94 T600 remodeling

Well about 2400 miles, no hook, nothing major mechanically to complain about. (Minor is a whole different story, see end)

Made 6 mpg on the last 1000 miles and the loads pulled were the last 3.

In reverse order
Railroad ties, 49k
Chep pallets, 35k (i HATE tossing straps with only 5 to 6 foot each side of me, the taller it is, the worse it is, and these were 13'4"...)
Wire mesh 4 stop load with a mess of palletized rolled wire to a farm supply chain
"Steel beams" from a galvanizer back to fabricator, theyre all fabricated and not very uniform
Simple Steel bar.




So the minor, air dryer and at least unloader valve on ac compressor needs changed, too fast of a sneeze, its not leaking down that fast, only happens once warmed up, also takes forever to air up from "0", fine once aired up and it holds fine with truck off, just seems to short cycle.

Air gauges arent reading correctly, or the warning is set wrong (light goes off at 90-95 on the gauge)

Starter is on the fritz, on its way out, or something. Solenoids click, but plunger doesnt always go (and the starter motor wont engage till the plunger engages)

Tire was flat, but got that solved on the road okay. Its holding now, but might just have been a bead seat (on the steel inners), not the nail i picked up.

Bunk... mattress is garbage, 4th night, REALLY felt it.

Definitely need a privacy curtain

Ac is subpar, its a normal kw, need a better flow valve shuttoff for the coolant, its disconnected, so have to use the 1/4 turns on the engine to regulate flow.

5th wheel is fine, but the slide stops where i need them are pretty well buggered, slid it and have only 1/8-1/4" of slop instead of the nearly 1/2" in the all back position.




The marker lights are acting finicky, so probably replace the plug on tractor

Largish oil leak after pulling hard a bit, cant tell if its extra blowby from compressor or the spacer plate.

And i really would like my 2nd and 3rd stage jakes. Solenoid and jake spring rebuild in order.

Everything else is cosmetic/creature comfort so far

 

Got my plate on, so no more paper in the window.

Wiper nozzle "upgrade" (7$ amazon. Kw is WAY too proud of their oem nozzles)


Muscle memory couldnt take not having my ashtray where it was on old truck, plus under console storage and my wallet location.

Mattress
MUCH better
Went with 5" high density foam, 1" cooling gel memory foam, isolates any vibration and is quite comfortable
Bed goes up even when made now
And it doesnt try to protrude 6+ inches when its down, very nice


Slid 5th wheel... cant imagine why i didnt want to be using those pins...


One side of the headlight switch died last night, just moved it over to the other side, guess im doing a whole dash rewire to switches the way i want them (rockers probably, most economic and easiest to do) hrumph.


Nother 1500 miles, no hook, so ill call that a win.
Made about 8.75 mpg on 930 miles, but i only had a 4x8 skid of 2,500lb, so basically empty. Still, to get that in grey truck id need to be going bobtail and maybe singled out drives.



Monday delivery in mich


home for wifes birthday weekend now (yesterday)

Weekend list with it raining:
try and get new air dryer installed
oil feed line to air compressor replaced (purge and unloaders werent enough)
Headlights replaced
Starter swapped with my other truck's
Privacy curtain made up (have materials, just gotta borrow my brothers sewing machine)

 

12v 134a unit, super secret chinesium edition, accounts for about 1/3 of all spend ive done on this truck so far (outside fuel/insurance)

As small as the sleeper is, indoor unit is reasonably small, so it doesnt make the sleeper feel too much smaller.



On a whim, pulled the trucks ac blower to see how bad the thing was rusting apart. I knew it was bad because i had little to no airflow and cleaning this wont do all that much, but i did close to double my airflow with a shop vac, air hose and 20 minutes of poking.

 

Also apparently my starter issue is the solenoid/ims/little trigger. Works fine when cold, gets dodgy when warmed up.

Someone installed a 24v solenoid, so with higher heat, the resistive current imcreases, so it wouldnt give enough juice to latch and trigger the starter fully.

That would be fine and a cheap easy fix except that you cant really just change that solenoid with the starter in place.
(Well, you can, but even with my skinny long arms i couldnt get to 2 of the terminals that needed disconnected, so i ended up just pulling and swapping the whole starter from my other truck. Should have new solenoid next week and can reinstall that in old truck after i run new wires.)

Hrumph.

 

Installed a different heater core valve, existing one is useless/never fully closes, so if i need heat and cold in the same day, it was always open hood and open and close main coolant valves. Probably come july i can close them fully, but proper adjustable temp is amazing. 115$ kit.


Springy Mudflap brackets go byebye, new 3 light mudflap brackets and fully new wiring.



Bought the "universal" pete/kw handle that doesnt actually fit kws. Drilled and tapped center to 1/4-20, and just stacked 2 of the springy bezel/washers, doesnt look great but better than it was.



Today the fan has just decided to stay on no matter what, im leaning towards a temp switch short somewhere.

I have made an average of 6.8 mpg since Ive gotten the truck. Dont think I can complain much with that.

Got a bit of grit in the rear diffs input seal, so it decided to leak a bit, and Im due an oil change.

So far so good on this one, a steal for what i got it at. We shall see if that luck holds for 6 more months. (Should have a big drop in insurance and some payments and can probably be done with equipment financing for a bit)

I know people are saying rates are garbage, but ive been finding reasonable stuff to keep me busy, point of fact i should probably have been doing about 2 more loads a week than i have been.

 

Time to swap the tires that came with the truck for the 100k or less ones from on my t600. Starting to get river wear and shocks are i beleive very much overdue. Blew an airbag the other weekend and then started to develop river wear and a clunk along with a small leak in rear differe tial seal.

The clunk as it turns out is a much more severe risk at the moment, but easier job than the differential going bye bye.

New tires are already on 2x aluminum, so need to replace studs, these are 1 steel 1 aluminum and barely a single thread protrudes

My solution for removing all the tires and studs now, yes, steers are well chocked


Studs all removed




Aaaand imma guess im not going to be pulling outta the house without changing out that there ujoint

 

Yoke and seal here tomorrow about noon. Will use the am to remove old seal and get the ujoint as installed as it can be
i ordered a strap style yoke because the yoke and u joint removal took 2.5 hrs this am, dont want to repeat that ever again, 4 cap styles suck.

Got all the studs in and pass side tires on and everything but torqued. Looking forward to seeing how the 11r22.5s do with this truck. ( i.e. how soon im going to want to put a 13 speed in instead of the current 9 spd

 

On the flat, the bigger tires are nice, definitely want the smaller steps between gears from a 13 though.

Rolled out and loaded, have 50 k on the skateboard, torqued the wheels 2x so far, 1 more time after delivery and i'll feel better

9$ a stud and 2.50 a nut isnt bad... until you go and do 50 of them.

And the yoke seal, bloody dealerships, i asked them which one it was, they ordered it in, wrong one, so i looked up the meritor table myself, they gave me the power divider seal, not as i said multiple times, the rear rear differential. Theres only 3, power divider input, front diff output and rear input

Designation differences are literally x, y, and z with ending numbers 28,29,30...

Called them up to see if they had the right seal, gave the exact part number, he asked for my vin, i hung up and got it somewhere else. WTF is wrong with these people?