Hi Everyone,

I am hoping I can start with a few questions that I am interested in getting answered so I may learn a little more about my truck to be able to take better care of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank-you.

1. Is there a 4x4 indicator light on the cluster?
2. What temperature should the truck run at? It never seems to warm up.
3. Do larger tires reduce power? If so, how much?
4. Is there any special way to adjust the timing?
5. Is there any way to protect a cv boot with a cut in it without replacing it?

That should be good for now, I do believe there might be some power issues with my truck but I will delve into that as I learn more. Thanks again.

Josh

 

Welcome to the site Josh. To answer your questions yes there is a 4x4 indicator on the instrument cluster. These trucks typically run around 200 degrees sounds like your thermostat is bad. Larger tires don't reduce power so much as alter the gear ratio to a lower ratio. You can't mess with the timing on a fuel injected motor(as far as I know) and as for the cv boot you might want to cover the boot in duck tape until you can get it replaced. But there isn't really a cheap fix on that one. Hope this helps.

 

also some more info on engine, trans, ect would be helpful as well...Welcome. There is a lot of info around here that has been discussed its a really good site.

 

Plan on spending a few dollars...

They do sell CV boot replacements...used to at least. They were always fun to put on...

Youll have to do your T-stat like Zane said...might be worth flushing the system while youre at it. Sounds like the older trucks have issues with gumming etc(only seen posts about it periodically).

Timing should be adaptive, no need/not good to adjust without full mods/mapping.

BTW...who's dying...you or the truck...lol

 

A tuner will adjust timing but not in the way you're thinking. The adjust the timing of the plugs (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not sure how much they change it though. There are settings for performance and towing. One retards it and one advances it.

Like zanethan said, larger tires don't reduce power directly they just chan change the gear ratio. The truck will acclerate slower the larger the tires. But it is not a big difference unless you end up going a lot bigger.

If your truck never warms up, your t-stat is stuck open and will need to be replaced.

 

Thanks guys for the quick answers, this will really help out alot. I figured I needed to replace the thermostat. I did recently buy myself a new one, I think I will wait a couple days to change it tho as it is about minus 30 out today. Really great to know about the timing too, its a starter question to a larger problem I am having with the lack of horsepower the truck is having. I beleive I should do something about it b4 it gets way worse but I will describe that issue in a new thread and be as descriptive as I can cause it is kinda baffeling to me. I do plan on spending enough to get the dakota runing properly tho, that is priority number one. Once again thank you very much. Talk to you again real soon.

 

Larger tires are heavier, thus they will rob you of some of the power that makes it to the pavement. Not only are they heavier, but they are rotating mass (which carries more of a penalty than the same amount of static mass when accelerating). To illustrate with an extreme example, imagine completely filling your current tires with osmium so they weighed, let's say, 1000 pounds each (I don't know what they would really weigh in such a case, but they would be extremely heavy). You probably wouldn't have enough power to even move, and if you did manage to move, you wouldn't go very fast.

Now going up a couple tire sizes isn't a drastic rotating mass increase, but it is an increase nonetheless, and it will rob you of a certain amount of power (there is no doubt a math formula that could tell you exactly how much power-to-the-ground would be lost, but I don't know what it is).

And as others have mentioned, they do alter the gear ratio (assuming that by "larger" you mean taller; not just wider); i.e., they effectively make your truck higher geared, which will also reduce your acceleration speed. You can compensate for this by swapping to lower gears in your differentials, but there is nothing you can do about the power loss from the added weight of the tires.

With that said, if you're only talking about a minor increase in tire size (such as going from P235/75R15 to 31x10.50/15 for example), the effect will be minor.

 

My 5.2L runs around 175-180ish.. never gets to the 210 spot... but stays at that temp non the less..

 

Going from 31's to 32's basically eliminated 5th gear on country roads around home even with the 3.92's for me. And while I agree with on what you said I do think going up in tire size for anyone will make the butt dyno feel like you lost some horsepower. However with anything up to a 31 on these trucks it shouldn't be to bad.

 

Thank you Maxim, that was pretty much what I was going to add. The weight is the biggest issue. Coupled with someting taller the differences really start to add up. Espescially with the 3.9. I changed from 235/75/15 to a 255/60/17 which are almost exactly the same height but about a 1/4 inch different in width. Ithink I gaind most of the weight from the wheels but I noticed a pretty defined difference with my 5.2. Like everyone else said, size will make it feel a bit different but the weight is really what gets ya down. My truck (5.2) doesn't get verry warm just enough to break the chill. I have been through the whole cooling system except for the heater core. and nothing has made much difference. My mothers truck (3.9) gets warm enough to run me out but it takes 2 forevers and 1/2 of tomorrow for that thing to warm up. as far as I know out Distributors are fixed in place so they're not adjustable. Super glue or a good hobby grade C/A glue works really well on rubber so that will help hold your boot together till you can either replace the boot or the shaft. You'll still want to wrap in in some type of tape. It would also be a good Idea to either replace or at least repack the grease in there before you close it up. Good luck.