Gary Lewis

I like those! Bummer that the trim rings won't work with the later boots.

All of my experience has been with mechanical clutches, save for Big Blue. And I was always taught to have at least 1/2" travel in the clutch pedal before hitting the throwout bearing. As that appears to be in keeping with the shop manual, I'd say that's what you should have - at least 1/2".

Yes, both are specific to this website, although Nabble only does the forum. But Nabble does find the name of the thread in the title of the post. So in Shaun's case something like 13 of the Nabble finds are the post titles, and that's not very helpful. And I don't know that I can fix that. Similarly, Freefind does find the same post twice - once in the "regular" view and once in the "topics" view. But I can kill the "topics" view to reduce the spam. However, I repeated Shaun's test and there were things found by Nabble that Freefind did not find. And, Nabble found today's posts, like in this thread, that Freefind won't find until tomorrow morning's run.

The real question is if the Nabble 36 are legit. As in my "Dad's Truck Build" example, the vast majority of the Nabble "finds" are just the name of the thread in the 562 posts. And I don't find that very helpful. So, are the 36 Nabble finds helpful? Are they different than the Freefind finds?

Guys - I think I've gotten the search option thing figured out, but want y'all to confirm it. PLEASE! We now have two search options - Freefind in the upper left and Nabble in the lower right of the screen grab below. Freefind searches the whole of the site, meaning forum and documentation, and Nabble only does the forum. I did a search for "Dad's Truck Build", and Freefind found 4 instances while Nabble found 576. At first blush it would seem Nabble is better - until you realize that there are 562 posts in the Dad's Truck Build thread and Nabble found the name of the thread in each of those posts. I can't account for the difference between the 562 posts and the 576 finds. (I'm not about to spend hours going through all of the results to find out.) So maybe there's something somewhere that Nabble found which Freefind missed, which worries me. Which is where you come in: I'd really appreciate it if you would test the two different search engines and tell us your opinion.

The reference material is at Documentation/Exterior/Bumpers. And, as you can see in the illustration there, all you need are the bolts. The front bumper bolts directly to the frame. And it looks like you did a good job of cutting the brush guard off. Won't take much to clean that up.

Pretty sure that's the same Warn front bumper I have on Big Blue. Look at those rear springs! Two sets!

Wow! That looks good!

Pete - What I said was "I believe it is pretty much the same as POR15 with respect to adherence to rust." I am in no way saying they are the same product. But they do both adhere extremely well to rust. Or, maybe I should say that I know POR15 does, and can only assume MS does from what you've said. I'm not at all pushing POR15. MS may very well be better. But I've used POR15 many times and with proper preparation it adheres well. When I run out of POR I'll probably buy some MS just to find out for myself. But so far the POR has not let me down. And since I have quite a supply it'll be some time before I run out.

Jonathan - Thanks. Yes, the main forum page will still be the default page. But you could link to the About page if you wanted and it would be an intro to the site. (I'm sure the About page needs to be revised, so let me know what you see that needs changed.) On Resources, there are some good links in there. So I'm loathe to just delete it. Can we wait until the rest of the revisions are done and we know what things look like? The Admins are the only ones that can see into the Admin Only folder, but we need it. And I don't know where else to put it. How Did You Find Us has now been pinned to New Members Start Here. And Marketplace has been created and the other three moved into it.

Dave - Come to the show and I can at least buy you lunch. Maybe you could sleep in the shop?

That would be a good project to teach him on.

Guess what one Big Blue's gonna have?!?!

Not yet, Bill. We need to rethink a bunch of the pages, placement, etc. But working together like we've been doing appears to work. We've been kicking around ideas and it is now starting to take shape.

Thanks, Dane & Shaune. I've gone ahead and created the Documentation page and moved all the documentation under it, lock/stock/barrel. Meaning I've not looked for a home for About/Contact Me, nor even thought about where some of the contents should go. But at least now you can almost get a feel for what I'm up to - pretty much what Vic suggested. And, I hope, pretty well in line with what others suggested for a "home page". The next step will be to find a theme that doesn't push the menu into the hamburger, at least for desktop users, so you can see the three choices. After that I need to create homes in the forum for the stuff in the menu under the forum, and at the same time do some other merging of things, like the For Sale, Want To Buy, and eBay & Craigslist folders into one pinned folder called Market Place. (No one said boo about that, so I assume y'all are ok with it.) Then I need to find homes for the extraneous stuff in the Documentation menu. But, I really, REALLY would like y'all to give me input. For instance, what would you change on the About page? Do you like the move of the prayer and pic to the About page? Etc, etc, etc. There are lots of little changes that may get overlooked, but if you see something that doesn't look right then PLEASE let me know what the problem is and how you'd fix it.

Good! Well done!

Well done! But does it stop?

Given the "Patina" look on my truck, just old used caps in moderate condition will be plenty sufficient. I've worked very hard(ly) at getting just the right "Patina" on it, for the last 22 years. Thankfully, old faded paint is now the "in" thing it seems. Next thing you know, everyone will be wanting to cummins swap stuff as well. I guess I just didn't know how ahead of the game I was...... Yep, Big Blue is getting more and more "in" as well - at least from the patina stand point. No Cummins, but a Scotty The Mad Porter 460 will have to do. Behind that will be the ZF5 you helped me get way back when. Up front will be a D60. (Interesting that Chrysler put that as a rear diff behind the Hemi back in the day.) Nothing flash, just solid. Anyway, I'll keep these caps until you look them over. And, I have the screws.

Paul - I have 3 NOS solid center caps I'm taking to the show. They are $80/ea as that's what I paid for them. And, I have some used ones, of varying conditions, that will go for next to, if not nothing.

I just posted on the Website Revision - Potential New Home Page thread, and would like everyone's thoughts.

I just posted on the Website Revision - Potential New Home Page thread, and would like everyone's thoughts.

Everyone: I'm working in the background to try to implement a cleaner look for the site. As you'll have seen if you are reading along, I've removed two Facebook sections as well as a couple of search boxes. And, if I get the Freefind search to cover the forum itself then I'll eliminate the Nabble search that currently says "Search Forum" and we'll be down to one search function for everything.Plus, I plan to move ahead with essentially the changes that Vic has suggested in the menu. BUT I WANT YOUR CONCURRANCE BEFORE I GO TO ALL THAT WORK. The intent is to have a menu instead of a hamburger, and it will have three things showing:Forum: And beneath that will be nothing as all forum-related things should be in the forum itself.Documentation: Clicking that will bring up the documentation menu fairly well like today, with the exceptions of Forum and About Me/Contact Me and, hopefully, some good rationalization. (Not sure what I'm going to do with the About Me/Contact Me stuff, but will figure it out.)About or Home: This will hopefully do what we've been discussing of having some static content moved there and free up the white space on the forum pages. Seems to me it should have the picture, the prayer, and a description that tells what the website is about. Plus a "contact me" thing.So, what do you think? Will that do what we've been discussing? I'll be creating the About page while waiting for your responses, but won't make the major changes to the menu until I get thoughts from several of you 'cause it is going to be a lot of work.

Oh yes: You may notice that there are actually two Freefind search bars at the top of the page. One, like the previous Facebook stuff, gets hidden by the menu, and I don't know how to fix that. I've added plenty of line feeds " " but that didn't really fix it.Having said that, perhaps it will fix itself if/when I find the right Weebly theme that doesn't have the hamburger going away.

I can't speak for MasterSeries as I've not used it, but I believe it is pretty much the same as POR15 with respect to adherence to rust. If you get any loose rust off and the remaining rust is clean a moisture-cure urethane will bond to it forever. There is no getting it off, at least not mechanically. In fact, it adheres better to rusty metal than to bare metal. But you want that rust to be part of the truck, not loose and ready to fall off. So wire brushing or sanding is good prep. In fact, the scratch marks from sanding provide extra "tooth" for the paint to adhere to.

Vic - I really thought I'd replied to this, but it doesn't appear so. Sorry. I did find the extraneous Facebook code and took it out, but along the way I deleted the other one at the top by accident. Let's see if the one at the bottom is adequate, although I need to add some cushion below it and haven't figured out how. As for the searches, I added "Search Documentation" to the top one and Search Forum to the other. That's because that's exactly what they do - at the moment. The Freefind search doesn't search the forum as I have it excluded, and the forum search doesn't search the rest of the site as it comes from Nabble. However, my friend that is a Nabble guru is coaching me on the Freefind search, and is saying that I have too much excluded. So I'm going to work on that a bit and see if I can get Freefind to find the forum stuff as well. Then we can have only one search option.