RowdyRebel

You work for Junior Samples Auto Sales? Are you their new truck sales guy? My beater truck leaks like a screen door on a submarine when it rains, so I've been looking for a replacement.

I've tinted the rear window of the cab, as well as the top 6" of the windshield....all that I can LEGALLY tint here in Illinois. I roll down the door windows and open up the wing windows to encourage a breeze to blow through. I have an aluminized windshield sun blocker sort of deal (wal-mart had 'em cheap last year) that blocks most of the windshield. I have 2 fans...a 10" that plugs into my inverter, and a 6" that clips to the sun visor and oscillates. Yesterday, I sat for 7 hours waiting to load. 95 degrees outside, sun beating down, asphalt parking lot. Stayed nice & cool inside the truck with the truck shut off (not burning any fuel). Ya'll can have that conditioned air. I like the natural stuff, myself. Even saved 40 pounds when I removed the compressor, condenser, dryer, belt, bracket, and lines from under the hood (all stuff that would have had to have been removed & replaced anyway if I ever decide to FIX the AC...so the labor is 1/2 done). Couple plugs in the firewall where the lines had been attached to keep things clean and I'm good to go. I know Mack appreciated not having to work around the AC stuff the last time my truck was in their shop getting the new cam, unit pump, lifters, etc...so it saved me a bit on labor. When I have to run the PTO-driven blower to unload, I open the hood. I've had a lot of guys ask me if I'm broke down, and I tell 'em it lets the heat go up instead of back toward the cab...also lets me poke around under there to check things out & make sure nothing is leaking/broken/missing/loose/etc... Even if I had AC, I'd still open the hood when I unload...just keeps things cooler under there.

Now I just gotta figure out how to use it Had my old Casio G'zOne Type-S for well over 3.5 years, and it still works great... Anyhow, I stopped by a Verizon Wireless store on my way home Wednesday to look at phones. I was interested in the new Casio phones, since the one I've had has been the best dern phone I've ever owned. They had the Ravine...which was really nothing TOO special...I liked some of the prior renditions better (Rock, Boulder, etc.)...but if that was all they had, I'd have to think about it some more. I picked up a brochure detailing what all Verizon Wireless had to offer and it was there that I saw a picture of a phone I absolutely had to have a better look at. I inquired at the counter....they could get me one for $100, or a Ravine for $150...but if they ordered one, I'd HAVE to take delivery on it, so I had to know I wanted it for sure before I placed the order. I'm not going to buy it sight unseen, so I left. At home, I googled this phone to see if I could find more info on it. Casio has a website featuring the phone...with tons of information about it. I watched a couple reviews on youtube about it, too. I logged onto the Verizon Wireless website and clicked on the "upgrade now" button just to see what all was available. Not only could I get that phone for the same $100 as the local Verizon store would sell it to me for, but I was ALSO eligible for an extra $100 "loyalty bonus"....which meant the phone would be free. Coupled with free Fed-Ex 2-day shipping, and I could have a new phone without spending a dime....but I STILL hadn't actually SEEN the phone, so I wasn't having anything sent to me quite yet. Then on Thursday, I had to swing by the terminal to have a trailer tire repaired on my way home and there was a corporate Verizon Wireless store in close proximity to the yard. They had a demo model. This thing was sweet! I had them add unlimited texting to my plan (mostly for her, but it also let me get the 20 or so pictures I had on my old phone sent over to my computer so I wouldn't lose them when I changed phones). When I got home, I got online and had the phone sent to me. It showed up yesterday afternoon. Casio G’zOne Brigade key features: - Tough Technology Design with a horizontal clamshell with QWERTY keypad; - Dimensions: 4.4x2.2x0.9inch and a weight of 6.0 oz - 3.2 megapixel camera with flash, video capture and LED light; - Bluetooth, microSD card support; - Clear Talk for superior sound quality; - Water, shock, dust, immersion, vibration, humidity, salt fog, altitude, high and low temperature storage, and solar radiation resistant conforming to MIL-STD-810F; - Field Force Manager that provides businesses with the ability to locate and communicate with their mobile field workers; - Document Viewer for Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and PDF. ...and it's push-to-talk capable, so if anyone I talk to regularly ever gets a Verizon Wireless phone with the push-to-talk ability, I'll have to activate that feature. The old phone will be kept, because I sure as heck ain't going to pay the $420 retail price to replace it with another one if anything happens to it that isn't covered by the manufacturers warranty. I keep the insurance on her phone (she's always losing/dropping/destroying phones), but have never paid for the insurance for my own phone...I just figure if I can't afford to see anything happen to it, I can't really afford to have it in the first place. My old phone is my insurance policy this time around, since it still works perfectly and all...if anything happens to the new phone, I'll just reactivate the old one until I can upgrade again. Anyway, now all we gotta do is get HER to pick out a new phone. The one she likes has been around for a while, we can get it free, but the camera isn't as good. The ones with the nicer cameras, she's not really that into for who knows what reason (it varies from phone to phone). I think she should get one like mine (I can get one sent to her for $50)...but she thinks it's too big & bulky (even though she's never seen it). I told her she could figure out all the tips & tricks...then show me how to use the silly thing.... ...and it's waterproof (she has a habit of dropping phones, and there's usually a puddle involved. Kinda hard to believe, seeing as how she's in Texas...I didn't think they had puddles in Texas. ) Oh well. I told her to get whatever phone she wants...so that's probably what she'll do. At least she listens to me...

Just make sure you have some sort of "winter bypass" as part of the system...that return fuel is what keeps the tank fuel warm enough to prevent gelling while the truck is on the road. Start cooling the return fuel too much, and it increases the need for anti-gel additives. Around here you might be able to get away with something like that...even without a winter bypass....but for an OTR truck that spends any time up north in the winter, it could potentially cause problems.

It gets right down to the hot fuel issue...about expansion of liquid fuel (and therefore not as much energy in a given volume) as the fuel temperature increases. For example, if you buy 100 gallons of fuel that is 80 degrees from a non-compensating pump, you won't go as far on that fuel run as you could have if the 100 gallons of fuel was at 60 degrees when you pumped it. Another way to think about this is to fill a one gallon can to max capacity with fuel...this is one gallon of "cold fuel"...then set it out in the hot summer sun. As the sun heats the fuel, it expands and some of it will spill out of the can. You now have a gallon of "hot fuel"....which contains less energy (the spilled fuel) than the gallon of cold fuel. The theory is the same when discussing cooling the fuel prior to injecting it into the cylinder. Colder, denser fuel will have more energy available to be released during the combustion process than warmer fuel....which means the potential for more power if the air/fuel ratio is correct. I don't see why it WOULDN'T work to some effect...the question to be answered is just how much cooler can you get fuel in an economical way? Drag cars can pack ice around the air box & fuel lines to cool things down. That method probably would be more work keeping the ice boxes stocked than it would be worth in power gains in an OTR truck....but could there possibly be another way to chill the fuel without expending more energy than you'll gain? OK...too much thinking for one night...

What's A/C?

Even if you COULD recharge the batteries in the time it took to discharge them, it still would be far from practical. Doesn't take but 5 minutes to refuel a traditional car....and until the "alternative" fuel source is capable of that, I just don't see it catching on. Can you imagine the lines at the "recharging stations" if you were on a road trip? ...and people complain about them drivers parked at the fuel island NOW!

I got a Mack Dozer...he's just a pup in this pic.

80,000# GVWR straight dumps....only one I've seen was in Missouri, and seemed like a pretty sweet set-up. It can haul more than a T/T due to a slightly lower tare weight, and go wherever a straight dump can go when it gets to the jobsite. If they were legal in Illinois, it'd be the way to go if you were running dumps hauling rock, asphalt, or anything else that grosses out before it cubes out...however 'round here, you get 34K on the tandems, 20K on the steer, and that rear drop axle is good for another 12K....don't get any credit for the lift axles in front of the drives, so that's just extra weight you're carrying around. If you are hauling lighter weight stuff like coal, though, you need the space you can only get with a T/T.

...and don't you forget it.

He said not to quote him...

That is my problem with a lot of churches these days...twisting words and Bible verses around and bending their beliefs to conform to modern politically correct societal "norms" and not "offend" anyone rather than reading the Scriptures as they were written and using the written Word of God as a moral bedrock. Same can be said about the Constitution, too...been bastardized by many who do not find what they WANT to find written in the document, so they have to "interpret" bits and pieces several times over in order to lay claim to something they'd LIKE to see as actually being in there.

Charge a car 8 hours to drive 40 miles. How much coal was burned at the power plant in order to produce enough electricity to charge that car for 8 hours? How many gallons of diesel fuel were burned digging the coal out of the ground, and transporting the coal to the power plant? How many gallons of diesel fuel were burned mining, processing, and transporting the limestone used in the scrubbers at the power plants? ...all to save the 1 gallon or so of gasoline that would have been burned by a 4-cylinder engine in that same car. Never has made much sense to me. Neither has turning food into fuel, which in turn links food prices to the price of fuel...because if a farmer can get $5/bushel selling his corn to be eaten...but fuel prices are increasing to the point where ethanol producers are willing to pay $7/bushel in order to meet their customer's demands....that farmer is going to be selling his corn to the ethanol producers for $7/bushel. If the grocery stores want to have corn on their shelves, they'll have to match the $7/bushel....which means you pay more when you buy corn.

I'm behind a levee. I've had water come CLOSE to the house when it rains a bunch in a short period of time. All of the water that falls on my property and the properties around me have to drain across the church parking lot and through a 8" culvert that's been smashed on one end and probably is 1/2 full of sediment. I'm about 10' in elevation above the low-lying areas, and according to my GPS, where my truck parks next to the garage is the same elevation as the road over the top of the levee about 1-2 miles to the East (on the other side of that low lying area) that holds the creek in it's bank. Not sure how that levee compares to the Mississippi River levee about 3-4 miles to the West. I would imagine, though, if the Mississippi River levee would have broke, I'd have got wet. Of course if I had enough warning, anything that COULD be moved, would be moved. My house don't have wheels, though. These people that live in their RV's and didn't move them out of harms way....got no sympathy for them.

Watching the 10:00 news....had a sob story on about the flood...people who live at a campground that got flooded out. They were showing all of these travel trailers and motor homes...every last one of them could have been pulled out behind any pickup truck or driven out under their own power BEFORE they were submerged. One lady was standing outside of a motor home that had a waterline indicating it was just a foot or so away from being TOTALLY submerged...and she was crying about how it was a $100K+ motor home and had all sorts of pictures and personal belongings inside and now it's a total loss. Well why the f*&% didn't you put the key in the ignition and drive it the f*&% to higher ground? A home flooding that's permanently attached to a foundation is one thing....even a trailer up on blocks that requires a service to come out and move it leaves me scratching my head, but I would guess the movers have a LOT of people calling them to have trailers moved to higher ground and can't get to all of 'em. But when you...the owner of the RV...can hook up and move it whenever you choose to do so, or can turn the key and drive it whenever you feel the need to....there is NO friggin' excuse to lose a damn thing inside that RV to a friggin' flood.

Top right corner of my browser window has my profile pic next to my screen name...right above "sign out" and "help". When I click on my screen name, a menu drops down. If I select "My Content" from that menu, it shows the threads I've posted in...the ones with the most recent activity are at the top.

"And what the hell took the President so long to break the news? The whole world knew about it before he even said a word! Was the teleprompter guy out of town or something? Now George Bush... George Bush would have gone all Bill O'Reilly with the news! He'd just step up to the mike and say, 'F@(& IT! WE'LL DO IT LIVE'"

That petercar was trying to evacuate when it broke down. The wrecker just didn't get to it in time...

I just wish they had brought the body back to display this f***er's severed head on a stake at ground zero for a couple weeks. The rest of his body should have been quartered and buried in an unmarked grave with slaughtered feral hogs. What sickens me the most about this whole deal is the "respect" shown to this terrorist and his warped religious beliefs....the SAME DAMN BELIEFS which led him to attack and kill thousands of Americans over a couple decades.

I think it's BS. They are going to destroy over 130,000 acres of prime farmland and wipe out homes all across that area just to "relieve pressure from the other levees". In 1937 when they blew it up it reduced the river level a few inches...but in a couple hours it was right back up where it had been. Personally, I don't see the point. If the land behind the levee was worth building the levee to protect, then the levee should not be intentionally breeched. If the land behind the levee was deemed to be an acceptable loss when the river levels rise, then the levee never should have been built. Yeah, occasional seasonal flooding can be good for the soil and makes for some productive land...but that's when the water comes in and goes out gradually. When that levee is blown, water is going to rush through the area scrubbing the fertile topsoil from the surface and carrying it downstream. Probably a good thing I don't live in a soon-to-be-flooded area behind that levee. I would have been positioned with my M1 Garand taking shots at the guys trying to set the explosives. Wonder what would have happened if the MO governor had called up the MO Nat'l Guard to protect the levees from the Army Corps of Engineers... Anyway, KFVS is the local news channel...supposedly they are going to have live coverage on the TV. Not sure if they stream online or not...might click around and see. Supposed to be happening around 9 pm or so. I'm just hoping this rain lets up soon. Damn near 2 feet of rain in the last week and a half....and 5 of the next 10 days has more rain in the forecast. Running out of places to put all of it. Ran WAY more miles than I normally do trying to get around flooded/closed roads.

I'd guess the casting for the pump would be the part number you'd need. I would assume you could build that casting with different sized pulleys for varying uses...but that casting would be what you need to match up with your engine block. ...but then again, what do I know?

Time is money. If it takes 3 days for the online purchase to get to you, but you can go to a local shop first thing tomorrow morning and have your truck back in service by noon, have you really saved anything buying online? Not to mention helping the local economy when you buy local... Just a thought.

Apart from the color, that don't look much different than a new Swift truck after a week or two on the road.... ...and spare parts is ALWAYS good to have

I think I saw a box for a ReMack water pump on the counter when I dropped my truck off last Monday for mine to get done. Sure, I could have swapped the part out myself...outside...in the rain...but they ended up doing a LOT more than JUST the water pump for me....and I stayed dry. ...but if a water pump is all you need, there will be less down time involved in buying a remanufactured unit and swapping it out as opposed to having yours rebuilt.

McBride's is one of the best reasons to live where I live. 3 locations within an hour...Cape, Carbondale, and Paducah. From what I hear, even Evansville is associated with 'em or owned by the family or something like that...and that's just over 2 hours. No matter which direction I'm running, I drive past one of 'em. Never had any complaints...'cept for when I first got my truck it was kinda tough getting in sometimes. Once they see you a few times, though, and they know you'll pay your repair bill, it gets easier. This was a last minute "can ya squeeze me in so I don't have to do the waterpump myself outside in the pouring rain in my driveway" sort of deal and they not only squeezed me in but ended up replacing the waterpump, camshaft, an injector pump, something having to do with lifters and the fuel (3 were really bad & the 4th was well on its way out), the bearings on the crankshaft, and the oil pump. Hell, there might have been more...they did a LOT of work...but they got 'er fixed. Not too much would make me happier running down the road the road right now. I DO have to keep a close eye on my speed, though....gets up there a LOT quicker, and even at speed its got plenty of pedal left. Can't say enough good stuff about 'em right now.