Yeret's Two-Week-Fixin'-Stuff-Up Blog

As of today, I begin my two-week vacation from work, and boy do I need it but who doesn't, right? LOL.

As some of you know, I had quite the saga with my now ex-mechanic resulting in crap getting "fixed" and some fixes getting crap.

My truck has developed quite the list of issues, some resulting from shade-tree-mechanic syndrome, some pre-existing and others from lord only knows who/what. So this time, I'M going to take charge of things.

This is my goal list and this topic will essentially be my two-week "fixin' stuff" blog.

-replace overdrive switch. I currently have to smash the button for the overdrive to switch off/on and sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

-replace multi-function switch. I'm having multiple issues relating to it and admittedly, I'm playing the ole Swaptronics game with it, but **** it. I've got the cash to spend at the moment, so I'm just gonna replace it and see what happens. Also, the low-beams have a short and only work when the steering wheel is in the "up" (or as I like to call it, "school bus") position. I will be examining the wiring in the steering column in hopes of revealing that very annoying problem.

-replace transfer case vacuum switch. Okay, when my truck went under the wrench, my 4x4 worked. Now it doesn't. I can't find any obvious problems like a mis/non-placed vacuum line but I've nonetheless found that I'm not getting a signal to the actuator when I shift into 4x4. Seems the vacuum switch is a weak point and I got one for pretty much nothing, so I'm gonna replace it and see what happens. I've actually tried replacing it earlier, but the damn thing seems to be welded into the transfer case. Hopefully I can figure out some way to remove it, LOL.

-exhaust work. After doing some reading, I've got a plan for re-doing the exhaust. And now that one of the welds on my y-pipe to catalytic converter section blowed up, now's the time to put that into motion. I'll post details when it's done. This will be one of the jobs that I'm going to pass off to someone else and lucky for me there's a very good exhaust shop in my town.

-attempt to find the source of my "no bus" problem. This insanely annoying problem is still screwing with me and after unplugging every single module one at a time, the problem still remains. Either I'm lucky and the cluster is just fubared or I'm (more than likely) not lucky and there's a wiring issue somewhere.

-install modified throttle body. I really want to do this, especially once I get my exhaust worked on. The only problem I have is that the bolt holes on the throttle body have a "dip" to them as a result of the chamfering towards the barrels. As such, if I just re-use the original bolts, all four corners are going to have a small leak to the outside. I've been looking for bolts with a tapered head to fill in the gaps, but have not been successful so far, mostly because I can't find a consistent size of the original bolts. If anyone would care to chime in on the size of these bolts, I would REALLY appreciate it. Worst case scenario, I've read that a dab of RTV will take care of this problem, but I'm really more of a "seal it with the parts" rather than a "seal it with goop" kind of guy.

-replace front brake hoses. I have replaced everything except these on the front end and she still pulls hard right under braking. A different guy who worked on the brakes said that the driver-side was very difficult to bleed as it would yield very little anything, so there seems to be something blocking it up. With any kind of luck, a new hose will address this.

-finish my A/C delete. Apparently, finish the job 100% was too complicated for my mechanic as he tore everything out, but left the compressor in place because he refused to get a non-A/C belt. Simple enough job to finish, but dammit, this should have been done by now.

-install aftermarket radio. I've got the harness adapter and the plug to the radio. All I gotta do is heat-shrink the wires together and plug everything in. No bull**** "cut and twist the wires together" job here. As they said in Face/Off, "the procedure is completely reversible."

-show up to work midway through my vacation and do a burnout in the parking lot. Okay, I've already been informed that this is frowned upon, so for the sake of job security, I'll refrain from this.

And likely some other stuff that I can't remember at the moment. If I do anything else noteworthy, I'll mention it. It honestly shouldn't take too long to attend to all this, but it seems every time that I say that, something comes up and screws it all up. Ah well, trials and tribulations are half the fun (except when they're caused by someone else's jack-sticking around).

Eywa ngahu!

Replacement belt, look into the ones below. You can go with a dummy pulley, like here:
Autozone AC Replacement Dummy Pulley

Or if you are so inclined, you can simply bypass the pulley completely, I have a list of belts that will work.

Just replaced the O/D switch. Wow, for once an easy repair! All I had to do was pry off the retainer ring from the shifter lever with my fingernails then use a combination of my fingernails and fladhead screwdriver to pull out the old switch. After properly applying a little dielectric grease, I pressed the new switch and retainer ring back on. After a brief test-drive, my overdrive switches off/on no problemo now. Hoowoo!

You've got a busted wire or two in your column, a multifunction switch may or may not fix this.

Yeah, I've figured as much. I'll consult my diagram again, but I think that the purple wire going to the combo-switch connector feeds the low beams and I've read that tilting the steering wheel up and down many times over time can pop wires loose at the connector. I'll be checking this out when I dig in again.

Replacing the switch is more of a "I can, so I will" thing. Let's call it preventative maintenance, LOL.

That sounds about right. I believe the harness is taped together, so it'll be a bit of a ***** to dig through and find the break.

And don't put your wheel up and down anymore.

LOL, I'm not the kind of person who does that. In fact, it very much irritates me when someone drives my vehicle, then jacks the wheel up when they're done driving. It's because someone else who owned the truck before me apparently insisted on doing this is why I'm currently stuck shifting the wheel up whenever I need to use low beams. Fortunately as a result of the time of year and my work shift I don't have to use them very often but still want to fix the problem. I find it a bit harder to countersteer while fishtailing through the snow when the wheel is angled so high, LOL.

Sorry for lack of updates, guys. There were a couple of birthdays in the family this weekend, so I was spending more time celebrating than doing any work.

Festivities are over, so today I decided to tackle that combo switch and see if I could find the reason why my low-beams don't work when the wheel is in the (personally preferred) down position.

First, the replacement part...



Local O'Reilly's BWD part. Yes, "Made in China" but it seems damn near impossible to find replacement parts that are "Made in USA" these days.

Steering wheel cover removed...



And now, armed with my new "weird screw type" driver set, I was able to remove those godforsaken tamper-proof torx screws.

After removing said screws and popping off the rear connector cover, I am greeted with a sight that I have all but expected to see ...



That would be a purple with white stripe wire popped loose from the connector. This wire is *drum roll* the hot feed to my low beams.

Just loose and dangling and totally NOT supplying juice to the low-beams...



There's a tamper-proof torx screw that holds the connector into the switch. It was a bit tricky to remove but after fiddling around, I got it out and with a bit of flat-head persuation, popped the connector from the switch. I then pressed the loose the wire back into the connector until I heard the ever-satisfying "click" of a strong connection. I'm thinking "HOLY ****, are my worries over?!"



I install the new switch, re-connect the battery and...



NOOOOO, the low-beams still aren't working! I'm thinking "****, there must be another issue in the circuit." I head back over to the cab and notice this...



The damned wire popped back out from the connector (note the di-electric grease)! WTF? I'm guessing the "male" connector shoved the "female" connector away when I pressed the switch into the connector. I declare "Sorry guys, but this is one marriage that BOTH of you WILL say 'I do'" and shove the wire back into the connector. I turn the low-beams back on, walk back out front, and...



HOOWOO, the low-beams are working! With the steering wheel lowered! Finally, after years of messing with this super-annoying problem, it is resolved!

At least for now. I'm still a bit worried that the wire popped back out of the connector so easily, though it did press back in quite firm the second time. I fear that this isn't the last that I've seen of this problem but for now, it's fixed!

I might have to warn everyone that drives my truck that if I ever find out that they adjusted the wheel, I will kick them in the crotch. Or I could just make it easy and not re-install the adjuster lever...

As a couple notes. "No Bus" problem still persists. Also, intermittent wipers are still "stuck" on one speed. I suspect an issue with the timer module which I believe can also potentially short the signal feed to the gauge cluster. Will have to look further into this, though this particular module has proven difficult to find a new replacement for. Just not a commonly-replaced part I guess, LOL.

Went in to to the belt drive today. The objective is to remove the A/C compressor and install a non-AC belt to finish my A/C removal job. Seemed easy enough and for the most part it was. Until I went to install the new belt...

Try as I might, there is absolutely no way that this belt is going to work. I tried every single pulley as the "last one on" and the belt is simply too short to work. From what I've read, this seems to be a very common problem for guys that want to bypass or remove their air conditioning. Apparently the accessory bracket is different between the two, which is something that I did not anticipate. As a result, using a non-AC belt on a truck originally equipped with AC is not going to work. So, it looks like I'm going to have to head down to the local O'Reillys and find a belt that will work. From what I've read, people have used belts anywhere between 90 and 92 inches. Bleck, guess I'm just gonna have to hope that the guys are okay with me playing trial and error with multiple belts until I find one that's just right.

Anywhere from 0.5" to 1" longer should work.

Nice man, thanks for sharing with us. I like your comment in your first post about the tilt steering "school bus" position. I got a kick out of that, partially because I love driving like that, it feels wrong at this point to have it any other way

90" belt did the trick, belt drive is finished. That should take care of my wet-weather squeaking now.

To my dismay, however, my coolant leak has returned with a vengeance. It's weird, I was leaking coolant, then all of a sudden and for the last month, no coolant loss anywhere. Now just like that, it's back big time. It's coming from the passenger side front of the intake manifold somewhere. Seems it's either leaking through the intake gasket, the temperature sender, the heater hose inlet or the water neck. And I can't mess with cooling system stuff without making a big mess and with all the dogs around, I'd rather not mess with it any more than I have to. Probably gonna let a shop deal with this one.

On a brighter note, I went down to the local exhaust shop and set up an appointment for Monday afternoon. I'm going to have the y-pipe swapped with a 2.5" diameter going to a single inlet 3" Magnaflow catalytic and a nice, loud Cherry Bomb Extreme (it's technically a muffler, not a glasspack, LOL). Basically, it's following the later-year second gen exhaust setup, so I shouldn't think that there will be any fitment issues. Fingers crossed that this will work, LOL.

And of course, new exhaust manifold gaskets. As expected, the dude rolled his eyes when I told him that the last guy to have the logs off used some high-temperature goop instead of my SUPPLIED gaskets.

For the hell of it, I checked the torque on my intake manifold mounting bolts and found that all but two or three of them were short of their 12 ft/lbs spec. One on the driver side front started tightening down at only 5 ft/lbs! After running a few errands, the puddle on the front passenger side seems to have dried up, but will obviously keep an eye out for it's return.

Well crap, looks like I'm still leaking coolant. It's not as bad as it was, but a leak's a leak, dammit! I really hope that I'm not going to have to yank the manifold off again, considering that's the exact action that set the whole matter with my mechanic into motion to begin with. If it comes to that, hopefully the grade 8 bolts that Hughes sent me with the repair kit are a little tougher than the original ones.

After unplugging the central timer module, my gauge cluster did not act up for the first time in weeks. Odd, considering that I unplugged this a while ago and it didn't help things at all. Perhaps the short in the low beams, which is now fixed, was working with the (suspected faulty due to intermittent wipers not working right) CTM to cause this? I've ordered a different one to see what happens.

Or maybe I just got lucky and when I drive out tomorrow, the same **** happens again. Who knows? The journey continues, LOL.

Just got back from the exhaust shop. All went well except my man was unable to fit 2.5" pipe to the manifolds, so he had to go with 2.25" pipe instead. Eh, it's still bigger than the old one, not to mention it just looks much nicer. The new, shiny pipe makes the truck look several years newer, LOL.

The Cherry Bomb is actually much quieter than I thought, though it might just need to be broken in. The Turbo Thrush that I had before was really quiet for the first few hundred miles but it opened up nicely afterwards. The note is VERY deep. Definitely sounds like a truck V8. As expected, the red paint has already burned off. It's just there to make the part look nice on the shelf I guess, LOL.

The engine feels much looser under throttle though it stuttered a shade if you snap it. It did the same thing when I had my exhaust work done last time, so I guess the computer just has to "learn" the new exhaust profile. It'll do a much better job handling it once it's been flashed of course.

And as much as I hate to jinx it, but my "no bus" problem does indeed seem to finally be resolved after unplugging the central timer module. Now that the tach works properly again, I really see that the engine is MUCH looser and revvier than it was when I first got it back. The new rings seem to have broken in very nicely. I'm hoping that the new module that is in it's way will resolve my intermittent wiper issue as well.

Cherry Bomb extreme right? It has no packing. Same thing as a Flowmaster 10. No breaking in lol

Regular glasspacks sound rather good as well imo . I'm an old man, quiet it is for me haha

Think I've finally found that pesky coolant leak. I believe it was simply a lose clamp on the hose where it goes to the heater inlet. It didn't seem obvious at first, but when I tightened it up, I noticed that it went pretty tight pretty quick. After close inspection I noticed the head was binding against the intake manifold (it's pretty tight in there), tricking me into thinking that it was tight. After a series of rotating, tightening, rotating, tightening, I got the bugger good and tight and CLEAR of the manifold so that there was no doubt.

Ran the engine for a while, all was dry. Went out for a drive, got back and all was dry. I noticed that the air in the system was burbling through the overflow which made for a nice reference; air was flowing though the overflow rather than out through a hose.

All I gotta do now is fully bleed the system and hope that the damn system stays tight this time, LOL.

Also really digging the new exhaust. The low, deep tone really sounds "truckish" and the engine feels so much looser under throttle. I really gotta get my new throttle body on now, LOL.

Despite the new central timer module, the intermittent wipers are still not working correctly. The only thing left to do at this point is tear off the cowl cover and look for anything obviously wrong with the wiper motor itself. Not really sure what I'm looking for though, LOL, but it's the only thing left that I can reasonably check. I have noticed via wiper marks on the windshield that the wipers are not "parking" in what should be their fully rested position. Hmm...

Got the new throttle body installed. I had to use a bit of black RTV on the corners to seal the bolt washers to the surface as the chamfering drew back into the bolt holes. Haven't run the engine yet, just figured to give the RTV as much time to cure as I can. I will report on any differences tomorrow.