Merry Christmas!

Trip delayed due to blizzard across MT and SD. Hope to leave Monday.

 

Well, other than effect on MPG, it isn't taking a week to evaluate difference.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from an update, but was very pleasantly surprised by what I got.
There is a noticeable improvement in the low and mid RPM throttle response.
I'm on the 93 Octane tune, but would think there's a comparable change in the lower Octane tunes also.

Thanks to Sean for an unexpected Xmas present.

 

installed new license plate light assemblies, and made a list for a junk-yard trip tomorrow -- local yard has 5 (count 'em 1-2-3-4-5) 98-01 model 1500s. 2 of them less than a month on the lot.

So i'll go treasure hunting. I'm planning to get a passenger seat cushion, e-fan from a v-8 5.9 jeep grand cherokee (they've got 9 of those), hopefully some factory fog-lights, and the main reason is to get an intake so i can have it ready to do a swap out when i do the plenum repair on my '00 5.2 soon.

 

well, the bone-yard trip was well worth it ---

Picked the intake off another '00 5.2, got a perfect condition passenger seat cushion to replace my drivers cushion, new air-hat/filter housing I needed, and a parking brake release lever for @spillage.

Got home and swapped all the parts above, plus replaced a front hub bearing assembly that was howling.

Trip to the bone yard was great -- they had 7 2nd Gens, 1 that just went on the lot yesterday, so it was full of goodies. Unfortunately, of 9 jeep grand cherokees, every single one was a 4.0, so no e-fan this time around.

 

It wasn't today, but I finally changed the heater core. After a couple years of window funk and 3 winters dealing with crappy heat seeing Beeker's How To I finally motivated me to dig in. About 2 hours in I was second guessing myself and thinking I could have just worn a hat and gloves for another year. Then at exactly 6 hours when I finally got everything back together to fire it up and leak check it, I had no blower. Now I was angry that after 6 hours of work I just made my problems worse. I walked away, had a beer and thought back over the whole thing to try and save myself the humble pie of coming on here asking for common mistakes. After replaying it in my head I guessed I either didn't reconnect a wire or did a bad job repairing the ground wire I broke behind the right side kick panel. Thankfully with my destroyed dash I could easily see that I didn't reconnect the a wire and was able to wedge my hand in the top, reconnect it and the blower fired right back up. So even though it was a whole day later it was only 5 minutes of work and the blower was back in business. No way I could have done that without having my entire dash top gone. So for once I was glad to have a destroyed dash. The upside is that I don't think there is any way I could have done the job in 6 hours if I had a real dash instead of a Coverlay molded dash cover that I just pick up and remove when ever I want in 30 seconds.

Background details on the job: I went with the Spectra Premium all aluminum core from Amazon for $38. Parts stores all had the same core for $54. I have put this job off for years so I wasn't pressed for time if it showed up damaged. I didn't want to mess with AC since it works so I opted for the risky swivel tubes and not removing the climate box. I can remove the Coverlay dash and check for leaks easily. I don't consider myself all that skilled and have never removed a dash so as crazy as this sounds I wanted to practice it once before I went for it all. I was also seeking to avoid removing PCM and screwing up a good running truck that I still drive to work every day. One day when AC needs works again I will do a full Evap swap, new mopar core and replace the dash top. Today wasn't that day

After doing it I am in no hurry to do it again, but think I was right to do a practice run... I'm a bit of a mess

Also recently, I had the "opportunity" to drive 391 miles round trip in a day for work. I usually drive that in a month so I decided to throw a can of Seafoam into the gas tank to clean the injectors. Some would say dubious value but I went for it. Truck ran great and got 15.1 MPGs by the odometer the next day when I filled it back up so I was pretty pleased with the old girl since roads favored 70-75mph. Best average tank I've ever seen was 16.5ish a LONG time ago on a perfect day where traffic and roads kept me around the 55 MPH mark.

 

Put grille guards on both 97s pics to follow Bring it on deer

 

Drove it to the Smog shop.
Passed. Yay
Backup cam for Xmas, install
when it isn't raining.

 

installed a 3"front and 2.5" rear lift and put my 315/70r17 on my dcenti 17x9's.... next 4.56 gears

 

Yer gonna LIKE that.

Where are you having the gears done? (I see you are in Toledo, not too far from me. )

 

gonna do them myself after I get all the parts