Gary Lewis

Excellent! You are making good progress.

Welcome to the Bullnose Forum! Glad you joined. I'll post the pic, below, but you need to go to Bullnose Forum/Forum FAQ's and learn how to post pics. It isn't that hard. But I don't know what that part is. Perhaps others do. But you'll get a whole lot more lookers if you post the question in the main forum rather than here in New Members Start Here.

That is a noble task! It'll look great when done. And you can take the whole family and half the house with you wherever you want to go.

As has been said, crimp connectors or soldering is the "right" way to do it. Personally, if I wasn't going to take the time on the trail (or more accurately, since I wasn't going to bring the tools on the trail) I'd just go with a roll of electrical tape before I messed with wire nuts. Strip the ends, twist them together and tape over it until you can get back to a place to do it right. A roll of tape doesn't take up as much room as an assortment of wire nuts, and it has a lot of other uses. Plus I've never felt great about how wire nuts work on the stranded wire used in vehicles. I like using them a lot better with the solid single strand you have in house wiring. Guys - Thanks for all of the ideas. I really appreciate them. But I've been playing with the TEST forum all day and haven't had time to process all of them. I will get back to them soon, but I'm pushing hard to get our new "home" sorted out.

Glad you got the fluids changed. Sad you had such bad shipping. That is really a bummer! I thought maybe Bilstein shocks are made in Germany, but it turns out that they are made here in the US in most cases. So unless you know of brands made there which would fit I don't have any suggestions.

Welcome to the Bullnose Forum! Glad you joined. And, glad you finally posted, having joined 6 months ago. But you probably have forgotten the instructions in the email we sent you. You were to go to the New Members Start Here folder, read the guidelines, and then start a new thread/topic to introduce yourself. That's important as we hold everyone to the guidelines, so want you to have had every opportunity to read them. And since they are posted at the top of the NMSH folder we direct you there first crack out of the box. So, please assure me that you've read them. Then we can get on with the whatchamacallit. Speaking of that, we can nail down everything that is supposed to be on the engine if you can find the calibration code. That's explained on the page at Documentation/CALIBRATION INFO & PART #'S. But the label is usually on the valve cover and looks like the pic below. If you can find the calibration # I'll give you a list of the parts that were on the engine when new.

So, what's wrong with having a blender? We could have carrot juice smoothies. And the porch light would let us find the thing in the dark.

The most serious rock crawling usually happens pretty close to the trailers, so trail repairs are so critical. Where it gets more critical is on a trail like the Rubicon that takes 2 days or so to traverse. One or two nights isn't very serious as overlanding goes, and from what I've heard, the Rubicon isn't anywhere close to the hardest rockcrawling trail out there. But when you're a day in and break the arm off your steering knuckle, a trail welder is one of very few options available. Because getting a tow truck in to retrieve a truck that won't steer might not be an option, and if it is, it won't be cheap! (We were warned that tow charges on the trails we were on in Canyonlands National Park will exceed $1000!) But again, I'm not saying that's anywhere near necessary for Ouray, or that it's something that I expect you will eventually need. I'm just enabling! Aw shucks! You mean I have no "good" reason to run out and buy a welder? Having said that, I am wondering about taking wire nuts. I know they have no place in a vehicle's wiring - long term. But, I'm thinking about short term. What if we tear up some wiring? With wire nuts we could use the ~25' roll of #16 I'm taking to effect some temp fixes that I'd replace when we get home. Yes, I could take a soldering gun, solder, connectors, crimpers, heat shrink, heat gun, etc to make a permanent fix. But that would take a lot of time and I'd rather be running the trails than making repairs. Thoughts?

Welcome, Ben! Glad you joined. How 'bout adding "Ben" to your signature? Your call, but I find it a lot more friendly if we can call each other by our names. Lemont, IL. Used to live in Elgin, so know the area. Want to be on our map? Bullnose Forum/Member's Map in the menu. You'll have fun learning on that truck. Since it has a carb it'll be fairly simple, although it is probably a feedback system w/a computer so that complicates it some. Anyway, welcome and I look forward to following your progress with it. And if at some point you want your kids to join then go for it. We strive to keep it family friendly, and I let my 9 yo granddaughter peruse the site.

You need either a break-in oil with high ZDDP or an additive for break-in with gobs of ZDDP. Scotty The Mad Porter, who built my engine, said that I had to use a break-in oil to keep my warranty. So I went with Brad Penn’s break-in oil.

I have a whole lot of extraneous sockets so may have a set of deep metrics that I can put in. But if not, I know where HF is.

Glad you got that email, Jim. And thanks for mentioning it as I should have warned y'all. Yes, there is progress. Pedro uploaded a recent backup of this forum onto our AWS servers and modified the email system, and we are banging on it to test it. At this point it is working better than last time in that we are getting email notification of people registering. However, when I registered this morning with that test user and clicked the "confirm" link I was sent I got an error message. But, the registration worked and we, the admins, got an email to that effect. So apparently the email system on the forum is working better this round. And if all checks out we may move around August 1st.

Yes, "the back of beyond" is far enough away that getting out might be up to you. Hence the need for any possibly-needed tool. Good points on the suspension and tank straps. I doubt the straps will come loose as I double-nutted them, but I do want to be prepared in any event. And the suspension could be critical. Deep sockets are in order.

I'm sure you know, but for the others, overlanding and rock crawling are two very different things. The true overlanding vehicles I've seen don't have nearly the capability of Big Blue for going over difficult things. They seem to take fairly late model vehicles and add gear for camping in the back of beyond. Sleeping facilities, serious ice chests if not refrigerators, dual battery systems and many times solar charging thereof, etc. Big Blue is a mix of offroader, albeit not "serious", overlander, and work truck. And we all know that a jack of all trades is a master of none. But, he should be capable of doing what little overlanding and offroading I want to do. However, he probably couldn't come close to rock crawling. But the ability to repair things when in the back of beyond might come in very handy, so the Titanium could fit into both an overlanding as well as a work truck.

Good to know, Jim, thanks. Yes, if I were welding I'd probably have the engine running. However, I will say that I've run the compressor several times with the engine off, and it lights most of the LED's on the inverter. So I know that the battery can handle it for a while. Anyway, the HF Titanium is an option - if I want to carry a welder.

Wow! That is just barely 2021. And if it slips any it won't be. How can they schedule that far out?

Interesting. It does show it as a ground. And usually taking a solid state device to ground doesn't hurt things, so I think I'd ground orange and see what happens. I imagine the intent was for orange to run all the way down to the O2 sensor, but just grounding it anywhere for a test might prove something. Good luck!

Thanks, Dane. Didn't do anything "to" the truck today. But as reported in the Ouray thread, I did a bit of packing to get ready for the trip.

Cool! What width are they? 6"?

The only use of that computer I can find in the master parts catalog is as shown below. So, do you have the AOD transmission? You'd have an "O" on the shift indicator with a "D" in the middle of it for Overdrive if you do. If so, then this should be your parts list. And, if so, then the O2 sensor should be E63Z 9F472-A. I don't know if that is a 1-wire or a 2-wire. However, I think it must be a 2-wire to take the orange wire. Is it possible someone put the wrong O2 sensor in?

Well, yes the EFI would solve a lot of problems, but that's not gonna happen 'twixt now and September. Hopefully this winter. Anyway, I'm glad you think I'm taking the right tools. But the step ladder might be a good idea. However, I can stand on the bumper and get there, although I don't like to do that since the chrome is quite thin. My plan is to go back in my thread and see if I documented what jets and rods are in the carb. If so then I'll work through the tuning guide and see what jets and rods I might need at 8000+ feet and then make sure I have them in the kits. So I might ping you on that to see if you agree with my thinking. And, thanks!

Dane - That's a nice truck, and well worth the money.

Did more toolbox loading today. Bill - I've tagged you as I'd like to know your thoughts on what I might need in my "carburetion" toolbox in order to do jet and/or rod changes, or anything else that comes up. Here's what I have at present: And I have the Edelbrock manual on tuning the carbs. Any thoughts, y'all? Also, I went through my spare sockets and ended up with full sets of 1/4" & 3/8" drive in both SAE and metric. And since I already had the 1/2" drive SAE sockets in, I think all I'm missing are some of the metric sockets used on the suspension, like 15 and 17 MM. So I need to do some research to see what is used there. But, I'd be thrilled if some of you know off the top of your head.

The only way to tell if they are ok is to inspect them closely, and if you don't know what you are looking for it would probably be best to replace them.