You sir have reached perfection in my eyes. Well accept the camper not being loaded up.
CK5
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1989 Crew Cab Tow Rig Build
- Thread starter Kay86K5
- Start date
That will be this next weekend. I’ll take pic’s for sure when I load everything up on friday
This was just a test. I replaced the whole hitch off the back of the crew cab and I wanted to make sure everything was good as I have an offroad event this next weekend that I have to tow my blazer to.
Went and did Idaho Tuff Truck Challenge with my brother this past weekend....lets just say we both got lots of looks and thumbs up hauling our rigs there and back 
Then on the way back I was even heavier cause there was a ford d60 on the trailer as well. My brother and I were guessing I was somewhere between 17k - 18k GVW with that setup, and I must say, this 8.1 towed it freaking good. I never dropped below 65 mph on the freeway and the load was very stable. Overall, I was very impressed how well the truck did as a whole with the setup. I didn't even have bags or a WDH either, and it still felt really good.
My brother and I even did a little "tow rig drag race" at a stop light with the setups exactly as you see it above (brother thinks he is close to 20k GVW with his semi with his crawler on the back...his has a DT466 with a 6-speed)....and we tied
My brother and I even did a little "tow rig drag race" at a stop light with the setups exactly as you see it above (brother thinks he is close to 20k GVW with his semi with his crawler on the back...his has a DT466 with a 6-speed)....and we tied
Then on Monday we decided to go up to my brothers property and do some work with the tractor and ride some dirt bikes
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Was the first time I've put the crew cab in 4wd to get up into his property, and everything worked great. In fact, in 4lo and in granny gear of the NV4500, it crawled around really nice!
Let's just say I put the some good hard miles on the crew cab this weekend and I couldn't be happier with it. In fact, it impresses me more and more every time I use it. I freaking love this truck!
Let's just say I put the some good hard miles on the crew cab this weekend and I couldn't be happier with it. In fact, it impresses me more and more every time I use it. I freaking love this truck!
rad 
That's so awesome man! What a perfect payoff?!?!
So he has the same displacement but in turbo dieselThen on the way back I was even heavier cause there was a ford d60 on the trailer as well. My brother and I were guessing I was somewhere between 17k - 18k GVW with that setup, and I must say, this 8.1 towed it freaking good. I never dropped below 65 mph on the freeway and the load was very stable. Overall, I was very impressed how well the truck did as a whole with the setup. I didn't even have bags or a WDH either, and it still felt really good.
My brother and I even did a little "tow rig drag race" at a stop light with the setups exactly as you see it above (brother thinks he is close to 20k GVW with his semi with his crawler on the back...his has a DT466 with a 6-speed)....and we tied
His is slightly smaller at like 7.6L if I remember correctly.
Oh, and sleeping in the camper over the weekend was freaking awesome! So comfortable
I don't know why I remember this wrong.
I didn't even try to do the math.
I think it's the duramax that is 8.2
My brother did just pick up another MD semi with an 8.3l cummins and an Allison auto that he's going to build sometime next year. He will wipe the floor with me in that one, haha
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Built a bracket for my transfer pump switch and gauge. Mounted it below the ash tray off the dash
Gauge and switch bolted up and everything is working. You can see in one of those pics the toggle switch I got has a dummy light on it that lights up when its on. This was the best solution I could come up with to not forget I have it on and either overfill the driver tank, or run the passenger tank/pump dry and ruin the pump in that tank. It seems to work great so far. This was my best solution to still run saddle tanks with an 8.1 swap without having to run a burban rear tank.
Seems like a good solution to me.
Small wins are always a nice thing. Finally got my little cheap SunPro tach working on the 8.1. This whole time I couldn't get the tach to work. I knew I was getting tach signal out of the wire coming out of the ECM as I checked it with a light and also hooked my scan tool up to computer and saw I had tach signal there too. Ended up being I had to add a little resistor. Basically I added a wire that went from a 12-volt switched source to a little resistor and then the resistor was tagged into the splice I did from the tach wire coming out of the ECM and the signal wire for the tach. After doing that, it works!
It still doesn't make much electrical sense to me as to why this works, other than I guess my cheap little analog style tach needed a little boost in signal strength to read the tach signal coming from the ECM. Oh, and I also had to set my tach to 4 cylinders instead of 8 on the back of the tach too.
Either way, glad my tach is now working. And I'm glad I went with this smaller tach as I was able to mount it on the column and not have it really block the view of the other gauges.
Like I said...small wins are always nice
It still doesn't make much electrical sense to me as to why this works, other than I guess my cheap little analog style tach needed a little boost in signal strength to read the tach signal coming from the ECM. Oh, and I also had to set my tach to 4 cylinders instead of 8 on the back of the tach too.
Either way, glad my tach is now working. And I'm glad I went with this smaller tach as I was able to mount it on the column and not have it really block the view of the other gauges.
Like I said...small wins are always nice
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Funny thing on the resistors too. I ended up finding some on Amazon. When I ordered them, I swore I thought the listing said a pack of 5 of them for about $6 shipped to my door. So I thought that was good and ordered them. Well, they showed up to my door and when I opened them up...it was actually a pack of 100 resistors for $6 shipped to my door (which looking at it now...is a heck of a deal 
).
The problem is, I only needed 1 to do this job.....so now I have 99 problems, but a resistor ain't one
).The problem is, I only needed 1 to do this job.....so now I have 99 problems, but a resistor ain't one
