holes in the bed if at all possible.

You're going to be hard pressed to find a 12v compressor that will put out enough volume to maintain 100+psi at the horns long enough for them to do anything. The tank allows you to store enough pressure and volume to make the horns work, but the typical 2-gallon tank that comes with most of the kits I've seen is only good for about 5 seconds and then it takes over a minute to recharge it. See what I mean about volume? Valves of some kind are absolutely necessary unless you want your horn sounding constantly. Basically, it's like the tap on a sink: open it, air goes through; close it, no more air. Solenoid valves are electrically triggered, typically through a relay, so they'll open when there's power to them and shut off when it's removed. It's much easier to wire up a switch than to plumb or rig linkages for a manual valve. As far as the pepboys kit, if this is what you're talking about, it sounds like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlkozk6qjKY Not impressive, I must say. But it doesn't come with a tank or solenoid valve because it doesn't need either. It's a pretty wimpy high-pitched horn, so the compressor it comes with is enough to sound it without a reservoir, so the relay simply turns on the compressor. In comparison, this is what the hornblasters mid-range (228VX) kit sounds like: Admittedly, it does cost 10x as much... but if I was going with a horn kit, that's the one I'd go with. I just don't have $500 to lay down on what is essentially a novelty horn.

I would have posted more earlier, but I was on my phone and I've got stupidly low max char limits. Older Caddy's (70's and back) also have some pretty loud horns, or any other of those luxury land yachts, if going that way. I pulled a set of four horns off a '73(ish) Sedan Deville a few summers back. Only two of them worked (even after I opened them up and "rebuilt" them), but I put them on my Dad's van, and it scared him the first time he hit it. It's nowhere close to an air horn, though. If you do go the route of assembling your own "kit" for air horns, you'll need: Horns (duh) You'll want more than one for a decent chord. tank compressor (or you could have a tank that you recharge with an off-board compressor) piping/hose (from compressor to tank and from tank to horns. Try for the same length between the tank and each horn) solenoid valves of some kind for opening and closing the air with a switch (I'd recommend one for each horn but you could put one upstream of the fork and you'd be okay) wiring to compressor and the switch for the solenoids. I've looked into putting air horns on my MJ (mostly for sh*ts and g*ggles) but I've yet to find an affordable and reliable way to do it. The biggest obstacle to me, beyond cost, is mounting the whole apparatus somewhere. The 4.0 doesn't leave much room in the engine bay, so it would likely end up under the bed, which I don't really like. As far as using the a/c compressor, yeah, it can be done fairly easily (lots of how-to's online because it's a pretty popular conversion) but my a/c still works (still with r12!!) and I'm not really one for heat, so the a/c stays. Another much cheaper option would be to get one of these and leave it on your dash...

If you've just got a pole mounted by the base, it'll pull backwards along the mount, but will also whip side to side. As far as flag poles go, I've used one of our extra 8' lengths of 1"OD .095 wall hardened 4130 chrome-moly tubes to fly a flag that if memory serves was ~18"x36" in about a 30-40mph wind, and it was bending the tube likely 30 degrees from vertical. The tube itself was zip-tied to the latch on our trailer at about 1" and 18" from the bottom. I'd be pretty concerned about the bolts tearing out of the bed. I'd recommend welding some plate to the bottom of the pole (so it stands itself up) and then running lines/wires from the top of the pole (or at least under the flag) to the tie-downs, and not leaving it up permanently. If you do leave it up permanently, past experience with a few different flags is that it'll only take a couple hours at highway speeds to destroy it, and with a flag that big, your mpg will go to sh*t.

hornblasters.com has a selection of kits available, although i've heard mixed reviews of the quality of the compressers they sell. Another option is to go to a yard that wrecks big rigs, pull some horns, and rig up your own compressor and tank.

Mm, yeah, sounds like with what you're doing you'd be pretty far from civilization wherever you're at... We do have a whole lot of no where. I'm guessing no beer is because you're on a base, too. That or you find the prices so obscene you can't bring yourself to pay for it!

One does not get stuck in this country. ;)

The 3.4 from my dad's 2004 Impala could also get 30 mpg while doing 80mph, loaded down with myself and my sister and all my sister's stuff (to the point where it was almost sitting on the bump stops) on the ten hour trip when I moved her to college a couple times. Just a guess, but I'd say that swap would be a lot less work!

The proper spark plug gap is always on the emissions sticker, no?

41psi for fuel pressure, perhaps, but 14 psi is bad.