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My new truck

There are basically two major manufacturers of automotive batteries in the United States and they each make multiple brands of "name brand" and "house brand" batteries of varying quality, that often "compete" against other brands in the same Corporate owned "family" of brands.
I installed some powdered lead conveyors at Exide battery in Burlington, Iowa many years ago it was amazing how many different stickers went on the same run of batteries. Even different month warranties. They just charged more for the warranty.
 
I had a good friend who worked at the Goodyear Belt and Hose plant here in Lincoln back in the 80's and 90's. He would take a bin full of thousands of identical formed hoses made there in the plant, put a stencil in this machine that would then paint a Part Number and a logo/emblem on the hose he inserted into the machine and then tossed the freshly marked hose into another bin. After reaching the quota of say GM 12345-6789 molded upper radiator hose, he would remove that stencil, clean the machine and then insert a different stencil and taking out of the same bin of hoses as the GM batch, begin marking Goodyear (Wingfoot emblem) 789012e upper radiator hoses. When done with those, change stencils and begin marking the hoses as the Advanced Auto Premium UH-246631 upper radiator hose. Then those same hoses were marked with a NAPA Gold P/N.
 
It would be interesting to know who makes these. They have a couple of features that I've never seen on other batteries. The most obvious being the top posts. They're hard and gold/brass colored. My jumpers haven't left a mark after 3 jump starts
 
It would be interesting to know who makes these. They have a couple of features that I've never seen on other batteries. The most obvious being the top posts. They're hard and gold/brass colored. My jumpers haven't left a mark after 3 jump starts
Probably magbrass. I have a hammer made out of that stuff. Mighty tough, it took a heck of a beating for a lot of years and still has more life in it than I can imagine.
Some kind of a combo of magnesium and brass.
 
So I changed out my ignition switch today. Should have been an easy job but..... The 2 screws that actually hold the switch on were E4 torx, which of course I didn't have but the biggest issue was there isn't room to get a quarter inch drive socket in there. Needs to be in like a nut driver type screwdriver or a socket with a really long snout. I did manage to find a socket and this is the modification I had to do to get it to work. The socket had an internal round hole so I ground down a Allen wrench until it almost went in, then I heated the socket up and hammered the Allen in and then ground it small enough to fit. What a pain. I did order the correct socket on Amazon for $5 the description said it was specifically for gm ignition switches.IMG_20201024_152630.jpgIMG_20201024_152637.jpg
 
My symptoms were when I'd go to start it cold the voltmeter wasn't going down as far as it should. I could turn the key off and on several times and then the gauge would read lower. At first I thought glow plugs controller but then I got to noticing that sometimes even when the glow plugs cycle was finished I wasn't getting any smoke out of the tailpipe. Jiggle the key some more and then I had smoke.
 
My symptoms were when I'd go to start it cold the voltmeter wasn't going down as far as it should. I could turn the key off and on several times and then the gauge would read lower. At first I thought glow plugs controller but then I got to noticing that sometimes even when the glow plugs cycle was finished I wasn't getting any smoke out of the tailpipe. Jiggle the key some more and then I had smoke.

Mine is a different issue. You can pull the key out and the alarm is still going. Then you can switch it back to stop with the key out. The stops are worn out.
 
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