DirtyComanche

Duallys just look so awesome.

Or are they 3D printed CF? CF reinforced prints are pretty well standard stuff now. I agree if the file was available it would be nice to have made public. Watching SuperFastMatt stuff on the Youtoobs it is very apparent that a 3D scanner and a printer with decent capacity will absolutely change your world for making near factory (or maybe even better) quality parts easily.

I see they subscribe to the "undercoat covers all sins" theory of workmanship.

The EVs haven't reached enough market share for the "trickle down" (not a bad way to put it) to generally work out yet. There's other barriers, wrecks are often damaged more by overzealous firefighters or wreckers, insurance companies often demand some parts go to scrap instead of resale by recyclers, there is barriers in programming and modules that are unobtanium or suffer 100% failure rates, there is difficult rules on shipping used parts, etc, etc. That said there is something of a community for old/nostalgic EVs and/or swaps of older components. Teslas have by far the best past end of life/life extension support just because there was so many and they came with enough problems, along with that enthusiasts fixed a lot of things unofficially. A lot of the other options are just a bit too crappy for them to be mainstream, so it's pretty niche. Their first car, the Roadster, is highly sought after, and repairs for the battery modules/BCM/inverter/etc are well documented and available as commercial services. Nissan Leaf swaps into other stuff are somewhat common, lots of support for doing it easily. Currently someone found a GM EV1 and is in the process of restoring it with help from GM (interesting project but the YouTube videos they make are basically unwatchable due to not being edited down). There's a fairly robust community for the electric S10s they sold around the same time as the EV1, with guys upgrading the batteries and other components to make them actually drivable. There is people out there remanufacturing/repairing battery packs for a lot of stuff, but some things are just too weird to be overly feasible. It is like anything else and if your budget is large you can do anything; like guys convincing themselves that their LS swap will save them money by increased fuel economy and then buying a built engine that makes 600HP on pump gas, which the payoff on will be never but I fully support them doing it. At this point you can get a used Tesla Model 3 for cheap enough and keep it running with used parts that the math does work, on a beater versus beater type of equation. At least if you live in the contiguous United States and assuming you're charging it at home too. For me here, eh, maybe not so much.

To get the pan out you need to jack up the frame/body and set it on your jackstands and let the axle hang down. You may need to take the shocks off to get enough space, I don't recall, but with a 2"~ lift (and the longer shocks you'd have with it) it's very doable. Just loosen/undo the top mount on them if you need more space, then it's easy to put back together by just putting the weight back on the axles and tightening the top mount back up. You should not need to jack up the engine, leave it supported by the motor and trans mounts. I've personally always had good luck with the one piece pan gaskets.

If you're now getting spark you can try misting some gas into the throttle body and see if it will fire off. You may get it to go that way. Otherwise it's move on to checking timing, fuel pressure, that the injectors are firing, etc.

Slow crank reduces the voltage. There is effectively a minimum cranking speed to make a suitable signal for the engine to run. You need to address your slow crank before doing other things. If you have a jump pack or an extra battery try giving it some beans with that.

A - 55Ft-Lbs B - 70Ft-Lbs D - 27Ft-Lbs That's from the 89 FSM.

Yeah, it does make for a fun driving experience, especially paired with a manual transmission. It doesn't necessarily make for a practical powertrain. SUVs are not worse "in every way" compared with a minivan. There is tradeoffs. Most minvans have a dismal to nothing tow rating, while the right SUV can reasonably tow a lot of things (medium sized camper, small horse trailer, decent sized utility trailer, car trailer with a car or SxS/ATVs on it, etc) which can cover the towing needs of most people who sort of need a truck but are better off with more interior space. Minivans also tend to be objectively worse in extreme snow or mild "off road" compared with a real SUV. Even from a fuel economy standpoint it's often fairly much a tie. Power, well, go drive a Suburban with a 6.2L and tell me what minivan is going to do that. Minivans win on the door design, that is a fact. They win on being generally cheaper for the same thing. They will likely win on lower cost of ownership over their lifespan, at least if compared to a vehicle from the same brand. I debated buying a Ridgeline to DD. The wife said no more trucks, so I didn't. They're only hated by "real truck" enthusiasts. The new ones are ugly, yes. The tailgate design is idiotic, assuming they all come with a swing tailgate (like a Wrangler has), as it is the worst of all worlds for being inconvenient in a parking lot or garage and not allowing you to support something longer than the bed; it is a design that caters to the limp wrist type that bought a Ridgeline because he needs a "truck" to take 2 bags of mulch and a bag of potting soil home from HomeDepot twice a year. As to unified manufacturing... No. Competition breeds innovation. I do not want Ford's cam phasers combined with GM's AFM and Chrysler's plastic critical components, because that's probably what you would get with a room of executives and engineers deciding to cost reduce it the best they could with the options they have. Keep in mind the EV crowd said our ICE vehicles would have negative value years ago and that our EVs would be out actively making money for us while we weren't driving them, so I wouldn't count on EVs taking over the world for a while.

So, how did you find it?

Rockauto's shipping options are always good for a laugh. I've seen $1000+ options to get things across the border to me. That said, there is scenarios where you just might be that desperate.

Yes, that's what you want, but $82 seems steep. Swaybar end link is the more proper term for them, my post was unclear.

Sometimes the threads are stretched from the bar and link pounding against each other. So they will just break, nothing can be done to stop it. I would order new links and plan on changing them too, but that's me. Edit, a Mevotech link with bushings is around $11 USD on Rockauto (my pricing is in CAD and I convert back, but it's about that), so $22 would get you both links and you only need to buy the bushings that go around the bar.

They're terrible. I was going to buy one instead of another JK but I couldn't find one in the right condition/price to do it for me. They all had blown transmissions, rotten frames, or some combination of both of those issues.

There is good reason that modern pickup truck design has evolved to the current state; the market spoke and manufacturers reacted. The last two year round DD trucks I've had have been crew cabs. Before them it was extended cabs, and before them it was the old single cab trucks. That is the natural progression of the market. This is excluding my "fun" DDs, which are always fairly useless and impractical (last was a TJ, before that a 2 door Cutlass, before that a MJ, and they are a whole other story). Yes, the single cab truck can still do truck things, but what it can't do is a much longer list. When I was a single guy doing single guy stuff, sure, you could stuff whatever you wanted to not get stolen/wet into the cab with you; but now, no. I always have a car seat, a backpack or bag of kid stuff, plus apparently I'm expected to pick family up from the airport or whatever and take them places, the average grocery shopping trip is more stuff than would even fit in the cab without a passenger, etc etc. Suddenly you're just accepting that a crew cab is what works. It's not 1980 anymore where you could just put the kids and extra family members in the box and tell them to hang on. There's also a cultural shift where now if it's in the back of your truck and not locked up, it might well walk away in the 10 minutes it takes you to run into a store to buy something. Personally, if I didn't regularly buy construction materials, landscaping supplies, greasy old transmissions and engines, and tow heavy, I would just wind up with a full size SUV myself, as interior space has become much more valuable on most days versus exterior space. So, long story short, for most people a single cab is nearly useless. That's why the sales numbers for them are generally dismal. Plus the other aspect of truck ownership is towing, and with modern everything being bigger/better, the demand is to be able to tow absurd amounts. That said, I think they still should make a 2 door single cab (with a little bit of space behind the seats) JT. My new "fun" DD is a JK because yeah, interior space. I have no idea how the Bogans in Upsidedownland handle using a Ute all the time. When I was working there I was given a fullsize car (a Ford something-or-other, it was a total POS) to tow a very small service trailer with because there is no trucks. I think that since the Land of Oz is basically entirely flat is the only reason you can get away with towing like that, and anyone who has to deal with towing anything bigger winds up with a small medium duty cabover. Meanwhile the Ute crowd seemed to mostly have them as a second vehicle, or they were young/single. The culture is different too, more people are clustered in the few large city centers and the rest of the country is a barren wasteland, so a lot less large outdoor toys, and people seemed to have most building/landscaping supplies delivered normally. I wasn't there long enough to fully flesh out the Ute culture, but I did enjoy the odd VB long neck for breakfast.

Also horribly overpriced and pretty useless. Speaking of which, I wish that the Aussie Utes were at least offered here. I mean, I wouldn't buy one new, but maybe an old one to daily for a couple months in the summer and then remember how terribly useless they are and sell for a loss in the fall. Yes, I could find an El Camino or Ranchero I guess, but there isn't any good driver ones for the price range I am talking about, plus you can't get them with the 80's build quality and cracked plastic interior that jangles my jimmies.

Limited through programing, not a mechanical governor. You'd pull out while putting the 400+HP of a stock Duramax to work and instantly hit the programmed limit, actually it was a bit worse, you'd blow through the limit and then it would cut power hard so it would come down to the limit and normally undershoot. You would feel yourself slowing down while beside them like if you had experienced a mechanical failure. It was great, best experience of my life. They limited them to 75mph. At the time their justification was that was the highest speed limit so "you would still be able to pass anyone who was going under the speed limit." The net result as far as reducing incidents? Well, the incident rate went up. Maybe not because of this, but it certainly was no silver bullet for eliminating them. The crappy drivers are still going to be crappy drivers. You could still drive 75mph on glare ice if you wanted, or next to a residential school.

They're going to do that anyway, unless you're going to ban performance modifications and altering factory tuning or settings.

No idea what the highest legal speed limit is in the USA. However, you sound a lot like you hate apple pie, bald eagles, and freedom. I worked at a company where all of the trucks were governed to lower than the factory setting (most GM vehicles govern at 100mph from the factory). It was at the request of one of our main clients, specifically their safety department. They made the logical "correlation equals causation" type conclusion that speed was a factor in the majority of auto accidents (reality is that the majority are either doing well over, or well under, the speed of traffic, "speed was a factor" is a statement that is improperly interpreted to mean "high speed was a factor") and therefore restricting speed would restrict all accidents. Those trucks were downright dangerous to drive given what the typical usage of them was. You would regularly be attempting to pass an ore or fuel Super-B, fully decked out ADR, 53' motorhome driven by somebody older than nuclear energy, or [insert whatever large vehicle that's going 20-30% under the speed limit] in places where there was no passing lanes and only very short stretches where passing was at all possible. This was because we typically would drive for 10-12 hours a day as our coverage area was larger than 90% of countries in the world, and you could not accept that you would be delayed by such a large factor, passing was just necessary, and you certainly weren't the only one doing it. There was several scenarios that would play out. The least worrying was you would pull out to pass, hit the governor, then proceed to pucker your rearmost lips for the next 10-15 seconds as you were trapped on the wrong side of the road and unable to accelerate more. Sometimes you'd realize you did not have the required safe distance once this happened, and have to abort passing, sometimes somewhat aggressively. Much worse was when you would pull out to pass and the person behind you, who was also waiting for the chance to do this, would follow you. Best case you could see them mouthing curse words at you when you hit the governor and effectively trapped both them and you in that oncoming lane, much worse was when you realized there was not going to be time and had to initiate aborting the pass and hope they realized you were doing that and also got on the brakes enough for both of you to make it back to safety. Much, much, much worse was when multiple vehicles would follow you. The other infuriating scenario, which applied particularly when you had a service trailer, was when you encountered the special type of person who would speed up when you tried to pass them. Given you were governed, it wasn't hard for them to make it impossible for you to get by them. You would also get your prairie drivers, who would drive exceptionally slow in all of the curved and narrow areas where you could not pass, but would immediately boot it when they hit the familiar embrace of straight blacktop; to pass those people you really need the top end. The reality is modern vehicles are very fast, and very comfortable at those speeds. My wife's suburban will do 80mph all day regardless of the type of road as long as it's reasonable weather conditions, and it will corner better and stop faster from those speeds than any 1980s vehicle. For it to do 85+ safely on a flat straight divided highway is not asking anything of it. Technology has come a long way, along with crash survivability. Traffic in all jurisdictions (that I've encountered) typically flows at 10-30% over the speed limit. You're safest doing the speed of traffic, and you're safest when passing to do it as concisely as possible. You may be resistant to change, but you're not going to roll the clock back. Also, this is why I don't daily a 1980's vehicle anymore. I will in the summer around town, but it just doesn't cut it on the modern highway. I'm not going to demand that everyone else change for me, that's selfish, and a lot like hating apple pie.

Why?

They are picking away at things. The electrician came by and put fixtures in the carports for lights: They strapped the back wall: They're doing a bunch of small things, soffits, flashing, some grading/backfill work, etc. So they are picking away at it but no big visual progress.

Agree. And they should have offered a 2 door on the same or shorter (4dr JL) wheelbase. It wouldn't sell great, but the R&D wouldn't have cost much, and there is a market for it that's currently being mostly taken by the Canyon/Colorado (at least here).

I'm doing floor heat so there will be two pads where there is no pex and that will be thicker. Otherwise I'd just do the whole thing. Floor heat is a luxury but I may go with an outdoor boiler at some point, and it's hard to integrate an outdoor boiler usefully otherwise. The house has a fully unfinished basement so it would be "easy" to add floor heat to it. Will I ever do that? Eh, who knows.

Sure, but it's a lot easier to load a 2 yards of gravel into a truck bed. And honestly a lot easier to get it back out.

Unfortunately you'll likely have to put more gas in it and see where it is leaking to confirm, unless you can see clear leaking marking, but I would probably just pull the sending unit lock plate off and look at the o-ring before adding and more gas. If it is from the sending unit o-ring, make sure to put some vaseline on the o-ring before you assemble it. It will help the sending unit lock ring to slide to the locked position without causing the o-ring to tear/extrude/split. Look for any nicks/burrs/cracks on the face of the seat in the tank and the lock plate too, as they may also cause the o-ring to fail or be ineffective.