The Great Smaug

[campfire]

Having finished one project, I pulled the Blazer out of its resting place and started some fab work (see Blazer Thread for dat story).

I came back to the house at one point to find that Wifey had decided to disassemble the gauge cluster. Last winter I showed her pma4x4's write up on led backlighting, and she has been wanting to do that ever since. On this day, she decided to tackle the project by herself. No help, no guidance, she didn't even tell me about it. She just dug right in and figured it all out.












She is awesome!

 

[campfire]

Having put in several night-time hours in the truck since then, I don't think that we ended up with brighter lighting. It is bluer, and I like that color better, but it isn't really any easier to see. Which is a bummer, as several members on here have had good results doing this.

It is brighter than driving without any reflective bezel, though...

Also, Wifey ended up spraying the wrong side of the reflective bezel. After I came to look at it, I had her also paint the reflective side. Net result is a thin ring of silver surrounding each gauge when the trim panel is in place. Not how I would have done it, but it actually looks kinda neat. Definitely different. Don't have a picture of it yet, as we ended up taking the trim panel back off for the trip back home.

She is so awesome. She not only helps me with da trucks, she will even take on her own projects from time to time.

 

[GWeakland620]

She is awesome!

Yeah, no joke

I can't even get mine to vacuum by herself.

 

[82355]

Mine doesn't know how to change the toilet paper roll.

Martin

 

[GWeakland620]

^^^True story

 

[swettysblazer]

Mine is nonexistent.... Oh wait

 

[campfire]

Mine doesn't know how to change the toilet paper roll.

Martin

Of this, we have ample documentation.

 

[campfire]

I installed my undersized radiator fan, but, alas, I had forgotten to bring the cowling with us.

I also replaced the weak alternator with a new (ok, cheaply rebuilt) one. This one came with complimentary pre-stripped threads.

We then hitched up the trailer and loaded up the Blazer. This happened at dusk, and no pictures were taken. The next morning, I came out to find this welcome sight:







I did rebalance the load before I left, but the rear springs in the Suburban didn't lift much. They are quite tired, and ride quite low, even with zero rates in the rear. The driver side rides on the overleaf, even when the truck is empty. The passenger side sits just above that point. The resulting tilt actually matches Big Blue pretty well.

The front end is stock, but it also sags. Loaded down this day, the rear springs on both sides were pretty flat.

When all was satisfactory, we hit the road.

 

[campfire]

As we headed Northwest on US-151, my Infant Warning System announced that it was time to get fuel in Dubuque. Actually, we opted to stop just short of Dubuque. Dubuque's downtown diesel station (& Arby's) isn't all that trailer-friendly, so we opted to stop in Key West. Somehow, Key West, Iowa never seems as tropical as it sounds.










When we were done resetting the IWS, we continued through Dubuque to Wisconsin.

 

[campfire]

I have decided that I really, really like having the CUCV clevis mounts. They are awesome!

I used them to anchor down the front end:



In the back, I chained down the axle, but used the rear clevis mounts to secure the body. The truck has no shocks, so it probably would have been interesting had I skipped this step.



All in all, I think I spent longer securing the loose chain/strap ends than I spent anchoring the truck.

Where can I get more of these clevis mounts?

 

[ryoken]

done resetting the IWS, .

 

[campfire]

done resetting the IWS, .

It was really weird hatching out a kid right in the middle of camping/traveling season. We were day-tripping until the day before labor began. We had her out at the local summer festival at 3 days of age, and we took her to Colorado when she was 9 days old. Since then we've kept busy; she's only had one weekend at home (ever). So we've gotten plenty of driving practice with her. But she's redefined what we are able to pull off. She's always ready to stop before we are. Typically before we get down to the 1/2-tank mark. So I keep buying half-tanks of fuel because that's how often I wind up stopping. And we keep showing up late for everything.

But we've made a lot of memories. It's been a pretty great summer, although the interruptions never seem to stop.

We still have 4 or 5 trips left to squeeze in before the Northwoods gets too cold for tent camping. Adventure is out there!

 

[campfire]

This trip handled the trailer really, really well. It kept up with traffic and mounted every hill we came across. Coming through Driftless Wisconsin, from Dubuque to Blue Mounds, 151 has steep grades and valleys. At least, steep compared to the rest of the upper Midwest.

The truck did wind up downshifting on several of them (I counted about 2 dozen), but it maintained speed quite a bit better than I had expected. And much more easily than Big Blue would have.

I did find out that running with this fan (and no shroud) wasn't really much better than running with no fan. The temperature did rise on a few of the grades. I snapped this picture of one of the worst ones:



The silver does look odd by itself, but it's makes a silver ring around the gauges when the bezel goes on. Kinda neat.

Coming into Madision, we rolled past this neat old bus. Ran my cranky old diesel past his cranky old diesel.

 

[campfire]

And then...all the fun disappeared. This perfect trip came to an end and was replaced by fear and concern for the remaining hours. The truck ran perfectly until we got to Madison. Pulled onto the beltway and ran into tranny problems. Accelerated up to highway speed (1-->2-->3), decided to stay in 3rd rather than rolling up to O/D. Slid the shifter from O/D-->D, and promptly found myself in some form of neutral. Slid back to O/D and found myself back in 3rd. When I got up to speed, it tried to go to 4th, but shifted very lightly, and I think the clutch was slipping. Not quite sure, as the T/C never locks up, so the coupling is always loose. But it seemed looser.

Moved the shifter back to 3rd, and kept it there most of the way home. Stopped along the way to check tranny fluid. Level was correct, and the fluid was clean and red. And the radiator was slowly boiling over.

Unable to stay stationary (despite my newly installed fan), but not sure how many more shifts I was gonna get out of the tranny, I hit the road again and we came into Fond Du Lac. At this point, we had to stop and turn left onto US-41.

Started pulling out into traffic. 1st gear was fine, but shifting to 2nd was quite slow. Shifting to 3rd was the same. I again tried sliding the shifter down to 3rd, and it again popped out of gear. I left it in O/D, but it never tried to go to 4th again. We ran it the rest of the way home in 3rd. Huge amounts of wasted power, and my ears are still ringing from the noise. Somehow I managed to lose track of the earplugs that had been in that truck. I did have the thought that 4.56:1 CUCV trucks live in 3rd gear all the time, but 200 miles of this convinced me that CUCV owners must be crazy! (The irony that I was hauling a 3-speed CUCV was not lost on me, either. )

Running in 3rd exacerbated the cooling deficiency, and wound the engine up higher than I prefer. So speed decreased accordingly, and we rolled into town in the late afternoon. Shifting through the required 2 intersections was similar to what happened above.

And then, about 1 mile from home, the temp gauge climbed. I had run out of water, within sight of home.

I nursed it through 1 minute of overheating and coasted into the pasture.

All I could think about was cracked heads and blown 700R4 stories. Just as I was really, really starting to like this truck.

 

[streetrodchev]

Are those the blue collector license plates on the suburban?

 

[campfire]

Pictures from the pasture. Location chosen by how far the truck happened to coast.







Nice to see all 3 together again.

 

[campfire]

Looks like the truck continued to belch out unburned fuel.







Never ceases to amaze me how much fuel an old diesel can waste and still somehow get better mileage than the clean gasser engines.

 

[campfire]

Are those the blue collector license plates on the suburban?

Yes, they are!

Coming from a state that doesn't offer such an option, I thought they were a pretty neat idea.

The CUCV gets a historic MV plate,
the Suburban gets a collector plate,
Big Blue gets a Farm Truck plate (though a Hobbyist plate could also have worked out).

I'm glad they offer weird plate options for weird people like me.

 

[campfire]

So, despite our success in nursing the truck home, the day ended kinda sad for me. I felt like I tried to hold the truck together for 4 hours just to have the second failure right at the very end. I've already dealt with one overheated 6.5 engine (), and this would be my 3rd failed automatic Chevy tranny if it winds up being broken. For those who have trouble counting, 100% of my 3 Chevy trucks have had tranny issues. I've never liked automatics, but they are not gaining any ground in my book.

 

[campfire]

So the question of the hour...what can cause these symptoms? When Big Blue's 700R4 failed, the professional shop that performed the rebuild told me that the pressure going to the 4th gear clutch dropped, the clutch slipped, and it burned out rather quickly under insufficient pressure.


That kinda matches the weak shift and slipping that I encountered in the few times it tried to go to 4th. But then it stopped trying.

As it is acting like low fluid level, I did have the thought that I may have a plugged filter.

I drove it around the block (sans trailer), and the fluid level still was where it should be, the fluid was clean, and it still shifted just like I described above. So I can putz around town in it. Kinda. But road trips and camping don't seem feasible at this point.

What other issues can cause this?