Good Morning!

Skwerl said:
Paul, I've owned Fords all my life but you might consider the Chevies also. They get noticably better fuel economy. Everyone I know with a Chevy pickup gets 3-4 mpg more than the Fords.
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Could be but a story from the past .

My dad had a '74 3/4 ton Chevy,350 4 wheel drive .double pumper carb,Hooker headers lift kit,the whole nine yards.

At the same time I had a '72 Ford,390 ,4 speed 2 wheel drive.I could pull the same hill,with the same load,one gear higher than he.The Ford got 12.5 MPG he got about 8 .

It seemed kind of funny because the Chevy had a 4:10 rear end while the Ford had a 3:26 Dana .The Chevy didn't come on torque until over 3,000 rpm,the Ford got on it at 2100 .
 
sotc said:
hes a lanscraper mostly frans
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most of my loads are under 500kg to the dump from pruning work. I dont do any removals of anything significant by a tree company's standards. I like the 3/4 ton when hauling aggregate, that I will admit.

Justin, the fix I got last week wasnt good enough as the same problem came back yesterday, one of my plugs is fouling with oil and the oil pan gasket is leaking, again... my truck is a '95 with 271,000 KM on it, I dont want to spend $2000 - $3000 to replace the engine because the body is rotting and the front suspension still makes some weird clunking noises at times. I have spent about $3000 in repairs in the last 18 months to keep a truck worth maybe $5000 on the road. My thought is that a newer truck will get me marginally better mileage than the ridiculous mileage I am getting now, be relatively headahce free for a few years, WAY more comfy but my sacrifice is smaller payload and smaller cargo bed.
Havent bought anything yet but it will likely be soon.

Squish, I have bought one vehicle privately, the rest all from dealers but I will check the good old buy and sell. :)
 
Looking private never hurts and with a mechanic a second opinion never hurts either. I have two very trusted mechanics, I wouldn't hesitate to run it by someone else just for nothing else then to have a different set of experienced eyes survey the problems. My '92 has 340,000km's and is going strong. My buddy's '91 Ford has nearly 500,000km's original tranny and engine(460 though) and it's a great running reliable truck still.

Good luck whatever you decide to do and heh propane .789!8)
 
Consider a smallish but heavy duty trailer with good elec. brakes for the agg hauling, perhaps? That might mate with a 1/2 tonner and cover both bases well.
 
Tighten up the pan .Get a couple of "hot" plugs and just change them .Most likely it will run another 50,000 miles.

You might have a set of leaky valve seals.Usually not too hard to repair without even pulling the head .

Most mechanics will do the old song and dance of installing rebuilt heads ,blah,blah blah.2000 bucks,pshaw.

Simple,you knock the center out of a plug and braze an air chuck to it.Roll the piston to top dead center,loosen the lifters and blow about a 100 psi of air into the cylinder to hold up the valves and change the seals.Nothing to it,so simple even I can do it .;)

If it still leaks oil just put a pan under it.Besides that,tramp oil just prevents the pavement from rusting plus it marks your parking place .My old Harley pan head did that for me.:lol:
 
ill never buy a used car from anyone but a private owner. dealers are to pushy and youll get a better deal almost any time
 
Al, you are gonna have a 'hit' put out on you if you keep telling mechanics secrets! :)

One of my favorite reasons I heard for getting a new engine was a leaky pan gasket and leaking valve cover gaskets. lol
 
I have a junk s-10 with a v6. It was fouling a plug that was hot. They make anti-fouler cups that thread in where your plug went and then the plug threads into them. I put one of them in and works fine. they are cheap.
 
groovy info, thanks y'all.

FWIW they did replace the second fouled plug with a 'hotter' plug for $0, which was appreciated.
 
Frans said:
Al, you are gonna have a 'hit' put out on you if you keep telling mechanics secrets! :)
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Well last year some jerk tried to tell me I bent all the valves and push rods from a bad timing chain on Dar's Caddy.He changed his tune when I told him that was impossible because it was a clearance fit engine .It still set me back 600 but he wanted 2 grand for a top engine job.In a pigs eye says I,the damned car was only worth about 2200 then.

They won't all screw you but some have to try.

I'm tired of fooling with it ,a brand new Merc is in the garage and the Caddy will go up for sale soon. A hundred and twenty thousand miles and having it for 14 years I can't complain too much though .
 
Damn! I woke up wide awake at 3:30 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I'm UP! Where IS everybody? :/:

Who wants a mushroom, potato and cheese omelet?

cheese-omelet-su-1036263-l.jpg
 
Don't ya just hate when that happens? I'm draggin' this morning, all that climbing I did yesterday has left some residual soreness in my back. Luckily I have an easy day today. About 2 hours of mistletoe removal on a large oak, all bucket work.

The omelette looks good, I'll take one please! :)
 
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