Tom, phone home.

 

LOL, he did.

I called Tom right after I saw his wife's post and he said he'd already called his wife.

Stewart

 

Ha Ha I just seen this. I was going to text him but I guess you guys beat me to it.

 

OMG!!!

BUSTED..... hahahahahahahaha

 

lol, this is great!

 

Successful day, got here in one piece...



But had an incident after the fact and spent the last three hours in the ER. No big deal but I can't type, so I will hopefully fill in details of the trip tomorrow.

ON edit: And I did call my wife. Thanks everyone!

 

Yesterday was quite a challenge dragging that thing up and down the mountains of Vermont. But the Ex did very well all things considered; there were two hills that forced me to downshift to 1st and climb at 25 MPH, but otherwise I was able to maintain more of a respectable pace. Speed was never a priority for me, and in the interests of fuel economy I don't think I ever exceeded 4,000 RPMs during the entire trip.

I was able to stress test my cooling system yesterday, and some of those hills were pure hell on the transmission cooling setup. One memorable one, going through Troy, NY, was a constant ~5% grade in stop-and-go traffic. The torque converter never locked, and I did see the transmission temps hit 205° before coming back down as it leveled off. Another example was climbing a steep hill in Vermont at 25 MPH in first gear; with the torque converter unlocked the temp slowly climbed up to 210° over the course of about a minute and a half. At that point the converter locked and the temp fell to 185° in less than 20 seconds, which really impressed me considering how little air was moving through the cooler at that speed. Now ambient temps were in the 30's, and I'm sure it would have run a bit warmer if it were in the middle of the summer, but I'm confident it would have kept it at a reasonable temperature. Here is a shot of my Scangauge after I crested one of the longer hills in Vermont yesterday:



My suspension upgrades were well worth it, and despite the stiff ride it did a great job. In the future I would probably invest in sway control, but as long as I payed good attention I was always able to keep things under control. I had only 35 PSI in the bags for the entire trip, and I could have probably gone down to 25 or 30 without any trouble. There was an additional 1,500 lbs on the axle compared to an empty truck, and as you can see from the photos it rode level and looked great:





I did consume about a half quart of oil during the trip, and I attribute that to a leaky passenger side valve cover that I've known about since the plug change. Not worth fixing at the moment, but I'll be getting to it sometime in the springtime. I was running M1 0w-20 oil, and I will be doing an oil analysis when I change it out this winter.

On the whole I was extremely pleased with how the Ex handled the trailer. I think my experience may have been a bit different if I had 3.73s, but with 4.30s I was able to keep a respectable speed and keep fuel consumption reasonable. I will be calculating my fuel economy later this afternoon when I go through my receipts, and I'll post that here. All of my tanks were between 7.2 and 8.5 MPGs though.

 

what happened with the whole ER thing?

 

One of my parents' dogs is a bit territorial and likes to get into it with my Mastiff. Like a complete idiot I attempted to pull them apart last night and my hand happened to get in the way of a closing mouth. One superficial cut on my finger and another on the top of my hand that appears to have been deep enough to cause some issues. Lots of pain radiated into my fingers and I can't grasp things very tight. The ER patched it up and put it in a brace, and I'm supposed to see an orthopedic doc today or tomorrow.

Perhaps I should invest in an electric cattle prod...the fight would be over when the dog hits the floor.

 

ever used a break stick?

 

Never heard of one, but I just looked it up. Not something that would likely be effective for these two, they snarl and snap but almost never actually bite each other. They make a ton of noise and eventually they stop, but we're concerned that they might at some point hurt one another. I didn't get bitten because the dog wanted to, but in the frenzy my hand ended up in the wrong place.

 

Glad you made it, welcome to New England! Sorry such crappy weather haha. Are you in Vermont now or CT?

 

Would have interesting to see how the ELM327 bluetooth compared with the Scan gauge II on a trip like this....

 

I'm in Concord, NH at the moment, staying with my parents while I figure everything out. I'll be headed down to Connecticut next week to try and find a place. My wife and daughter fly out on the 21st, so I have to be moved into a place by then!

The ELM327 is just an interface that can talk to a bluetooth device, so I guess it would be better to compare it to different software and devices. I almost bought one and the Torque app, but it really doesn't do anything needed that my Scangauge didn't. My concerns were coolant, transmission, and cylinder head temperatures as well as engine load, all of which the ScanGauge handled great.

From what I gather the Torque app is very capable and has a variety of different ways it can display things, and from that perspective I'm sure it's superior. But it also locks my phone down as a monitor rather than being able to use it for navigation and to send/receive calls when needed, so I guess that would be a downside.

I've used the Torque app about a year and a half ago at one of our OH meets and was very impressed. Perhaps it's something that belongs on my christmas list!

 

I was just curious to see how the values compared - for example when you were climbing that grade and the trans temp was rising. I am lucky enough to have an android phone from a few years ago that I use as my "gauge."