keithb7

My concern is mainly around Coker selling brand new tires that are dated 2006. I like to think I reset the date to 0 when I installed them. Aging typically begins at install date for me. If Coker told me “Hey we are having Black Friday sale on NOS tires. They are brand new, but manufactured in 2006. Price is 20% off”. I’d likely pass. Now, if they were 60% off that might be a risk I’d take! Lol.

That date makes me a little nervous. If Coker disclosed the tire age, good. If that info was withheld, I might make an inquiry with Coker. A quick online search revealed:

Happy Thanksgiving to my American Mopar friends. Hope you have a great time with your loved ones. Up here we have our Thanksgiving in early October. The harvest has to done by then else it becomes perma-frost. Mrs and I spent the day blowing-in 26" of new pink insulation in our attic. We went from an R6 to an R50 rating. We did it ourselves. Momma was in the attic running the hose, distributing the fiberglass. I was down on the ground feeding bags into the blower machine. 50 bags and 3 hours later we were done and high-fiving each other. About 1/2 way into the job Momma did mis-step and slipped off a truss. She slammed down through the brand new ceiling drywall she just completed last summer. Now we have a new hole in the living room ceiling for Santa to come down through. She bruised a rib of two but it never slowed her down. She pushed on and we completed the job. I took her out to her favourite dinner later. A nice little reward is in order. A proper ceiling repair will likely wait until the new year.

Ignore...error

That is quite the shop. I covet thy neighbor's goods!

Ignorant drivers can bother me occasionally. I especially notice a ton of jacked up 4x4 trucks that never leave the pavement, with ultra bright headlights. 99% of the time I don't let it annoy me. The odd time I get a little peeved. I never make a responsive aggressive move though. You just don't know what the mental state is of the other person behind the wheel. I get out of their way and let them get on to however-it-is they want to kill themselves. They get their up-commins' at some point. Someone else with a brain just as small or smaller, with a brick on their shoulder, will put them in their place eventually. I smile imagining how they may get their karma some day.

Maybe watch this video through. It may add something to ponder while you are troubleshooting your carb.

Definitely get that oil pump bled and primed. Then after that, once installed, pull the coil wire and crank the engine over until you see oil pressure climbing on the gauge. Then you can proceed to let the engine fire and run.

At my place of employment we rebuild large diesel engines and powertrain components. We do spIn-up the powershift transmissions and torques on a large hydraulic test bench. We bring hydraulic pressures up to operating specs. We shift through all the gears. Test all the pressures, reliefs, shift valves, solenoids etc. Your cold break-in sounds similar. I’ve personally never heard of it being done on a fresh engine rebuild. The fresh engine rebuilds that we do, we pressure lube everything. Soak everything down inside there, forcing oil through all the oil galleries. Then we dyno them. We break them in, then we full-load test and tune them to maximum rated horsepower and torque. We recently got new engine dyno that can handle 2,750 HP. A big engine for us is the 5,187 ci engine. (85L). Its fun to stick your head in the dyno booth when one of those bad boys in under full load. 4 large turbos wailing. I glance at the monitoring gages. The fuel burn rate is about 1L of fuel per minute per cylinder. Its a 16 cylinder. In total that’s 4.22 US gallons per minute for that portion of the dyno test.

Yay! Congrats on all the great engine rebuild progress. I am questioning the need for a cold break-in. Did you apply that super slippery oil to all your crank, rod and cam bearings?

My wife and I just ended a week-long trip to Arizona. We flew into Phoenix. Picked up a rental RV van and hit the roads. We drove and toured as much as we could fit into a week. We had a fantastic time! We met very friendly, helpful pleasant people everywhere we went. We went north to hike Sedona. Down to Bisbee and Douglas. Caving in Coronado and Kartchner. East over to Wilcox where we tipped a few back with the locals in their cowboy dive-bar, Rex’s. Chiricahua hiking. Heading north again travelling through Why and Ajo. And lots more. We saw so many great places and things but best of all was the people. Kind. Appreciative. Welcoming. From our BLM campsites to the drivers at the truck stops and all points in the between. Living like nomads on the road in our van for a week showed us the real, happy, generous people of America. God-bless America, we love y’all. Special mention to the truckers doing an important job and staying so friendly. I realize now, after I turned off mass-media and all the news doom-and-gloom for a week, I saw the big heart of a really great country, open up wide.

I’ll play along. My current rig. 1998 2500 Dodge with a Cummins 24 valve 2 cyl 5.9L diesel engine. Maintenance and repairs are done by me. i’ve owned it for 5 1/2 years. Engine is stock at about 190 hp if I recall. Lots of good usable torque, yet pales in comparison to modern diesels. Loud, skull-rattling stock engine clatter. But she’s pretty tough. Reliable and gets the job done. Towing package factory install including transmission cooler and extra rear leaf springs and block. Fuel economy is excellent when considering total weight that is rolling down the hi-way.

Some nightmare examples here of new (expensive) trucks. My 25 yr old Cummins equipped truck keeps on ticking. You might imagine, I have little interest in upgrading it.

These rear plugs....As discussed above. PITB.

https://youtu.be/J5Wbyengb8U?si=Biko9ILXnYTqnwMp