Chasing a dream

Long post.

I made the drive out to Hawk Pride yesterday. Didn’t realize there was an event going on until I’d already planned to go and meet some folks there. I don’t deal with large crowds very well. I went anyway, and it started off Rocky pretty much immediately. GPS showed the park a touch further down the road and I passed it, and I saw a big driveway and shop with tractors and such and it was plenty big enough for me to pull in and back out into the road to turn around, so that’s what I did. But when I pulled in there this guy appeared out of no where and absolutely lost his mind because I was turning around there. He comes up to the truck yelling and throwing his arms up and cussing me out. I’ve got my boy in the truck with me and logos for social media on the side of my truck so I tried to keep my cool with the guy and explain that I had no idea, was from out of state and just following GPS. He is enraged and not having it. My blood was boiling and there was no reasoning with this guy. I went on about my way while we were both yelling at each other. I need to see if that altercation it still on my dash cam.

Anyway I went on into the park which was jam packed and muddy as all get out. SxS had the buggies outnumbered 10:1 and it was evident. I watched the race and hung out with a friend I finally got to meet in person for the first time, till about 2pm and then we went and rode around for a few hours.
I was crawling an obstacle beside the main hill for the traffic to come and go to the race, and some idiot in a SxS rips up the hill in 2wd and pelts my buggy with rocks, hitting my boy in the face causing him to bleed. I backed off the obstacle and told my buddy I either needed to get into the trails away from everyone or just head home. So we went and wandered around.
Neither of us had ever been there and was just riding around blind, even though we had a map I found it hard to navigate. Apparently there is an active map but I didn’t have enough service to download it.

I have never seen so much trash littering the trails in a park. It was by far the worst I’d ever seen. We did a few cool things but spent more time riding around in circles it seemed.
Then I realized my motor was running 240° and my fan wasn’t working. Turns out I melted a relay. I swapped that out and rode a little longer but the mud and the crowd had finally done me in and I decided it was time to head back since I had nearly a 2 hour drive back “home”.

All in all it was a good day, I had fun with my boy and did a few cool things in the buggy. It was worth it all to get to spend the day with a guy I’d “known” online for a while and we had a blast talking about life and everything in between while watching the race.
Can’t say I have much interest in going back to HP, but I do realize it was an event weekend so the crowd was bigger than normal, and that I didn’t get to see much of it. It just seems like more of a SxS park to me.

I had planned to go to Stoney Lonesome this coming weekend but have decided to skip that. I’m so anxious to wheel out west I don’t even want to wheel here and I’m really just over all the mud and the awful SxS crowd. I know I will deal with that everywhere but I can’t take 4 weekends straight of dealing with rudest people in the world.
 
Once you wheel out west, you will not want to come back east to wheel. It ruins you for sure.
 
89wrangler said:
Once you wheel out west, you will not want to come back east to wheel. It ruins you for sure.
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Agreee. But Sxs dominate there now too
 
Ron said:
Agreee. But Sxs dominate there now too
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Sadly you are correct. At least the state of Utah is trying to combat it. The test you have to take to ride out there is incredibly relevant to the entire nation and everyone should have to take it. I tell myself they won’t be as ignorant out there but we all know I’m lying.


89wrangler said:
Once you wheel out west, you will not want to come back east to wheel. It ruins you for sure.
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Man you ain’t lying. All I can think about is point and shoot traction and a rig that doesn’t need 2 hours worth of washing after a ride.
 
77GreenMachine said:
At least the state of Utah is trying to combat it. The test you have to take to ride out there is incredibly relevant to the entire nation and everyone should have to take it. I tell myself they won’t be as ignorant out there but we all know I’m lying.
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:laughing: :(
 
77GreenMachine said:
As usual, I had to learn the hard way today.

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I've got a 7" garmin dezl to use in the semi truck and when towing long trailers. Most times it's a lot better than google or apple maps, especially when connected to your phone. Sucks truck is heating up so much, might really suck out west this summer
 
Believe it or not, these things will run 220-230 degrees for a while. I know it's uncomfortable, but it'll do it. 240+, yeah...I'd ease up.

If you think it needs a radiator, might as well put one in it. Have you done a water pump yet? That'd be the time to do it. I'd probably snag one of the plastic/resin wheel pumps. DHD sells one with hardware and doesn't require the harmonic balancer to be removed to get the water pump off next time.

I don't remember how the transmission cooler lines are run. Is it like a pickup? Transmission to heat exchanger in radiator, then to external cooler, and back to the transmission? A bigger external cooler helps draw some heat out of the cooling system.

Does that rig have a "tow/haul" mode? Always keep the converter locked when you can, it helps keep the heat down. I'm sure you know this. I also noticed my stock transmission would start to run a little warmer than normal and changing the spin on filter would usually put it right back to normal. Have you done that lately?

Can you manually downshift? I don't know how they are with their gearing/tire size, but pulling it down a gear (or two, sometimes) and just letting it have some revs will keep the turbo spooled and lower EGTs. Inversely, oil temps will go up some. It should help with coolant temps. It's spinning the water pump and fan faster, but sometimes you just have to go slower.

One thing I have absolutely no idea about on those is the oil cooler. I know how they're setup on the pickup motors. It's all right there on the side of the block, but I saw on Rock Auto that some radiators have an oil cooler in them. Ideally, it'd have a good water to oil heat exchanger and then an air to oil cooler. I have all the notes still from when I was going to do one on my rig. If you think about it, the entire bottom end is oil cooled. These also have oil squirters that shoot the bottoms of the pistons to help cool them down. I'm sure you've seen the oil pressure drop some when it gets good and toasty.

I'm doing some looking to see if there are any common cooling upgrades for those trucks. It being a medium duty, I don't know what's like the pickups and what's different.
 
After some quick looking:

The fan blade itself seems to be a good thing to change. I use Rock Auto to look at pictures and get technical information. The stock one appears to be 20" or so, has 10 blades, and an outer ring.

An AC Delco 15-80690 is closer to 21", no outer ring, and has 9 blades with a higher pitch.

This guy did the swap with a Hayden 2886 fan clutch and said it works well, but it'd work a helluva lot better if the fan was actually inside the shroud. If someone made a spacer for the fan hub, that'd be the ticket.

www.dieselplace.com

Cooling Fan Mod

www.dieselplace.com www.dieselplace.com

Trying to find CFM ratings is almost impossible, but I can see there's a definite difference in fan blade pitch between the medium duty fan and the pickup fan. In your setup, I don't think a few HP and .1/.2 mpg would matter to you. It would definitely be nice to keep it cooler though!

More to come. I'm still digging.
 
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I was going to say, adding an oil cooler or a larger one can help as much as a radiator. Also, didnt you add/change the exhaust brake? I guess it didnt help much coming down the grade?
 
Man, sounds like you have something to figure out with the truck. If it’s overheating in the East in Feb, it’s going to have a really hard time out west in summer.

When I was out west a few summers ago, there were a couple climbs I had to take it slow and the pusher still got hot and was beeping at me a couple times. Just have to take it slow and steady. But never had any issues in the winter in the East.

My biggest contributor to the RV getting hot was the transmission. I’d keep an eye on that and be sure it’s in good shape. And if you do t have an exhaust brake, you’re going to want to have one out west. It really helps with managing speeds going down those really long grades.
 
A lot of questions to answer lol.

Yes I have an exhaust brake. It helps a lot, and I’d have been screwed without it yesterday.
I believe the trans and oil coolers are separate from the radiator but need to confirm.

When I pulled off from the brakes, I manually pulled it down to 2nd and was using the brakes minimally, that helped a lot and is what I should have been doing to begin with.

My transmission never gets hot, I’ve never seen it above 175° till yesterday, which was understandable with that climb and the TC not locking up for some of it.

The truck does not have a Tow Haul mode, it is basically tuned to be in TH all the time.

Previously I had this issue and I replaced the fan clutch with the Hayden 2886 clutch, and it didn’t help. I’d bought that from Amazon for half the price of everyone else, so then I bought another one from RockAuto and it made a massive difference. I’ve towed this sale setup up 77 with no issues, but that seems to have changed again. I noticed the truck heating up to 210-215° with only the buggy on the back, climbing minor grades at the last place we were staying. It seemed to change recently and now thinking back, I haven’t heard the fan at all in a while. I just checked and the fan has resistance for a second and then seems to spin pretty free. I need to check it while hot.

I am thinking I need to replace the clutch again but this time buy it from Kennedy Diesel or Summit. I just think I should be able to hear the fan, and I never do.

I unknowingly put a sever duty clutch on my 8.1 truck a couple years ago. It makes a ton of noise, and killed the mpg a little, but that thing couldn’t over heat if I needed it to.
 
77GreenMachine said:
A lot of questions to answer lol.

Yes I have an exhaust brake. It helps a lot, and I’d have been screwed without it yesterday.
I believe the trans and oil coolers are separate from the radiator but need to confirm.

When I pulled off from the brakes, I manually pulled it down to 2nd and was using the brakes minimally, that helped a lot and is what I should have been doing to begin with.

My transmission never gets hot, I’ve never seen it above 175° till yesterday, which was understandable with that climb and the TC not locking up for some of it.

The truck does not have a Tow Haul mode, it is basically tuned to be in TH all the time.

Previously I had this issue and I replaced the fan clutch with the Hayden 2886 clutch, and it didn’t help. I’d bought that from Amazon for half the price of everyone else, so then I bought another one from RockAuto and it made a massive difference. I’ve towed this sale setup up 77 with no issues, but that seems to have changed again. I noticed the truck heating up to 210-215° with only the buggy on the back, climbing minor grades at the last place we were staying. It seemed to change recently and now thinking back, I haven’t heard the fan at all in a while. I just checked and the fan has resistance for a second and then seems to spin pretty free. I need to check it while hot.

I am thinking I need to replace the clutch again but this time buy it from Kennedy Diesel or Summit. I just think I should be able to hear the fan, and I never do.

I unknowingly put a sever duty clutch on my 8.1 truck a couple years ago. It makes a ton of noise, and killed the mpg a little, but that thing couldn’t over heat if I needed it to.
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I wouldnt have thought a clutch would die that quick, but guess you never know. I also wonder if putting a big electric pusher on the front of the rad, that kicks on at 200 or so, might help, esp on the slow climbs?

How were the EGTs during those climbs when the engine temps were climbing?

I know that adding a big oil cooler helped keep a friend's buggy cool, when nothing else would. It didnt have near the radiator as this truck though, which I would think would help; but my experience is with a Cummins that are apparently difficult to run hot.

How were the trailer brakes, when the others were hot? Maybe could try turning up or dragging the trailer brakes some on the downhills, mixed with the trans & exhaust brake.
 
paradisePWoffrd said:
I wouldnt have thought a clutch would die that quick, but guess you never know. I also wonder if putting a big electric pusher on the front of the rad, that kicks on at 200 or so, might help, esp on the slow climbs?

How were the EGTs during those climbs when the engine temps were climbing?

I know that adding a big oil cooler helped keep a friend's buggy cool, when nothing else would. It didnt have near the radiator as this truck though, which I would think would help; but my experience is with a Cummins that are apparently difficult to run hot.

How were the trailer brakes, when the others were hot? Maybe could try turning up or dragging the trailer brakes some on the downhills, mixed with the trans & exhaust brake.
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EGTs were great the whole time, barley touching 1200* for a moment. Haven't had an issue with that. Trailer brakes weren't smoking, I used them a bunch after stopping to get the rest of the way down. I am probably going to turn them up a bit so they're helping more.

It may not be the fan clutch, but I'm not too confident in it. There are so many part failures right out of the box these days it's not crazy to think I got yet another lemon. I am probably going to pick up another one before I leave here as it's only $100, and takes less than an hour to change. It's just odd that I never hear the fan.
 
I have one that was tighter than a 2886. Might have 500 miles on it. You want it?
 
Today I drove into town today and when I got back I cut the truck off and check the fan at 190* and it spun very freely.
@Croatan_Kid is shipping me his right to the campground and I will put it on before towing back to NC. I think between that and staying off of what is basically just like the Blue Ridge Parkway, I should be good. I have to drive down to Atlanta in a few days to meet with Partially Committed Racing so if it makes it here before then I could probably see a difference in the truck even without the camper but I'll know for sure when I head out of here.
 
I guess you're not technically wrong...

Maybe they're just nomads or pikeys, for those of you that have seen Snatch. They do live in a caravan :D
 
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