Yeret
The Village Drunk
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2014
- Posts
- 943
- Reaction score
- 178
- Ram Year
- 1999
- Engine
- 5.9 Magnum
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!
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!