PEAK PUTTERS

A nod to Boyscout for the thread title… Still makes me chuckle and I promise to use it whenever possible.

Anyhoo, some of you may recall that I dumped the Tundra for the Super Duty almost a year ago now. Since that time, I have thoroughly enjoyed several facets of the truck, but other things have annoyed me to no end. Among those things were a nasty habit to wander all over the road, a clunk on bumps from the frontal area, a saggy rear end with even a light trailer hitched up, and a nasty exhaust leak. With a looming 2000 mile tow trip, I wanted to get things sorted out to ensure it was as enjoyable as possible…

First, I had my boy saw the steering wheel back and forth, and sure enough I found two clapped out TRE’s as well as a trac bar that appeared to have Jell-O bushings. The source of the clunk was a set of wasted bushings on the sway bar links. A quick call to NAPA had all new parts in hand, and I spent a couple of hours doing some basic R&R wrenching. I’m happy to report that all issues are resolved, and it drives like a new truck. Well, a new 2003 ¾-ton with leaf springs

To address the saggy rear end (which is due to the front leveling kit), our friends at Amazon were nice enough to send me a Firestone Ride Rite system complete with an in-cab switch and pressure gauge. Sadly, the included white faced gauge doesn’t match the interior of my Super Duty, so I had to go back to Amazon and source an Autometer Z-series air pressure gauge that does match. I also ordered up a single pillar gauge pod from GloShift, which is touted as being able to retain the Super Duty grab handle that is located on the A-pillar. Well, I’m here to tell you the two cannot coexist, at least not without some love from the Dremel After about an hour of carve-czek-carve-czek-carve-czek, I had something that I could live with. While eating a sammich, I decided to call my new friends at GloShift to see what the deal was, and as it turns out they offer two versions of this pod, and I of course had the wrong version Oh well… But, for anyone’s future reference, the version I have is for a standard 2-1/16â€

very nice, at work we use the welded nuts quite often with great success rate

Great job on the stud removal ! I have a 99 F-350 and they didn't build it so a guy can work on it very easy.

I realized that I had forgotten to take/post pics of the pillar gauge pod surgery, so here are a couple of the almost-finished product:







Now back to the exhaust leak saga... NAPA came through and I picked up my new exhaust gaskets on Monday after work. After a few minutes wrestling them into place and torqueing the new exhaust manifold bolts, I nervously hopped in and fired it up. Much to my dismay, the exhaust leak persisted After a round of swearing that would have made even the saltiest of sailors blush, I took a second to evaluate the situation and think about what could be happening here. As it turns out, if we think about how the internal combustion engine works, there is actually more than one way for exhaust gasses to escape the combustion chamber... While it's not quite as prominent as a faulty exhaust gasket, spark plugs have been known to back out and/or blow out, leading to the dreaded puff puff puff. So, another trip to NAPA and I had 10 new plugs and boots ready to drop in.

As I eased into the engine bay and started backing out the plugs, sure enough, I found not just one, not even two, but three plugs that weren't even hand tight!! As you can see from the pics below, two of them are very sooty and obviously showing signs of exhaust blowby. The third one was little less obvious, but certainly well on it's way to getting sooted up as well. After about an hour of frustrating wrenching (these V10's are roughly 1/3 under the cowl ), I had fresh plugs and boots installed, and was once again nervously climbing into the cab to fire it up... SUCCESS!!! There are hardly words to describe how nice it is to have a leak-free exhaust system On to the next battle...

did you put motorcrafts back in it? dont know how much truth to the story but supposedly the motorcrafts are better at not backing out but obviously the ones in the rig were motorcrafts and they did back out

Yep, all Motorcraft OE parts.

Your lucky those plugs didn't take the threads with them. Usually when they get that loose it's already too late.

Boy Toby, you're REALLY making me glad mine rattles...

LOL nothin' to be skeert of... A little wrenching never hurt anyone. Besides, now I'm like a towing ninja

at this point in the game if it wasnt for waste oil id be back in the gasser world honestly, and a 3v v10 would be a high ranking choice

Did the waste oil thing for a while, free fuel was nice but also came with other issues.

the two trucks i run them on dont have enough money in to worry about, the other only gets a 50/50 mix with diesel and atf, I currently get enough atf that i run only atf no motor oil, if i end up running wmo it will get mixed with some gas to thin it out. so far i have clocked around 20k miles total on waste oil but the truck that has ran the most of it is only around 8-10k miles

If you have a mechanical lift pump it's not to bad as long as you thin it out. Electric lift pumps won't take the abuse. If you run straight ATF (all I ever ran oil is way to dirty and thick even after filtering) you will have cold start issues and can gum up the rings and start to smoke.

Toby, if you want to match the pillar pod to the rest of the pillar, I have the paint to do it.

I appreciate the offer... It actually came color matched grey, but it was just too much IMO with the rest of the dash area being a sear of grey as well. The black sort of broke it up a bit better IMO.