An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

I have found that if I turn on my phone's hotspot 1st thing in the morning instead of starting the truck, I can link the tablet to the hotspot and do my log certify and duty status change out of sleeper to off duty. Then just turn off the hotspot. Once I start the truck to air things up the tablet reconnects to the truck and I can start my pretrip time

 

I have found something I hate worse than Wylie or Samsara...Ram truck engineers. My wife's Sheepmobile 1500 has the 3.6 liter Pentastar V-6. It has had a slight passenger side valve cover leak lately. Right before I got home it started giving her problems...mainly because it started leaking worse and got low on oil. We've had this truck for around 4 years and have never had to add a drop of oil between oil changes. Suddenly it leaked enough oil to cause the safety sensor to shut it down due to a low oil level which caused low oil pressure. A friend works for a shop put it on the OBD2 computer and it said bad oil pump or sensor. He quoted her $1200 to replace the oil pump, valve cover gaskets and put a new oil pressure sensor in it. I told her to hold off, drive the Silverado and I would look into it. She topped off the oil and the engine never made a sound that indicated a bad oil pump(Dodge has a 2 speed oil pump). 1st thing I checked after checking the oil was oil pressure. Cold, at idle I was turning 50 psi, at 2500 rpm, 95 psi...no indication oil pump failure to me. Since I am a YouTube mechanic, I looked for a video on the oil pressure sensor on this motor...it is under the intake manifold!!!!!! F-that. So, I ordered a valve cover gasket set. But, because this the most complex engine since the Maxxfarse, it comes with 2 valve cover gaskets(which are differently shaped) 4 cam phaser sensors (this 6 cylinder engine has 4 overhead cams), 6 spark tube grommets (it's like a hemi where the plugs are waaaaaaay down these long metal tubes in the head), and some sort of sensor gromet. The part that makes me hate these engineers is...the PCV valve is a huge donut that bolts to the back of the passenger side valve cover (with t-25 torxs screws) and it has to be removed in order to the valve cover off...which is under the cowl and under where the heater core lines connect to the hoses. Not to mention a wire harness almost as big as my wrist runs across the valve cover as well that ALMOST has enough slack to get out of the way. Took me almost a day to get the #### thing off. And just as long to reinstall. You almost have to remove the engine to get the passenger side valve cover off...and the drivers side is worse, you have to remove the upper half of the intake to get it off(which isn't leaking, so I won't mess with it). 2 days work for 1 dang valve cover replacement job. But on a positive note, no leaks, good oil pressure and no knocking or rattling and no new engine codes....but I would still like to stick my size 12 steel toe boot up the arse of Einstein engineering team that designed that engine. Right now, in my opinion, I rank Ram below Ford on the list of trucks I would ever buy again. I hate Fords with a passion, but if someone gave me a brand new Ford or Sheepmobile, I would trade it for a Toyota or a Chevy the 1st chance I got.