Truck got a little warm coming home today with the cruise set at 70. Coolant temp gauge showed normal, but when I got home it was idling a little rough. I shut it off and waited a minute and then started it again. Took a lot more cranking than normal and still idled rough. Left it for a while and went and started it seemed just fine. Took it for a drive and drove as good or better. I’m going to have to use my foot all the time I guess and just go REALLY slow (about 45) up the hills at least until I get a pyrometer. Hopefully I didn’t do any damage. Motor at least was in really good shape and only has 130,000 miles round about on it. I guess the rest of the truck does too except the blasted trans. Man I wish it still had the manual in it. So much simpler and more gears to choose from.

Well, it DEPENDS on her POISE. I can tell you, where I come from, dentures are a good thing....

I live in southern Utah and I can pretty much coast into town comparatively. Going home there is one hill about 1/2 a mile long and I can’t remember the grade now, but I would guess it is somewhere 6 to 7 percent grade. In my Mom’s 2002 Dodge Ram 1500 you are pushing 4K rpm to maintain speed up he hill. Maybe that helps for comparison. Then you just get to the top of that hill and it levels out a little to about a 2-3% grade and then goes up again to about a 4 maybe 5% grade for another 1/4 mile. So basically there is about 3/4 of a mile that is all uphill on he way home. According to a mapping site I use for running routes that shows elevation change, over the course of two miles from just before to just after the biggest section of hill it goes from 4100 feet to almost 4600 feet in two miles. The website that shows grade says it ranges from 6% to 7% for 3/4 to 1 mile I’ll attach a picture of what it shows for grade.


I guess I need to check the rear diff and make sure that it has the same gears as the front. I’ll have to clean it up to read the numbers. When I googled the numbers on the tag on the front differential it popped up as 3.54 gears. I thought that usually gear ratios were indicated on a tag on the rear door, but there is only one sticker on my door jam that says when the truck was manufactured, tire size, axle weight ratings, and maybe a couple other minor things. Maybe I’ll have to pull the diff covers off and change fluid, figuring out what gears I have at the same time. Shouldn’t the front and rear differential have the same gears? I thought they had to and that the transfer case did all the gear reduction from front to rear and that that was why the front tires spun a little differently than the rear when in 4WD.

Dang. I feel your pain on the fuel filters! I went through 4 within 100 miles before the crud from the previous owner running waste vegetable oil in the truck. That was after having the tank professionally cleaned by a local radiator shop too. Granted I run a Napa filter that, unfortunately, doesn’t have the spot for the water in fuel sensor. They filter to 4 microns though, so I figure that there must be some benefit even if they plug up faster/easier. I want to add a big Caterpillar filter like I’ve seen some do just after the tank before the lift pump. That way I could run the larger stock replacement filter with the water in fuel sensor in the normal location. For now I think I’ll stick with the filters I’m currently using. 4 microns sounds pretty good!

Haha! I feel you there too! To top it all off my best average between fill ups so far is 13.4 m.p.g.

I guess that brings me to what I did to my truck today. I went out and set the time on the clock after some searching on here how to do it, and then sat there for a minute listening to the radio thinking about how I need to fix my fuel gauge. Sometimes if the truck is sitting at the right angle it will work. Sometimes I’ll be driving and it will start to move and then fall back to empty where it usually sits. I don’t drive more than 200 miles on a tank as with my poor mileage it goes through the fuel pretty quick. That’s all highway driving too, however full of hills my driving may be. Kinda disappointed that I haven’t been able to get better mileage. Maybe when I get a pyrometer and start tinkering with the pump it will improve. It works very hard now to go 70. I need to somehow figure out definitively what gear ratio I have. If it isn’t 3.54 I will probably make it so. Anywho. If there are any ideas or threads that would explain how to fix my non-working fuel gauge then that would be appreciated. Seems like I read at one point that replacing the sending unit would fix it, and it seems like Oliver mentioned he had one that worked he would be willing to talk to me about through PM. I just want to make sure the sending unit is my issue, not something else.