Project: Tow-Rat (Lil' Blue)

[6DoF]

it's a cummins ... it'll forever mark it's spot

[6DoF]

turbo drain seal fixed, no leak. the stupid o-ring wasn't thick enough for the groove they put in the part. i just cut a new paper gasket from a roll i had, left the oring, and tightened her back up. guess that worked.

catch can had an internal filter that was restrictive, ditched that. i also forgot to put the steel wool de-mister in the can, so added that. then added 2 more breathers off my 2 oil caps in the front of the engine, no more breather oil. just the front main and rear main leaking oil

added some firewall insulation, as you could imagine that was getting uncomfortably hot inside with the hot pipe basically touching. the wrap does a lot, but not quite that much. it's just warm now, so huge game on.

[6DoF]

the wife had a dream recently that i had 3D printed mounts for a Bluetooth speaker under the dash. she woke up and ordered me this little Bose unit. no way i wasn't going to then print mounts for it! so far no latch of any kind, just cradles it. the rubber like body seams to keep it from moving at all.

with a mount, seamed like a great place to put and hide my "AFC Live" fuel control. should work just like the production version from Power Driven Diesel, but was like 10x cheaper. one bypass valve, an orifice valve to slow the boost signal to the injection pump, and one pressure regulator to set max boost the pump sees. allows you to set the springs and screws in the pump for max power, then dial it back for no smoke and smoother daily driving. or if lazy, have the screws n springs set wrong, and dial in appropriate fueling. in my case, i need to keep the power in check as i should have enough turbo and fuel capacity to yeet the head gasket before i shift gears.

[6DoF]

finally the wife got bored and decided to see why i kept talking about washing the truck with CLR and a soft scotchbright pad. so far, so good! she wants to go over it again with the CLR, and i need to order some patina sauce ASAP.

a fair bit of brown reduction, not sure if it worked more or less than i was expecting haha. the nicest part is everything getting a TON smoother after the rub down. but now it almost looks weird with less blotch blue.

[6DoF]

Friday night i got out to the first cruise, had an absolute blast talking to everyone. no one really knew what it make of it! there was a huge parking lot behind where i'm taking the picture, i was "late" and in the overflow. ended up with a few rows of cars in the grass yet that evening.

Goal Achieved! grass shut in the door

[youngrodder]

Looks like your having fun with it. Sometimes showing up fashionably late to a show/cruise yields the best parking spots. By then they quit policing it quite as bad and you can dump it any ware.

My son knows the drill. A) Find a sweet spot. B) Pull in dump, it on the ground. C) Walk away (casually). Come back later. By then there will be no one there to ask you to move it.

Marc

[6DoF]

this is such crap ... bottom of my driveway we needed fixed, Monday a week and a half ago they did demo but no pour yet! the '55 has been stuck at the house! it's 1-2weeks cure before i can drive that heavy thing on it too.

hard to tell in the picture, but it's a huge hill. where i'm standing for the pic is like 65feet above the cul-de-sac. it's also a shared driveway full concrete below my gravel t's in, and the grass on either side of my gravel is 2 different neighbors. we had a little old concrete in the corner to the gravel, but made the whole corner wider with gravel. the 2 tires on different surfaces would murder a modern traction control. now it'll be all concrete for the first 60-80ft before gravel. the fully concrete shared section was badly broken in one place by a cement truck during the build for my house, so also fixing it. there's a 2 slab long, 3ft wide, 8" deep hole that the neighbors have to drive around now in the other neighbors yard ...

uuuggggghhhhhhh

[6DoF]

it's like having an umbrella! not 10min later now and they showed up to confirm measurements, will start 6am tomorrow morning. game on.

[youngrodder]

Hopefully you get freedom soon...

Marc

[6DoF]

as of Friday, we are free! the driveway is awesome, so so much better. and yet, i got Lil' Blue stuck in the driveway

so after putting in a lot of work on the barn, it was time to circle back to the truck for a bit. getting some tuning taken care of but mainly went after getting the hitch and rear bumper location figured out. decided i really needed to have the hitch on before doing the bumper mounting.

i don't always take weld pictures, but these turned out particularly nice. this thing aint goin nowhere. a few extra gussets to the chassis, a few close out panels to clean up, and i'm really happy how it turned out. 2.5" receiver, CHECK! the power connection will be mounted to the bumper, so it's just zip-tied up for now.

but then since i have a hitch, must test it out! hitched up the airstream and went for a cruise. she towed perfectly, better than expected, barely even know it was back there. absolutely next level reactions on the road too. thumbs up out the window, waving, the smiles and nods, it was cool to see. until i got home. round the new corner, building boost, head up the gravel hill where the 2wd starts to spin. not enough weight on the rear end yet for the total rig weight. got RIGHT to the top and she stopped spinning and dug. had to back all the way down the driveway and around the corners back to the road where i could unhitch and run up to get the Grand Chero-car. booo i know the picture just a post or 2 ago doesn't look steep, but it's hard to walk on cuz the gravel just slips out from under you.

[57FleetsideC4]

I wish I had your welding/fabricating skills. Hitch looks great and works great to. Steve

[6DoF]

Originally Posted by 57FleetsideC4

I wish I had your welding/fabricating skills. Hitch looks great and works great to. Steve

thanks! only way to learn is just go do it. break some eggs, make a mess, have fun with it.