New England B.S. Thread

My trucks won't be plasti derp free any longer... Just derped the wheels I picked up in Maryland to match the rest of the dark gray bits on the truck. I still need to clear coat them but they look good.

 

Turncoat

 

Technically, they aren't on the truck so the truck is still plasti dip free. The idea is to see if I liked them that color, if I do, I'll have them powder coated. Just a cheap way to test the waters. But yeah.. I know...

 

Well, since you misspelled it in your blurb as "Pasti-Dip" it still counts!

 

If you're testing color prior to powdercoat then I'm with you. Also to note, I'm just words on a screen with an opinion. So don't listen to me either way I'm just having fun with ya.

What color are you trying out?

 

How many of you guys have done the ECGS bushing? Impressed/not impressed?

Just did it today and drive 45 miles home.. Definitely cut down on the vibes and the axel has no play, but there is still a small vibe from something..

 

Just ordered new tires for the Subaru. It's going to kill me to sell my 18" wheel/tire combo as they look great on the car, but the tire noise was unbearable. I couldn't deal with it anymore. When the tires are louder than bad wheel bearings and louder than any truck tire I've ever heard, something is wrong.

I have to drop the truck off at a local independent mechanic to get my axle seal looked at. When Billy and I put in the ECGS bearing I thought it would be a great idea to replace the axle seal while I was in there to prevent any issues. About two weeks later I noticed my transmission crossmember was damp and I was dripping on the driveway. Not wanting to rip it all apart again to seat the seal incorretly I brought it to Copeland and had them look at it. Diagnosed my leak as a bad axle seal and I paid through the noise to have it replaced.

Seal still leaks, they're blaming my Fluid Film. Crossmember only gets damp during driving. They are claiming the heat is liquifying the Fluid Film and coming out of the box section and the seal itself is dry. I did put more Fluid Film under the truck than years past when I applied last November, but I've never had a dripping issue in the summer. When i was under it on their lift I thought I saw some fluid on the passenger side too but I think it was an illusion. I couldn't get them to do anything about it outside of blaming it as normal.

I'm hoping to get a 2nd opinion from the mechanic the wife's family uses. He's reasonably fair in dealings I've had, so we will see what he has to say. I just am afraid I'll run the front diff dry if I ignore the leak and I don't want to have to be filling it 1-2x a month. Since I've put the lift on I've already been keyed up enough about things going wrong with it (I'm a bit...crazy when it comes to this stuff...like have been in a foul mood for weeks about this) so hopefully I can get some resolution. See thread here. I just know if I do the seal again, I'll install it wrong and be back at square one. What kills me is that I'm 95% sure some of my bolts aren't properly torqued as I've got a few new creaks. I'll have to borrow back a torque wrench from my buddy to reset all the values.

Installed the whole suspension with my friend and everything went perfect, all OEM torque and no weird noises or anything. Worked with the always amazing Billy (thanks again for the HUGE help with the ECGS bushing, couldn't have done it without you!) and got everything back together just like OEM, again no weird noises or anything. A non-OEM seal ended up giving me a small leak so I paid to have it fixed and ended up in a slightly worse situation with no resolution. I wish I had an unlimited amount of time, money and tools. I'd get this figured out.
/rant.

Have it, impressed as it killed the vibration I purchased it for (the 35-50 MPH one). Still have something at 55-65 that's noticeable on the throttle but is quiet otherwise. I also have a growl at 0-20 most noticeably taking left hand turns, but I'm not 100% convinced it's something that wasn't there before I lifted or is a function of a different contact patch for my tires due to different camber values.

 

So these crackheads moved in next door. So now it always smells like burning plastic, and their kid is always screaming like they're killing him...

 

Is the heat from powder coating an issue with those wheels? My assumption is they wouldn't be forged, but I know that specific wheels cannot be powder coated safely because the heat causes weakening issues. That seems to apply more to powder coated wheels or modified pressure cast wheels.

There is something to be said for a well done powder coated wheel that is super glossy.

 

I'm doing it to see if I like both the wheels and the color. I bought wheels off a King Ranch which, if you're not familiar with them, have a silver face and a tan return to match the two tone of the truck. My truck is all dark blue paint and the rest is following the FX4 scheme which is dark gray side steps and everything else is slowly getting smoked out. I Derped them dark gray to match the side steps. They're not on the truck yet, but I think it looks awesome!

The idea was, if I didn't like it, I'd peel off the derp and just resell the wheels for what I bought them at.

You know, I have no idea. I haven't gone that far yet, I might just have to get them painted if I go that route.

 

The only time I have a vibration is on take off and at highway speeds.. I'll have to keep an eye on the new seal that I put in.. Hopefully it doesn't leak as well. I'll have to see how the vibes do after I put more miles on..

I did the OME lift about 40k ago.. Have been happy with it so far. Just lately I have been getting some pops and creaks when I turn the wheel sharp.. I'm not too worried about it yet.

 

Heat is almost never an issue with powdercoating wheels. I've had about 5 sets done so far and it's the only way I'd change the color of a wheel (until I read Pugga's idea). But even then Pugga isn't doing it for the long term.

 

I've got over 40k on mine as well, still no squeaky leafs, got rid of the speed bump thunk when I installed LR UCAs. Now I am way overdue for the ECGS bushing replacement at over 50k. When I get home I'll suffer the cold if I have to, especially since that vibe is way worse in the winter.

 

Nice. My idiot neighbor has taken to burning his trash, because apparently driving 5 miles to the transfer station is too much like work. The fees for garbage are included in our property taxes, even. So now randomly once a week I'll come home and my entire house will smell like burnt plastic. Or I'll be lucky enough to come home while he's burning, have to close all of my windows, and look at his whole yard enveloped in a low haze of burnt trash smoke.
And he has two young kids living in his house. Moron.
I've talked to him about it a couple of times, and other neighbors have too, but he keeps doing it.

 

What's kind of neat about the plasti-dip also is, now that they're derped, if I want to try another color, I can spray paint over the derp to see how I like the look and it'll still just peel off. I don't plan to do that, but I've seen others do that before with wheels.

There is one other way I saw to change the color of a set of wheels and that's vinyl wrap. If I had the skills, I might have given that a go. Seems like a fairly durable option or a good way to protect a set of wheels for the winter months.

 

Happy Monday, faces!

So I was right about that pellet stove that we picked up on Friday. It's only a couple of years old, but the fan motor on it had a wicked loud whine/resonance that vibrated through the whole stove. A replacement fan motor is $350, which is why the previous owners were selling the stove (they were buying a new one with a warranty instead )
I got it home Friday night and Saturday morning I took the fan motor out and tore it apart. Sure enough, I'd say they had never cleaned it/oiled it. I stripped it down, blew it out with the air gun, scraped off the built-up scale/fly ash on the impeller, and repacked the bearings with some high-temp wheel bearing grease. Put it back together and reinstalled it with some red gasketmaker to help seal up the (cracked) factory ceramic gasket and fired it up. Works perfectly and it's almost completely silent.

So now I've got a pellet stove that cost $2500 three years ago, and I only spent $500!

 

Nice pickup Noel! It's amazing what people will damn near give away due to ignorance. Baffles me, especially with the amount of information available on the web. You can find a DIY for pretty much anything with a few minutes of searching.

 

Good find. Just like my snowblower. $19 in a carb rebuild kit and a few hours and I've got a perfectly functional snowblower.

 

Only one's that have problems are cheap cast aftermarket and super-light weight factory (like a Porsche) forged wheels. Even though they only heat them to 350* it can have an effect on those super light (thin material) or cheep wheels. These are the guys I use. They are great http://www.powder-pro.net/

 

Yep.
I don't know if this one has a 'how-to' tutorial online, but I've rebuilt fan motors on other pellet stoves in the past (The winter that I worked for a plow contractor I bought a few, rebuilt them and resold them for some extra $$ between snow storms), and the basic designs are all pretty much the same. The Englander we had in our old house was really fussy; if you didn't clean & repack the bearings every 4 tons or so it was noisy as hell to run. And that thing had three fans and two auger motors to maintain, so it seemed like I was fixing one of them about every year. This one should be less maintenance; it's only got one fan that handles the intake, exhaust, and room circulation, and one auger instead of two.

Plus I wrote down every part # I could find while I had it apart, and I've been able to find most of the moving parts on the web. So I could probably completely rebuild the motor (new bearings, bushings, brushes) for less than $30 in parts, rather than spend $350 on a new assembly from the manufacturer. Eventually the armature on the motor will wear down enough that I'll have no choice but to buy a new motor, but I bet I could rebuild the motor 3 or 4 times before that happens.