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MAB3L, the most reasonable truck on the road!


bhgl

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Sounds like a fun trip .

There's a round, black vacuum chamber on the forward lower inside edge of the passenger side inner fender liner, I found the plastic vacuum pipe to it was perished as was the vertical plastic vacuum pipe to the heater's hot water valve ~ it crumbled in my hand .

It's supposed to travel vertically and be held in place by hooks molded into the leading edge of the heater box, God alone knows how/why I was mis routed close to the engine where the heat killed it .

Also the 10MM I.D. hoses to the fuel tank vapor recovery system were all perished at their ends, the center of each hose looked fine .
I've been looking into the matter and I figure it's just perished plastics and rubbers, frankly I'm not too concerned with getting it repaired at the moment, but will definitely like to have it working efficiently when I install the new AC system, hopefully I can get it working with a patch or replacement of a hose or 2.

I just don't want to start touching those old plastics right now and end up with 0 airflow before the trip starts.
 


superj

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i understand the humidity part. i live in a very high humidity part of texas as i live about 1/4 mile from the gulf of mexico. its been roughly 95 everyday but the humidity makes the temperature feel like its 110+.

i live almost at the bottom of texas. i live in corpus christi which is about 2.5 hours from the bottom tip of texas in brownsville.

they always talk about climate change but its not effecting down here. the summers are the same as they always have been and the winters are sometimes cold and sometimes not. nothing has changed temperature wise down here since i moved here in 1993.


its funny. i live really close to the gulf so i get a nice ocean breeze year round. that actually lowers the temperature in my part of town by about five degrees compared to if you go in to the airport, which is about 20 miles from me. conversely, it also makes winter feel a lot colder than it actually is since we have such humidity year round. 50 degrees feels like you are dying because of hte wet cold wind of the ocean.
 

bhgl

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i understand the humidity part. i live in a very high humidity part of texas as i live about 1/4 mile from the gulf of mexico. its been roughly 95 everyday but the humidity makes the temperature feel like its 110+.

i live almost at the bottom of texas. i live in corpus christi which is about 2.5 hours from the bottom tip of texas in brownsville.

they always talk about climate change but its not effecting down here. the summers are the same as they always have been and the winters are sometimes cold and sometimes not. nothing has changed temperature wise down here since i moved here in 1993.


its funny. i live really close to the gulf so i get a nice ocean breeze year round. that actually lowers the temperature in my part of town by about five degrees compared to if you go in to the airport, which is about 20 miles from me. conversely, it also makes winter feel a lot colder than it actually is since we have such humidity year round. 50 degrees feels like you are dying because of hte wet cold wind of the ocean.
Don't want to get into politics and stuff in a thread, but you are right to an extent, it affects places differently, since Coastal areas don't go through as strong of temperature fluctuations it's harder to feel things first hand. Whereas where I live, our peaks and lows go from 95F all the way down to those -30F days. Lately though, the summers have been HOT and DRY causing a lot of forest fires, where the winters have been super mild, meaning there's even less water going into the system come spring because of less snowfall/buildup.

I've always wanted to head down Texas way and see the sites, the few folks I've met from Texas always talk about having to drive hours to get to the next big city or what not, and that's exactly like where I live, just with fewer trees I guess haha.
 

superj

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yeah, hours between big cities and towns. i don't even live in a big city and its hours from me to a big city, or even more to another state.

Screenshot 2024-08-15 101633.JPG


i live where the "X here" is. i am actually between corpus christi and mustang/padre island.

that 852 mile trip takes 12 hours and 17 minutes. the 838 mile route takes 12 hours and 44 minutes.

its funny. a little more driving (4 hours) and its the same seat time as going to canada from the top x in the picture as from the bottom of texas.


and something else i have noticed living here versus other states i have lived. when going somewhere in other states, the people tell you distance in miles. like its 100 miles to atlanta, when i was in georgia. here, people tell you distance in time, its 2 hours to san antonio and 4 hours to houston.
 

pentode

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how are the temps up there? i have never been north of virginia, other than very very short trips. i have visited minnesota and new york when the weather was warm for about 2 or 3 days each and that is as far north as i have been.

my dad was in virginia in the marine corps when i was a kid. i would go stay the summers with him, though, so no cold weather. the farthest north i have lived is camp lejeune north carolina, for one winter. so i have no idea how summers and winters are for normal life in anywhere that is not considered south. only other places is southern california, where i grew up, and hawaii, where we lived for 3 years when i was really little.

i have also been to yakima washington during the summer. my dad was stationed there as a recruiter before virginia. but still, only during summer did we go.


i have always wondered what its like in canada and alaska. you see stuff on tv and it always looks snowy and cold but i feel like that is not the truth for year round living.

its probably the same as texas is presented on tv. people think texas is sandy deserts and cactus with hot all the time but here in south texas, we are plains land. long stretches of grassy fields with small trees that are windblown. and hot, yes, from april to december its hot, usually. and i mean the heat index is over 100 degrees alot of the time because of hte humidity.

so i am very interested in your pictures and hearing how it is. temps, greenery, animals seen, stuff like that
I lived in Prince Rupert BC for a few years, about 90 miles from Alaska and I’ve been to the Alaskan panhandle several times. It’s a staggeringly beautiful place, I highly recommend checking it out if you ever get the chance. As @bhgl mentioned, it’s amazing the difference between the coast and the interior up there. The coast is technically a rain forest and it’s about as green and lush as it’s possible to get and the temps are amazingly moderate. If it’s 65F today, you can bet it’ll be between 64-66 tomorrow. Winters and summers are both very mild along the coast. Once you get 30-40 miles inland though, all bets are off. We once to a road trip up to Hyder AK - it was 65F when we left Rupert and by the time we got to Terrace an hour inland it was 110F.
That whole part of the North still feels like the frontier. If you ever really wanted to get away from it all, that would be a great place to go.
 

bhgl

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I lived in Prince Rupert BC for a few years, about 90 miles from Alaska and I’ve been to the Alaskan panhandle several times. It’s a staggeringly beautiful place, I highly recommend checking it out if you ever get the chance. As @bhgl mentioned, it’s amazing the difference between the coast and the interior up there. The coast is technically a rain forest and it’s about as green and lush as it’s possible to get and the temps are amazingly moderate. If it’s 65F today, you can bet it’ll be between 64-66 tomorrow. Winters and summers are both very mild along the coast. Once you get 30-40 miles inland though, all bets are off. We once to a road trip up to Hyder AK - it was 65F when we left Rupert and by the time we got to Terrace an hour inland it was 110F.
That whole part of the North still feels like the frontier. If you ever really wanted to get away from it all, that would be a great place to go.
I go up there about once a year, usually by flying for that reason. The folks who live up there are really special. If you live there, you typically CHOOSE to live there.

One of my buddies has a Masters in Philosophy, has published papers and poetry, and his day job is a heavy equipment operator for mining operations. To this day he writes poetry in the cab of his tractor whenever he's waiting.
 

bhgl

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Alrighty folks! The front end is for the most part buttoned up, but we may need to address a few things, here's all that went in to the front over the last few days:

-Bilstein 4600 Shocks
-New Lower Ball Joints
-New outer Tie Rods
-New wheel bearings, + fresh grease!
-New Brake Pads
-New Brake Disks
-New Slide Pin Boots
-AC Delco 3 degree Camber/Caster Adjustment Cams on all 4 sides of my upper control Arm
-Belltech 3 Inch drop coils.
-Bump stop delete (room for even a pancake bump stop is severely limited so I may not even install one)

Results:
The truck now rides much smoother in the front, and steering confidence is much higher, even with the vehicle being VERY unaligned.

The old shocks had no return on their own, one I compressed by hand is still sitting compressed in my garage, the lower ball joints on both sides were cooked, and the outer tie rods while not great on one side and bad on the other, but were worth a replacement.

Brake Performance is drastically improved as well.

How much of this is down to simply having some newer components, vs. it being lowered is up for debate. The rear still isn't lowered and has it's original shocks.

Some potential issues:

I didn't do my due diligence by leaving the upper control arm bolts untightened while having the car up in the air, as a result, I think both sides while being very unaligned, also have the upper control arm's sitting at very very different heights and angles. The driver's side sitting much lower. This evening I'm hoping to lift the truck, loosen the upper control arm bolts on both sides, then drop it back on the ground to re-torque everything.

Aside from some typical spring settling noise, while going over a rather large bump on the test drive there was a noticeable metal on metal scrapping sound, I know this sounds weird but it sounded like it had some resonance to it. When I got under the vehicle post test drive to take a look at everything, I noticed the driver's side coil spring is a lot closer to the bump stop compared to the other side, to the point I could barely put my finger between the two. I'm wondering whether this might have something to do with how the spring itself is seated (it doesn't look as though it's being bent or compressed weird), or if it's due to that upper control arm.
_____

I'll post some pictures of the truck soon, really wish I had remembered to take some good before and after photos, but the truck does now have a fun small rake to it without being so low that it's impractical, I imagine it's still got some settling to do.

I have my alignment scheduled for tomorrow, so if anyone has any recommendations on what I should do ahead of time to maybe make their job easier/save me some bucks on the front end setup at the shop please let me know.

More updates soon!
 
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sgtsandman

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You didn't reuse the old grease?! How wasteful!
 

superj

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your spring might be sitting so close because the truck is not aligned yet. the camber bolts might not be set up identical so it could be leaning one way more than the other side is.

the noise will require more hands on investigation and more bump test drives
 

bhgl

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your spring might be sitting so close because the truck is not aligned yet. the camber bolts might not be set up identical so it could be leaning one way more than the other side is.

the noise will require more hands on investigation and more bump test drives
So while I was home I was able to loosen the upper control arm bolts with the vehicle jacked up, lower it, then tighten them, which seems to have evened them out.

The coil spring is still mighty close to the upper bump stop however (the one that's non-removable and attached to the frame).

The truck has had a frame repair done on the front before, but as far as I can tell most if not all of the damage was to the sections in front of the control arm. Still, I'm wondering if that might be the cause.
 

bhgl

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Well folks!

Some good news, the mystery noises have pretty much cleared up, I will have to trim the inner fender linning though as its rubbing pretty bad on one side where it's not properly secured.

We got the rear dropped with Belltech drop leafs and Bilsteins installed.

I had to pickup new shackles for both sides as they were more or less seized in place and would've been more work to take off, replace bushings.

I can say for sure the ride has improved, however we're dealing with some pretty brutal alignment woes.

For one thing, I encountered probably the laziest shop I've ever met. Even though I made an appointment, as soon as they attached alignment equipment to the truck they said, and I quote "I'm getting too old to work on trucks like these, I'm not going to be able to align it at 3pm on a friday." Didn't even bother to give me a preliminary measurement, at least he didn't charge me I guess. So I've been trying to eyeball adjust things at least to get some miles on the truck and break in a few components.

Toe is messed, but that's fixable and normal. Camber is extreme though! I installed these AC Delco alignment cams which are supposed to give me 3 degrees of adjustment castor and camber, but i can't seem to get anything remotely close to a proper alignment, even with both caster and camber bolts cranked to their max I'm still looking at some heavily negative camber.
 

pentode

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I suppose I would need your tire size as well haha, just remembered, but if there anywhere near stock (225/70r15) it looks like you've got a 3.55 rear end.

View attachment 113100

With a 3.73 rear end, at 100 KpH you'd be looking at closer to 2150 RPM. Let's just say you definitely don't have a 4.10

I was considering dropping down to a 3.55 ratio for fuel economy, so if you're getting 24-25 solid, at those speeds and a 3.55 ratio with no other supporting mods, that's good data for me to consider swapping in some lower gears.

To help me out, if you've got the time and patience, would you mind doing a proper fuel economy run next time you're out and letting me know your stats? (fuel up to full before, setting trip odometer, refueling at same pump to full)

If you're near where I'm at without any mods, then you might see some serious improvement with just an E-Fan installed (I'll give you my recommendations on how to go about it if you'd like), and on the highway you might get some gains just by having a reasonable topper/bed cover installed.
Fuel prices finally dropped enough for me to fill the truck up. I did a 51.8 mile run today 80% highway at 70mph, half the trip with a snowblower in the back. (No cap and some snowblower in the air stream) I got 23.11 US MPG. (My truck is in miles but I know you can convert it). I did fill back up at the same pump. Hope that's useful data for you.
 

Lefty

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Someone recently told me that a person can get very good mileage by keeping under 3,000 rpm. Granted that's hard to do. You really have to slow down on the open roads. Maybe yours will get 55mph at less than 3,000.
 

pentode

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Someone recently told me that a person can get very good mileage by keeping under 3,000 rpm. Granted that's hard to do. You really have to slow down on the open roads. Maybe yours will get 55mph at less than 3,000.
@Lefty Is this directed at me? If so you may have misunderstood. OP asked me to check mileage with my rear end and I’m posting the data. I’m thrilled with 23mpg. Speed limit is 70 on the stretch of road I was on and I was turning 2400rpm for the record. 😄
 
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