Gary Lewis

Oh no! I'm glad I didn't have a snake IN my truck. But thanks for the birthday wishes. Yes, I got to spend it the way I wanted.

I agree with all Jim said. In addition, I don't think you have anything to worry about. Yes, the pressure is low when at hot idle. But assuming the 300 six is like the V8's where the oil pressure pickup point is at the end of the chain, you have enough pressure to the bearings to ensure they are lubricated. It isn't the pressure that creates the wedge of oil that keeps the crank from the bearings, but the presence of oil. So if you have 5 psi after all of the bearings and the lifters then you won't have problems. No, it isn't a new engine with tight tolerances in the bearings that create high pressure in the oiling system. But it will work just fine.

I'm sure hoping I can get my son to go with me overlanding, and I keep seeing glimmers of hope. For instance, for my birthday he got me a Petzl Actik headlight, which I'm sure he found via some of the magazines he reads on overlanding. It has a red light mode which he said "Is good for in camp as it won't hurt your night vision, and while you may not go camping on the Ouray trip, maybe in the future." So I do hope to need multi-day capabilities on fuel and will be keeping track of how much Big Blue uses.

I doubt we are talking anything approaching 100 miles in a day, much less 200. But when (if) we go overlanding then I think I'll need to be carrying extra gas. But we shall see.

Could you post some pics? That might help us understand what is going on.

I left the tires at 35 psi, the normal pressure. That's 'cause we had so many sections of highway between the sections of trail, and then the trip to/from the hotels. So it would have been a big pain to change the pressures. If I had the compressor installed I might have dropped them to the low 20's for the trail. We could have driven slowly on the blacktop/highway and then aired up at the end of the day before dashing to the hotel.

Dang is right! Wow! So, why build all of that and then sell it?

That's probably a good idea. A new thread with the right topic will get more attention.

Thanks, Dave.

Thanks, guys. Glad you are coming. Hope we fill those 10 rooms up and have to ask for more.

I'm sorry, I've not done that on a 300 so can't tell you what you are doing wrong. But I'm going to tag Fuzzface2 as I think he may be able to help you.

Its the "somewhat special equipment" bit that worries me. How 'bout asking him what he'd do if a 3G came in with a similar problem? Is that an easy fix? Sure enjoyed seeing my voltmeter sit perfectly still on this trip. Ran the A/C the whole way and the voltage never wavered, even when at idle w/the A/C on.

I thought about using Big but then how would you see the snake? Yes, he scurried off as I approached. However, I was about to step right where he was going and that spooked me when I realized it.

Thanks, Bob. That was my thinking as well, but I've not done it and you have. However, we only got 160 miles yesterday & today on one of the 19 gallon tanks, so that's only 8.4 MPG. And that does include a bit of highway driving. So when going slow it looks like the MPG may be more like 8 rather than 9. Still, that's 300 miles for the two tanks so I think it should be adequate for Colorado since we can fill up each day.

Ouch! That sounds like a lot of pain and worry! And while you are right that others have had worse, when it is you or your beloved it is still a big deal. So I'll keep you in my prayers that the upcoming scan shows that the kidney is improving very well and the tube can come out. As for the work you are doing, it looks great!

Yep, I agree - switch and/or linkage problem. The switch writeup is at Documentation/Electrical/Ignition. But you may want to use some electrical contact cleaner on it to loosen the switch up. The grease they put in originally tends to be pretty hard by now. And check out the link going down to the switch. It is supposed to clear the steering column but if it gets bent it can drag on the column.

Glad you got it done. And, glad you found the loose bolts. (I need to do that myself.) So, is it running better?

I agree with Jim - coil, module, or maybe even the pickup in the distributor. But one of those things is quitting when it gets hot, and that's not unusual with the module or the pickup.

Haven't been to Big Cedar, but have heard good things about it. Guess I'll need to go. As for the hubs not getting wet, true from fording. (Or is that Fording?) But, EVERYTHING got wet from the thousands of mud puddles we hit. Many times I had to turn the wipers on to see where we were going. The truck is absolutely filthy everywhere and it is going to take a long time to get it clean again. Anyway, we are home. Made a bit more than 1/2 of the 500 miles of the GOAT and got up this morning thinking we've seen enough of rutted roads, so booked it home. (We do that sometimes. Did the same in Germany several years ago and decided we'd seen enough cute little villages.) But, in fairness, we picked the wrong time to go. That part of the state has had a tremendous amount of rain and the roads have had water across them many, many times. So there are ruts everywhere. In fact, it seemed like they were taunting me as every time I shifted from 2nd to 3rd the ruts would appear, necessitating a shift at least into 2nd if not 1st to go slowly enough for the bumps. We used the mapping app called Gaia and it worked pretty well. However several times it froze and if we were approaching a turn we had to stop and wait for the app to start working again. Anyway, the app provides some interesting stat's: 268 miles on the GOAT Average moving speed of 22 MPH, but that includes several miles of blacktop to get to the next rutted gravel road, so I'm sure the pace was more like 17 MPH. In fact, that's about the speed I drove most of the time 'cause it is about as slow as I want to go in 3rd gear. Moving time of 12 hours & 16 minutes But the truck did really well. In fact, the security system worked perfectly yesterday during the day so I armed it last night and when I disarmed it this morning there were no extra chirps saying that "this sensor faulted", so maybe there's no issue. That just leaves the one fog light not coming on and the drip around the windshield to figure out. But I will want to go over EVERY fastener on it as we bounced the thing, hard, for most of those 12 hours. In fact, we almost went airborne at one point. We were on a very small blacktop road running at about 30 and came over the top of a small but sharp rise to find that the road dropped away abruptly. There was no time to drop the speed and it was obvious that many other vehicles had come down hard given the number of grooves in the pavement, so we prepared for the worst. But while we landed firmly there was no chance we slammed metal into the pavement. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we didn't hit the bump stops as there was no abruptness to the landing. So I'm really happy with the way the truck has come together. The D60/SD springs/RSK made a tremendous difference in the ride. And removing 2 leaves from the rear spring pack has dramatically helped the rear suspension. I'm sure our teeth would have jarred loose with the old setup. Last, here are some more pics. I'll apologize right up front with the size of the pics. They were taken with Janey's iPhone 12 and while that thing has a good camera it takes big pics. I edited the pics in Photoshop, but in many cases still couldn't get the size less than 1 MB to load here. So I cropped them to get them small enough to load w/o resizing. Look closely at this one. Right in the middle between the two tracks is a snake. I didn't see it when I took the pic but as I returned to the truck it had crawled into the DS track and .... let's just say I was a bit shaken.

Both the '81 and '85 factory shop manual sections have it: Documentation/Engines/300 Six. Shown as Cylinder Front Cover and it is 12 - 18 ft-lbs.

You are now on the map.

LOL! Yes, first on a ZF5 is much lower than that of a C6. 5.72 vs 2.46, so more than 2:1. Extra fuel? I have two 19 gallon tanks. And I'm turning in about 9 MPG on the GOAT, so I think I'll be ok w/o extra fuel as that would give me a 342 mile range. Might not get the full 9 at Ouray, but then again these trails have had me running from 1st to 3rd all day.

Yep. And one of these days you'll be working out the little teething problems. Things will be going so well you'll have to review the documentation to realize what a huge effort it was.

Pardon the crude drawing of an and to a driveshaft and the u-joint, but rap where the red arrow is pointing.

I was in 1st gear, which is quite low on a ZF5, as well as 4Lo once today, and just 4Hi and 1st several times. My oil pressure stays up quite nicely on Big Blue at really low RPM even when the engine has been up to temp for several hours. In fact, at anything over 1000 RPM it is at 60 PSI. But that's due to the engine having been well built by Scotty. As for oil, I'm running Brad Penn 30W break-in oil at present. Bought 12 quarts and used it for the initial break-in and now on the 2nd change I'm also using that oil. Will probably go to Brad Penn's 10W30 when I change after this round.