i am happy with my electric Suntouch heater haha. I rarely use it though.
And yes, i know, if the power gets knocked out I don't have heat.
Unless I get in my truck and burn the full tank of gas i have, idling away while running the heater

 

Nope- I'm on a different computer, and I had to reinstall Windows on it to get back online. After I changed out the HD, I couldn't get Windows to load. I put the old HD back in and then the mouse wouldn't work. This thing I'm on couldn't make a connection to the net, and when it finally did, it started looping a couple of different ****-poor excuses that it had some problems and just thought it best if it were to shut down, and if I liked I could send Microsoft a report or just like it. One of them (avgnsx*****) was like a herion addict, as soon as I shut it down it was back again, a real drama queen, always encountering a problem and needing to shut down. So I re-installed Windows on this thing and now it's like a new Mustang- slick and fast.

It's got a whole lot more memory than me and it's now free of all it's past baggage. It makes me envious.

 

Don't make the same mistake I did! I decided to try and get the old axle pivot bushing out of mine that was completely worn out, without taking the arm out of the truck. I managed to get it out after a struggle and half- it was so bad my memory has blocked out half of it, but I vaguely remember an air chisel and an assortment of rods or whatever and trying to swing a sledge under a truck on my back. But then when I tried to replace it I could only get the new (stock type) one in half way. Spent several hours and finally gave up. That axle is going to have to come off to get the replacement pressed on.

In the meantime, I started shopping on Ebay for this truck. When some polyurethane axle pivot bushings came up for bid, I picked them up cheap. Then I found out that those polyurethane bushings require you to remove all the rubber remnants out of the original metal sleeve and then place the bushing in that!!!!!! All I would have had to do is clean out the old crumbling rubber and slip in the poly bushing.!!!!!

So if you decide you need to replace the axle pivots at the same time, get some poly's and leave the cases intact! Worth every penny.

 

I've done pain-in-the-rear jobs like that. Changing an exhaust donut on a Jeep Cherokee is not exactly a picnic. No room to work, everything's either froze up or if you get it loose, you have maybe an inch or two of movement in the exhaust system to move everything enough to put the new donut on, and then you have to be Hercules to get it tight enough that it won't leak. I replaced the donut on mine, but I wasn't able to get it tight enough. It still sounds like a bumblebee before it's warmed up.

Thanks for the heads-up. I've already decided that the whole front end's coming out, I'm gonna replace everything at once (radius arm bushings, axle pivot bushings, any other rubber). My uncle's done it before and when I asked him if it'd be too much trouble to do everything, he just said "come early". I can't wait to see what it handles like with new parts. It might actually drive in a straight line when I let go of the wheel! lol

I'm gonna need some new balljoints at some point too. But that's gonna come a little later on, along with a possible transmission swap. I'm hoping to find a ZF5, if not that then a T18.

 

Between this talk about front ends and the white Christmas the last 2 days, it reminded me of something that happened years ago.

I had a 70 Chevy PU with a utility bed on it. The roads were icy and this thing would turn almost a quarter turn of free-wheel in the steering wheel. So- you had to turn it almost a quarter turn back and forth just to keep it in a straight line.

There were 3 lanes on the freeway and one of them was clean and the others were ice/slush. There was a car driving in the clear lane at the speed it should have been in the ice. I thought I saw a clear stretch on the right long enough to pass this fool. Sure enough, as I started to go around and a head of him, he sped up and I ran out of clear road before I could get in front of him and move into the clear lane.

I started fishtailing and wound up sideways and just as I did wound up sliding off the freeway. As it happened , there was a 2 lane exit right there, and I wound up taking that exit sideways.

There was a cop working a wreck on the right hand side of that exit and I slid past him at about 25mph just as my truck was rotating to the left. A few more small back and forth fishtails and it straightened out enough for me to get it under control and I just went down the access to the next entrance and back on the freeway.

So some time later, a buddy of mine and his friend were going to adjust the free-play in the steering gear box for me on this thing. He told me to move the steering back and forth so he could feel to adjust the tension on the gears. After a couple of rocks back and forth, he told my buddy to get in and work the wheel, he wanted to show me something. The gear box was bouncing on the frame. Two bolts were gone and the other 2 were backed off 1/2 an inch. That's why there was so much play in the wheel.

After tightening up the bolts and replacing the missing ones, the wheel only had about 3/4" of free wheel. That would have come in handy while fishtailing back and forth on the ice! Anyway- that was like getting a new truck!

 

That story was so good, I read it twice. lol

That's what I love about old trucks. Stuff can be coming off or falling apart and they're still reliable.

 

Reading that makes me feel guilty about selling my truck (haven't done so yet) Too bad I can't afford her, and really need the cash :/

 

Kirby, what specs did you need of my computer? I forgot all about that....

 

CPU specs (brand, model, speed), amount of RAM, that's about it I think.

Does it act up when you're using the torrent program by itself or with just a few tabs in Firefox running too? Or does it only act up under heavy multitasking?

My rule of thumb is "less is better". The fewer programs and processes running on your system, the better. I have 33 processes running now (four of those are svchost*****), and my computer runs fairly fast for what it is. I've seen computers with upwards of 60 processes running, and most every time, they run like trash too.

 

I'm not on it now, lets put it that way. I download Top gear every sunday or monday, I can only run the torrent program, anything else crashes or freezes up.

I'll have the specs later this evening.

 

AMD Athlon 64 dual core 4200+ 2.36 ghz
4 gigs DDr2 ram (2x 2gig), 32 bit Vista home premium

 

That should be able to handle plenty...

Run the programs you were running when you had problems, and if it'll let you, open Task Manager and look through the list, noting which processes are using the most CPU and memory.

Today I started my truck up again, and after I started it and it died, I started it again and it ran fine, with a bit of white smoke and black smoke here and there. I parked it at the end of the driveway so the exhaust wouldn't end up in the house, and I made a phone call while I let it run and warm up. By the time the call was over (about 5-6 minutes), it was running.....smooth. I didn't hear the usual popping and spitting it usually does. It was running almost like a new truck! The smoking had stopped that I could see, and the exhaust didn't smell as rich as it used to. I got in and revved it a little to see how it'd react (run smooth or stumble), and it ran smooth then too, but smoked a little (black). I parked it in its usual spot in the carport, and it ran smooth all the way til I parked it.

And this is with the choke wide open the whole time!

 

I'm thinking it's a Vista issue, I never had this problem on the Computer when i was running XP. I'm hoping to upgrade to Windows 7... all i need to do is tell my friend in College to buy it for me!

 

Try what I mentioned and turn off indexing. (follow the first how-to, that's what I did and it will disable indexing entirely)

Disable and Turn Off Windows Vista Search Indexer and Indexing Service My Digital Life

I noticed a decent improvement in speed when I did this on my laptop with Vista Home Basic, including faster loading times after logging in. Also makes life easier for your hard drive, since it's not constantly running to index files. It won't search for files as quickly as it would with indexing enabled, but if you don't use search much, you probably won't have any trouble. I myself keep my files sorted into folders manually, so I rarely use search unless I absolutely cannot find a file.

I wouldn't place all my faith in 7 yet...people are all saying it's going to be the solution to Vista, but it's still just a new OS that's sure to have its own bugs.

I personally haven't had any issues with Vista, but I've never found an OS that can compete with XP Pro. It's like putting a Ford engine into a Chevrolet. The inside will outlive the outside.

 

Thanks for reminding me, I did it on my laptop and loved the end result.