RowdyRebel

They came out through the drain hole. Some required a little effort, though. Quite a few pieces were stuck to the magnetic drain plug. One larger piece was wedged into the hole and I had to go after it with my finger after the oil had finished draining. I got another piece or two out while flushing it with the first gallon of clean oil...second gallon did not flush out any additional pieces, so I put the drain plug back in and filled 'er up. I saved the 2 gallons of clean oil...figure I'll strain it and use it in the lawn mower since it uses/leaks quite a bit of oil anyway. No point in throwing out that much new oil...

Sure would be nice if people knew how to mind their own damn business...

It's got a magnetic drain plug...still probably not a bad idea to get a larger magnet involved, though. Gotta look around the garage and see if I've got any old speakers.....

I had all of that apart about a week after the turbo blew when I was changing the exhaust manifold gaskets...didn't see any obstructions. The turbo outflow empties directly into the fill tube, which is a straight shot into the pan....no narrow passages to be found on that journey to the pan.

Good news for sure.

I hope you're wrong too. I can't afford to do anything about something major like that right now, so I'l just have to hope it holds together. Pretty sure I have breakdown insurance, so if it blows up in spectacular fashion, I might be able to get help paying for it.... I'm still hoping those are turbo bits & pieces...I changed the oil when I put the new turbo in after the last one blew up. This is the first oil change since then.

When I blew the turbo, I changed the oil. This is the first oil change since then...and I found a whole bunch of stuff that shouldn't have been in the oil pan. Now I'm HOPING those are just pieces of the turbo that have washed down into the pan...otherwise, it's gonna cost more than I've got. Anyone recognize these pieces? Am I on borrowed time? Or are they just remnants of the blown turbo? For what it's worth, I flushed out the pan with a gallon of clean oil about a quart at a time to get the last (I hope) pieces out. Might pour that clean oil back through again just to be sure...hate to leave stuff in there if I can get it out.

I matched 2 numbers....13 & 52. One more match and I would've been $5 ahead of where I was before I bought a ticket...but just my luck....$2 down the drain. You could buy me a new volvo if you wanted to...I wouldn't complain. It wouldn't take me but a few minutes to trade that sucker off for a real truck.

I think I found a way to beat this...even though the deputy said he's never actually seen somebody get fined. According to the deputy, he'll come back in a few weeks and if it has been "cleaned up", the judge asks him if progress is being made to clean it up and he says "yes" and it gets continued until who knows when. HOWEVER... http://code.unioncountyil.gov/nuisances/generally/ (16) To store, dump, or permit the accumulation of debris, refuse, garbage, trash, tires, buckets, cans, wheelbarrows, garbage cans, or other containers in a manner that may harbor mosquitoes, flies, insects, rodents, nuisance birds, or other animal pests that are offensive, injurious, or dangerous to the health of individuals or the public. That's the one I was actually written up for. It doesn't say that I cannot allow the accumulation of "stuff"....just that it cannot be accumulated in a manner which might harbor mosquitoes, etc. ALL of my buckets have lids on them, so they do not accumulate water. The only critters I've ever seen going into that area of the yard are the bunnies that Dozer is chasing. They COULD have written me up for the lawn being excessively long....measured in FEET, not inches (I hadn't mowed yet this year...kept forgetting to take my gas cans to town so that I'd have fuel for the mower, or it has been too wet, or I've been too busy with other things....needless to say, it was longer than 8")....but they didn't. I told him he was lucky he caught me, because I was going to be heading into town to buy some gas for the mower (as well as other things to work on the truck to get ready for the "safety blitz" in a couple weeks....just in case) and that it would be mowed by the end of the day. He also asked me if my old Ranger (parked in the front yard) ran...apparently the commissioners have seen it parked in the exact same spot all of the time and never see it move. Heck, I've been parking it there for so long there is a bare spot in the lawn underneath it where the grass never sees any sunlight. Yes, it runs. Starts up with the first turn of the key every 3 or 4 months when I decide to use it for something. As far as I'm concerned, as long as a vehicle is registered, plated, and carries the state minimum required insurance, it's NOBODY'S BUSINESS whether or not it runs, how often it gets used, or anything else as long as it is parked on PRIVATE PROPERTY. The more I've been thinking about this, the more it burns me up. Laying in bed this morning, I was debating about getting some concrete, a pair of 8' long treated 4x6's and a piece of 3/4" plywood. Right there at the edge of my property...still on my land, though....sink the posts about 3' in the ground and cement them in. On the 4X8 sheet of plywood, write something to the effect of: PRIVATE PROPERTY: KEEP OUT UNION COUNTY COMMISSIONERS: GO F(censored here....but on the billboard it won't be) YOURSELVES! IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE WAY I KEEP MY PROPERTY, DON'T LOOK AT IT! ....although that might get me another visit from the Sheriff for violating ( Public Nuisance shall include the following: (1) Any thing, act, failure to act, occupation, condition or use of a property which shall continue for such length of time as to: (d) greatly offend the public morals or decency. Then again, I'd get to argue the 1st Amendment right to free speech and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Right now, all I have is the 5th Amendment (No person shall be...deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation) and 14th Amendment (nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law). Of course they will argue that appearing in court to answer the citation is my due process, and I will argue that my property rights were lost LONG before I was summoned to appear. I was summoned to appear as a direct result of my property rights being stripped from me without due process. Hell, I'm surprised some pantywaste yankee liberal hasn't complained about my garage doors violating that one. I bought the house where I did because it wouldn't matter if I was on the road for 3 or 4 weeks at a time without being around to mow. I bought the house where I did because if it was raining during the 2 or 3 days I was home and couldn't get it mowed, it wouldn't matter if it went another 3 or 4 weeks while I was out on the road again before getting back home to see about getting it knocked down. I bought the house where I did because it wouldn't matter where I parked my vehicles, or how long they sat waiting for me to decide to drive them. Before I bought my house (back when I was renting elsewhere and the landlord paid for a lawn mowing service) I even cancelled the insurance on my personal vehicles because I never drove them anywhere. I'd pick up what I'd need on the way into town, then I'd spend my time at home actually at home, then I'd hit the road again. I didn't drive my personal vehicles again until I got on a dedicated run and was home more than 2-3 days per month...at which point I started up the insurance again. All of my vehicles have current registration AND insurance....AND they are parked on MY property. It shouldn't matter if they run or not. I bought the house where I did because it is far enough out of town so that the state law allows me to burn trash or whatever else I need to get rid of. There is a statewide ban...except if you live more than 1 mile from the nearest town with at least 1000 people. I haven't had trash picked up here for as long as I've lived here...no point, really. I'm not going to pay $60 every 3 months for 1 Walmart bag's worth of trash per week to get picked up every week. It shouldn't be the place of government at any level to come in and tell me how I must keep the appearance of my property. It would be one thing if these ordinances had been in place prior to my purchasing the land...I'd say "OK...those are the rules I've got to obey, because I chose to buy the land knowing those were the rules". However, I bought my land 6 years before the ordinances were passed. Those WEREN'T the rules when I bought the property. They CHANGED the rules AFTER I owned the property, stripping away some of the property rights I had previously held on this little piece of land I call home. THAT is what bugs me the most....and my question to the court will be "Who is going to compensate me for my previously held property rights which have been stripped away by the passage of this ordinance?" I'm really not upset that I have to clean it up...I was going to get around to that anyway since the fiance already told me that the pile of stuff couldn't stay next to the garage once she's up here (she's a bit more cityfied than I am...). It's way more fun when she screws me, though, so I don't mind doing certain things for her...

Don't know what happened to him, but if I'm suddenly MIA after 7/11/13, you might need to send bail money my way. Turns out the county commissioners had nothing better to do, so they passed a "nuisance" ordinance back in 2010....can't have grass more than 8" tall, can't keep "inoperable" motor vehicles on the property, can't have my pile of "scrap" or the stack of wood in the burn pile. Sheriff deputy rolled in and woke me up this morning...issued a citation and I've got to appear that day. Apparently, the commissioners passed that ordinance and now they drive around patrolling, then send the sheriff out to do their dirty work. Deputy said the sherrif has been trying to get ahold of me for the past couple years...basically since the damn ordinance was passed. I'm going to put it on record when I appear that if I EVER catch one of those good-for-nothing busy-bodies snooping around my property, they are going to wish they hadn't rolled out of bed. I bought my house where it is because of where it is....I could do as I pleased on MY land. This ex-post-facto bullshit, unless they want to compensate me for my loss of use, I couldn't care less what they think. If they don't like the way it looks, they need to turn their head the other way. Nobody else needs to be driving past my house. Only thing back here is a farm field and a boat shop, and the boat shop has its own driveway out to the highway. One thing is certain, though. Apparently the farmer who's field is behind me was on the commission and was the one pushing hardest for this ordinance. If I do a little digging and find that to be true, he'll find out what a nuisance REALLY is. I almost hope it's the same judge I got to see the last time I was at the court house....then I'll REALLY give him a piece of my mind about the way he allowed an out of town attorney to flat out lie to the court in order to secure a "win" that he knew he wouldn't get if he actually had notified me of the hearing so that I would have been there. Better start passing the collection plate now..... Funny thing is, a couple weeks before I'm set to appear myself, I've got to report for jury duty! 6/10 & 6/24

I've found the industrial strength duck brand to be a good balance between strength and price. Gorilla tape is just too darned expensive for this penny-pincher. As for the underhood welders, I've seen them advertised in 4x4 magazines and such & been curious about 'em for a while....sounds like they'd be pretty handy, but I guess it is yet another example of a great concept with poor execution.

I had quite a few changes happen around the same time....switched from an older style trailer with the squared off nose and no side skirts that weighed about 1000 pounds more to this one with the rounded nose and side skirts....and I blew my turbo around that same time, and then changed a leaky exhaust manifold gasket a few days later after I acquired the gaskets (I'd been looking for that exhaust leak for several months & couldn't find it...much easier when oil is pouring out of it). Overall, I gained about 3/4 to 1 mpg....but no telling how much can be attributed to the skirts vs. the more aerodynamic nose of the trailer vs. the lighter tare weight vs. the increased boost pressure from a new turbo without a leaky manifold gasket. I will say this much, though, the difference in trailers was astounding. I always knew the old trailer was back there...ESPECIALLY when I was driving into a headwind. I could FEEL the wind buffeting on the front of the trailer (of course it doesn't help that I've got about 12 feet between the back of the cab and the front of the trailer). This trailer? I can't feel it back there. When I'm empty, it doesn't pull much different than when I'm bobtailing....except for the weight. Easily one of the best pulling trailers I've ever had. The side skirts took a little getting used to....having to walk around the trailer instead of simply ducking under it. After these 2 blow-outs, though, I'm not so sure the fairings would be worth it if it were MY trailer....but then again, if it WERE my trailer, those junk tires wouldn't be on it so I wouldn't be having the blowout issues. Every time a tire blows on that front axle, it tears something up on the side skirt. I'd probably keep them on there if they were already there when I bought the trailer...but doubt I'd put out the money to install them if they weren't already on. I'm mostly local anyway, and highway mileage is limited....always preferred the 2-lanes. I'm a little disappointed, though. I'm going to be dropping this trailer today and going back to tanks....guess they need me again. I was getting used to actually getting a decent nights sleep and not starting until 7 or 8 in the morning and only working 9 or 10 hour days inside the 100 air mile radius, so no need to keep detailed log book entries. On tanks, I always had the 4 AM load appointments...which WILL stop once the new rules go into effect (need 2 consecutive days with 1AM to 5AM off duty in order to reset) because I'd lose the ability to use Saturday as a make-up day if I'm leaving the house at 2:30 in the morning. Not to mention getting up that early absolutely SUCKS!!! It also means 13-14 hour days and actually keeping a log book. Sure, I'll gross more....but once I got the run they had me on figured out on the dumps, I was actually doing $0.10/mile better & running 100 fewer miles than I had been on tanks. Oh well....guess that's what I get for having a truck set up to do it all. When things pick up on one side and slack off on another, I'm the first to be told to switch. I do have one persistent issue that needs to be resolved. I think I've got a weak valve somewhere....when the tank pressure gets down to around 105 psi and until the compressor kicks in to recharge the air tanks, whenever the turbo spools up and boost pressure increases above 5-10 psi, I hear air leaking...sort of like a pressure cooker....and because of that leak, boost pressure won't go above 25 psi or so and I really don't have much power to pull a hill. Once the compressor kicks in, that leak stops and boost pressure rises to about 30 until the compressor shuts off...and then I pick up the remaining couple psi to get full boost. I understand that last couple psi because the compressor is sucking air from the intake....but the leak between 105 psi tank pressure down to the kick-in point for the compressor is really bugging me. Would that be the air governor? Possibly the air dryer? Something else? Can't afford to blindly throw money at the problem, and not sure how to spool up the turbo to listen for the leak when the truck is parked and I can walk around listening and looking for where the air is escaping from....so I just deal with it. If I see a hill coming up and my tank air is getting close to 105 psi (and think about it in time), I'll tap the brakes a few times to get the compressor to kick in so I can pull the hill....otherwise, I downshift an extra time or two on my way up.

I've never had a blowout on the caps I've run on my truck. I've even had my own cases capped twice and ran them without any catastrophic failures. Quality tires that I bought new as virgins which haven't been abused, sent to a reputable facility for capping, with high standards in quality control. Quality in = quality out. The "fleet" caps the company uses, on the other hand....different story. I think they send cases to whoever will wrap a new tread around them the cheapest and the only requirement is that they hold air....and even that is negotiable. I've picked up a nail in a trailer tire before and rolled into a reputable tire shop only to be told they weren't going to patch the tire. When I went in to look at WHY they were refusing to patch it, I saw that the tire (a fairly "new" cap) already had about a dozen patches on the inside....some of which were even on the side wall....and the nail had punctured one of the existing patches. Garbage in = garbage out.

...blowed a danged trailer tire. Last time it was the front right inside...and it tore the heck out of the side skirt brackets & cables when it came apart. Limped 'er on up the road about 2 miles to the next get-off and found an old vacant gas station to wait for a service truck to bring me a new tire. While I waited, I removed the side skirt on that side (since it broke the weld on the rear bracket and sheared a cable) and stowed it on my catwalk for the ride to the shop (where they handed me a new bracket and cable and sent me on my way to put it all back together myself....) Today, it was the front right outside tire that failed in spectacular fashion. I was going to limp on up the road to the next exit, but a section of tread was still hanging on flapping around, so I had to pull off onto the shoulder. I pulled the pair of 30" tire spoons out of my side box and removed the tire. Tossed it up on the catwalk with a chain to secure it and I got the heck off the shoulder. I HATE sitting on the side of a busy highway, and I won't hang out there any longer than absolutely necessary. When I got up the road to the next exit, I crossed the road and found a wide spot on the shoulder of the get-on ramp to sit and wait (there really wasn't anything else there at that exit....just a seldom traveled state highway....might have had 3 cars drive by during my hour long wait). This time, though, it didn't obliterate anything on the side skirt...just stretched a couple cables and knocked some of the clamps holding the side skirt to the supports....nothing a little bailing wire couldn't fix. One of the benefits of having a frameless dump trailer....no need for a jack if the blown tire is on that front axle. Heck, I was surprised the tire guy even removed the rim to mount the new tire...I would have just slipped the new tire on, aired it up, and been done with it. Anyway, that's one of the reasons I refuse to run those ridiculous super single tires....no way to move the truck to a safe location to have the tire replaced....and that creates a safety hazard for everyone on the road and ESPECIALLY for that poor soul who gets called out to change a tire with traffic zipping passed at 70+ mph while the drivers are fumbling around with their phones completely oblivious to what is going on around them on the road. One of my pet peeves is when I see a truck on the shoulder having a tire changed...when there was still a perfectly good tire that would have allowed the truck to be moved to a safer location....ESPECIALLY if the blowout was on the side of the truck that has the tire guy working on the traffic side of the vehicle. There is no reason for it, but you see it all of the time. Tire guys risking their life because some panty waste steering wheel holder is too scared to drive the truck to a safer location. § 396.7(Any motor vehicle discovered to be in an unsafe condition while being operated on the highway may be continued in operation only to the nearest place where repairs can safely be effected. Such operation shall be conducted only if it is less hazardous to the public than to permit the vehicle to remain on the highway. It's right there in the regulations. Move the damn truck to a safe location to have the repairs made before you get somebody killed. OK....I didn't set out to go off on a tangent like that. I just wanted to post up another Redneck Engineering success story.

I've got 2 partial roles and a full roll in the truck...but why duck it if you can weld it? More power! Argh! Argh! Argh!

The bracket is steel...bolts onto the aluminum subframe of the trailer. These welders would use 6011, 6013, 7018, etc electrodes. I've seen electrodes for aluminum welding, but they are DCEP if I remember right, and I've only got an AC welder right now. These under hood welders seem to be DC, so it'd be a possibility I guess to weld some other stuff...

Anyone have any experience with one of the various "under hood" welders? Something along the lines of Mobi-Arc or Premier Power Welder or any others I haven't run across yet? I ran into a situation a couple weeks ago where something like that would have come in handy....blew out a trailer tire and that broke a weld on the bracket supporting the side skirt on the trailer. It also shredded a cable, but I could have used bailing wire to temporarily fix that issue...the broken weld on the bracket, not so easy. I ended up removing that entire side of the skirt and securing it to the catwalk as I waited for the tire guy to show up to replace the tire...then I had to swing by the yard on my way home to get it fixed. Rather than fix it, they handed me a new bracket and cable and sent me home to reinstall the side skirt myself. Would have been MUCH easier to just weld the broken bracket on the side of the road and twist some bailing wire together to "make" a temporary cable rather than wrestle that silly side skirt like I did.

Heck, I didn't know how to weld either until I bought a welder and started playing around with it a bit. For what it'll cost to have somebody else do the work for you, you can buy a welder and learn to use it....then the next project that comes up, you'll be ready to go instead of needing to hire somebody else to do the work for you again. Just make sure you get one that is capable of welding the thickness you are going to be working with....and that you've got the power at your shop to run it. My wire feed calls for a 20A 110V circuit....pops the 15A breaker if I try welding too hot. My stick welder is 220V and calls for 50A, but I only have a 40A breaker. Works well for most...handles the thicker stuff better than my wire feed...but if I'm running a long bead on thicker metal, it'll still pop the breaker. The entire garage is only on 60A...so while I COULD increase the breaker size to 50A, if much else is being used in the garage at the same time (lights, etc.) I'll have a longer walk to reset the breaker at the main box in the house. Really a silly design if you ask me....200A electrical service at the house and only 60A going to the garage.

I just used a 6-pin, but only 4 are wired up because that's all I needed for the tow lights on the back of the beater truck. I spliced into the wiring for the Left & Right turn/stop lights and the tail lights right there at the back of the tractor, and grounded it directly to the frame. The reverse can be spliced in there, too. They make an electric brake controller that plumbs into the air line rather than the electricals...although you can still splice the more commonly available units off the rack into the brake light wiring by the pedals and then run the blue wire back for that. Aux circuit would have to be run from a power source...usually on a keyed circuit so that when the key is on it is powered, but no power when key is off to avoid draining the vehicle's battery.

If I were buying a new truck and it was going to have air ride, I'd opt for the Raydan Air-Link. Walking beam suspension with bags instead of a spring...best of both worlds. BTW, pics can be found here with the writeup on both suspensions...

BTW, that's an 8" drop hitch...really needs more drop, but that's all that's available off-the-shelf around here. Anything bigger and I'd either have to special order it or make it myself. Would have been better if the hitch was under the rear cross member instead of in it....and I should have used a 2.5" receiver tube instead of the 2" for better weight ratings. They sell an adapter so that you can use 2" hitch in the 2.5" receiver, or just use a 2.5" hitch to take advantage of the increased weight ratings....less likely to bend/break if you use it as an anchor point to either get pulled out or to pull somebody else out of a sticky situation.

Can you weld? Most farm supply stores sell 2" receiver tubes in varying lengths. I torched a square hole out of my rear cross member and welded in one of those tubes....then reinforced that with some angle iron. Bolted in a pair of 10,000 pound rated D-rings and then welded them in place as well. It's a LITTLE higher than I would have liked, but it works. I had wanted to weld the receiver tube on to the underside of the rear cross member, but that would have been more involved because it would have required modifications to the light bar. Some pics:

Yup. My old 8N tractor is righty-tighty lefty-loosy on one side & lefty-tighty righty-loosy on the other. Same with the trailer my grandpa built back in '51 using the front axle from an old (at that time) Willy's....so I just figured that's the way things used to be. I've known about left-handed threads since I was 7 or 8 years old, so it didn't surprise me in the least that my truck with the stud-piloted wheels was like that. I thought for sure all you old-timers would have been intimately familiar with them...

Might talk to the guy and see if HE will hire you. Perhaps he'd even be willing to sell his business to you eventually once you learn the ins & outs of it....start out by driving for a year or so to get out and meet customers & such, then transition to the office to start assuming more & more "responsibility". Then, once you know how both ends of the operation work, start making payments to the guy and he can retire. If his kids don't want it, it's going to put more into his pocket in the long run as a running operation than it would by simply liquidating the assets and selling out. Or if he'd prefer to simply liquidate, see if he'd be willing to keep the business going long enough for you to learn the ropes and secure sufficient financing for the buyout.

On my 3rd trip ever in my own truck...before I had split the tanks, or even been paid for anything I'd done up to that point....I took a load down to Ashdown, AR. I stopped at the J just east of Texarkana to fill up both tanks just in case I felt up to driving home after I was empty...I wanted to have enough fuel to make it without worrying about fuel receipts matching up with a log book. Anyway, after I finished unloading, it was late and I was a little tired, so rather than pushing it, I decided to keep it legal and stop there at the Super 8 in Hope. While filling out the paperwork for the room, I ALWAYS include my vehicle information....even though the desk clerk usually tells me they don't need it. Good thing I did, too. Not even an hour after my head hit the pillow, the room phone rang. It was the front desk notifying me that their security guard (an off-duty detective with the Hope PD) caught some guys trying to steal fuel from my truck. (Had I NOT included my vehicle information on the room registration form, they wouldn't have known who to call). They asked if I wanted to go out there to make a statement and I said "Hell yeah...be out just as quick as I can pull my boots on!" So I hurried out there, just as pissed off as a guy can be....and in retrospect it's probably a good thing the thieves were already removed from the scene before I was called out there because there was no telling what I would have done (but at the very least it probably would have landed ME in the slammer right along side them...and more likely than not, I would have had a reserved room for a while because they wouldn't have made it to the slammer). When I got out there, it was obvious that this wasn't their first rodeo. They had a pump mounted under thier bunk, with a quick-connect to attach the suction hose directly to the floor of the bunk from the outside to run to the other truck's fuel tank. The pumps outlet was another rubber hose which passed through their floor directly into their own fuel tank. Their suction hose was long enough that they could have easily parked 2 or 3 trucks away from their "target" and simply passed the hose beneath the other trucks to reach the tank they wanted to drain. During the search incident to their arrest, the officers found a multitude of tools. If I had locking fuel caps, they could have defeated them. If I had anti-siphon inserts, they could have removed or punched through them. If they didn't feel like messing with locking caps or anti-siphon inserts, they could have removed the crossover line, drain plug, or simply knocked a hole in the tank to get at the fuel that way. They didn't pay for it, so why would they care if any gets spilled? They don't mind helping themselves to $500-$1000 worth of fuel...why would they care if they tore up a fuel tank? It's not THEIR truck being damaged, and if they are successful they will be long gone before anyone realizes what had happened. The best part of the whole deal? When the cops were searching the truck, in addition to the tools, they found more than a few bottles of liquor. They were more interested in the booze than they were the attempted theft of fuel, as they had these guys not only for the illegal transportation of alcohol in a CMV but also (since Hope, AR is located in a DRY COUNTY and they exceeded the "allowable quantity") they were booked for BOOTLEGGING! The fuel theft was only pursued as the means to justify the search of the truck, which turned up the booze. But yeah, my first reaction after this happened was to order up some locking fuel caps. I had my passenger side tank split 60 hydraulic/20 fuel before they arrived, so it worked out nicely that only 1 showed up (the other was backordered). I even used it for a while before the hassle just got to be more than I felt like dealing with and resolved to just not leave much fuel in the tanks if I parked for the night anywhere other than at the house. I put the OEM cap back on, and used it until it was worn out to the point where it wouldn't stay tightly screwed on. That's when I removed the locking mechanism from the locking cap and started using it again. Sure, it APPEARS as though I have a locking cap these days....but I don't. It screws on & off no different than the OEM cap. I'd much rather make it easy for them to see that there is no fuel in the tank rather than to come out and find my equipment damaged in any way. If you've got fuel and they want it, they are going to get it. It all really boils down to your basic risk vs. reward situation. The best way to prevent fuel theft is to simply limit the percieved reward by eliminating the commodity they seek. The risk is still there, though, but without the reward they cannot justify taking on that risk. The other option is to increase the risk...but that is difficult to do absent chaining up a very mean & aggressive pit or rottie under your truck on JUST long enough of a chain to prevent anyone from putting a hand on your fuel tanks. That also has its drawbacks, as you'd be liable for any innocent passer-by's who happened to get tore up by said pooch as they walked past your truck on their way into the truck stop.