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What did you do with your GMT400 today...or yesterday....

@Will L. Your pics as requested!

I stand corrected. me being blind in one eye and cant see from the other... I found the block drain plugs! they are 1/4" ntp plus with a square inverted hole. Note their location and the blank boss I had thought was where they should have been. the motor mounts would have to be removed from the block in order to remove them! Nope not going there unless I have no other choice LOL

also take note of the condition of the rubber mounts as they were replaced not that long ago.. anchor brand I got off RA.

View attachment 88258
View attachment 88257
Urethane mounts are in order here.
 
I think the Delco ones are still available but that will be for another day. it's too hot to do much with all this high humidity. Can't walk outside even after a cold shower and not break a sweat in 5 minutes!

I did manage to get some maint done this afternoon. tightened up my rear brake shoes. I've been wanting to do that for a couple weeks now. also noticed that I need to replace my boost gauge. with the engine off it's showing 1 psi and when running I can rev it in neutral and the gauge will go up to almost 5 psi. holding the RPM at 2500-3000 it will go up to almost 5 and then gradually drop to about 3, something it did not do before. Before I could barley get the gauge to move when in neutral.

I did run the engine a bit with the PTO switch on and the temp never got over 180, even on my way home from work it stayed under 190 so its possible that yesterday during my first drive with the 180 stat installed it had an air pocket in the system that I had not gotten out yet.

I will watch it for a few more days and see. or at least go hook up to the travel trailer and pull it down the freeway a few miles for a loaded test.

were expecting some heavy rain to come in sometime tomorrow and last through Sunday. Forecast says possibly 11-12 inches of rain is coming!

I always welcome the rain but not the humidity!
 
If you flush it really well with garden hose and the mud keeps coming back- you will have to use those plugs. That was the only answer when people ran dexcool too long.

Two ways people do this. You pull use the jack to lift/hold the engine while one side comes out. Set it back down then do the other side. Thats normal for just mount replacement but having to do a flush might be worse -idk.

I always had an engine hoist or similar around and would get the front end of frame on jackstands or car ramps. Then used the hoist with chain to lift front of the engine up till the trans hits the tunnel. Then do both at once.
Many guys just put a floor jack under the balancer or wood at the front of the pan behind the balancer.

I never thought about it before but makes me wonder if the mount could be drilled/notched to clear it there. Needs done so rarely, probably not worth the aggravation/risk.
 
The rain cam in today! has been drizzling all day with sperts of heavy showers so I have not been able to do anything yet. might not until this weekend. today's drive to and from work along with a short trip into town I had no issues. temp stayed under 190 on my gauge, but again with the rain that also helped keep things cooler.

something I also noticed today is a faint smell of diesel in the cab with the ac running. Nothing that I can tell is leaking but I am having a suspicion that one of the injector return lines might be seeping. adding this to the list to check on this weekend too.
 
Got out there this evening looking for why I was smelling diesel, couldn't find anything. checked all the IP lines and injector return lines, all look good. looked over hoses from the LP and nothing.

My Daughter wants us to join her out at the beach on Saturday in Port Aransas TX for her hubby's birthday. started looking over the truck, temps seems to be staying under 190 with the cooler thermostat. I did find where I am loosing coolant. I was afraid the reason I was having to add almost a gallon of coolant in about a months time was due to worse issues, but I discovered the lower rad hose is seeping coolant where the tee is. the hose from the tee going up to the pressurized bottle is a separate hose, coolant is seeping at the connection. I'm willing to bet it's my own doing, when I replaced that hose I had to cut the old one off splitting it. I'm sure I scored the plastic tee in the process plus I used silicone coolant hose for the replacement. I inspected the hose and the clamp, all looked good and was tight so not too worried it's gonna blow, but I will add this to the list of things to fix.

One thing I did run across was while I was under there I looked at the steering components and discovered the nut on the pitman shaft was loose!! back when I put this box on I had tightened the pis out of this. I spun the nut off and inspected the threads, then grabbed my wrench and long cheater pipe and went to town on the nut. took it out for a test drive and I see that took a lot of play out of the steering wheel.

it's funny that this same thing happened to me on my dodge pickup. Not sure what causes them to loosen up like this.
 
I made some good progress today taking care of some work I had cobbled up on the truck. I had been wanting to relocate the LP from under the hood to under the truck on the frame rail. I had bought a faucet dura-lift fuel pump a while back and had temporarily mounted it on the firewall right above the engine. this was back when I had returned from towing the 93 home and had all the issues with my OE LP going out along with a clogged fuel filter I had installed on the frame rail in place of the tank sock.

I used a couple of L shaped brackets I had sourced from work used for mounting trailer air brake relay valves. they usually toss them when they come with the new valves. I put two of these brackets together making a sort of Z out of them. found a threaded hole in the frame that held a brake cable guide. installed a longer bolt to hold the guide and used a nut on the inside to attach the bracket I made. The holes on the bracket are slotted so they worked out perfect to mount the pump. connected the hoses, completely bypassed the steel line from the old LP going up to the engine with fuel hose. Ran that up to the fuel filter under the hood and re-used the connector from the old LP to connect power.

Got that out of the way, then strung out my alignment tools since I wanted to straighten my steering wheel (slightly cocked when going straight) found my toe was way off after adjusting the steering wheel. got that fixed.

Had my boys help me clean out the bed getting all the leaves that had collected up around the aux tank/tool box. Then started loading the bed with shade canopy, chairs, beach sand toys, small bbq pit, and the ice chest. All packed up ready to head out to the beach in the morning.

drove around town running errands watching temps which still stayed under 190. so not worried about that on this trip. I went and filled the tank and got my mileage from last weekends trip pulling the travel trailer.. 9.3 mpg. I was expecting worse but I guess this is a good number for pulling a wind anchor for a 150 mile trip.

Plan is to meet up with my daughter and her husband out at the beach tomorrow for his B-day. They left tonight to stay out there till tomorrow evening. we will be leaving in the morning and heading back that afternoon.
 
I made some good progress today taking care of some work I had cobbled up on the truck. I had been wanting to relocate the LP from under the hood to under the truck on the frame rail. I had bought a faucet dura-lift fuel pump a while back and had temporarily mounted it on the firewall right above the engine. this was back when I had returned from towing the 93 home and had all the issues with my OE LP going out along with a clogged fuel filter I had installed on the frame rail in place of the tank sock.

I used a couple of L shaped brackets I had sourced from work used for mounting trailer air brake relay valves. they usually toss them when they come with the new valves. I put two of these brackets together making a sort of Z out of them. found a threaded hole in the frame that held a brake cable guide. installed a longer bolt to hold the guide and used a nut on the inside to attach the bracket I made. The holes on the bracket are slotted so they worked out perfect to mount the pump. connected the hoses, completely bypassed the steel line from the old LP going up to the engine with fuel hose. Ran that up to the fuel filter under the hood and re-used the connector from the old LP to connect power.

Got that out of the way, then strung out my alignment tools since I wanted to straighten my steering wheel (slightly cocked when going straight) found my toe was way off after adjusting the steering wheel. got that fixed.

Had my boys help me clean out the bed getting all the leaves that had collected up around the aux tank/tool box. Then started loading the bed with shade canopy, chairs, beach sand toys, small bbq pit, and the ice chest. All packed up ready to head out to the beach in the morning.

drove around town running errands watching temps which still stayed under 190. so not worried about that on this trip. I went and filled the tank and got my mileage from last weekends trip pulling the travel trailer.. 9.3 mpg. I was expecting worse but I guess this is a good number for pulling a wind anchor for a 150 mile trip.

Plan is to meet up with my daughter and her husband out at the beach tomorrow for his B-day. They left tonight to stay out there till tomorrow evening. we will be leaving in the morning and heading back that afternoon.

Sounds like you are making progress. You mentioned the camper being like a wind sail, yelp I agree. My 21 foot camper probably weighs 4000 pounds or so. With my Duramax, flat lands, I might get close to 13 mpg if I drive decent. In the hills and mountains, It's in the 12's, I did see 11.5 MPG one time, probably had some extra weight in the truck.
 
Sounds like you are making progress. You mentioned the camper being like a wind sail, yelp I agree. My 21 foot camper probably weighs 4000 pounds or so. With my Duramax, flat lands, I might get close to 13 mpg if I drive decent. In the hills and mountains, It's in the 12's, I did see 11.5 MPG one time, probably had some extra weight in the truck.
I averaged 16 or 18 mpg with the 98 Suburban pulling the 26' camper to Illinois from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

That was before ULSD
 
Knocked a couple more items off the Truck Project List I put together while the truck was down. Just because I refused to spend a dime on it until it was actually running correctly didn't mean I wasn't keeping up with the needs. I prioritized Safety, Functionality/Dependability stuff over comfort and fun stuff.

Hard wired in the dash cam vs. USB. Now it will record in Park Mode.

New 3 Gauge Pillar. Old one was drilled out to allow for a set of gauges on the dash that proved to be so much overkill. I removed the dash gauges years ago. Needing to run the Dash Cam's power cable behind the A pillar made for a great opportunity to get this task done too.

Replace driver seat pedestal. One of the rollers in the slide has been AWOL for I don't know how many years. Tired of having a rocking chair, I finally sourced one that would do the job. Hard to believe that finding a bucket seat pedestal for an extended cab in a pick-a-part yard would prove to be a quest. As I was cleaning this one up I realized it wasn't actually a correct part but, it will do.

Replaced front Tow Hooks with D-Rings. Not critical, just a fun thing I've wanted to do. Still, having lowered the truck back to stock ride height, the D-Ring set up looks a little out of place.

66 Items knocked out over the past year, still have a page plus of stuff. Mainly sub tasks to bigger ones like a paint job, rear disc brake conversion or swap in a limited slip diff
 
Knocked a couple more items off the Truck Project List I put together while the truck was down. Just because I refused to spend a dime on it until it was actually running correctly didn't mean I wasn't keeping up with the needs. I prioritized Safety, Functionality/Dependability stuff over comfort and fun stuff.

Hard wired in the dash cam vs. USB. Now it will record in Park Mode.

New 3 Gauge Pillar. Old one was drilled out to allow for a set of gauges on the dash that proved to be so much overkill. I removed the dash gauges years ago. Needing to run the Dash Cam's power cable behind the A pillar made for a great opportunity to get this task done too.

Replace driver seat pedestal. One of the rollers in the slide has been AWOL for I don't know how many years. Tired of having a rocking chair, I finally sourced one that would do the job. Hard to believe that finding a bucket seat pedestal for an extended cab in a pick-a-part yard would prove to be a quest. As I was cleaning this one up I realized it wasn't actually a correct part but, it will do.

Replaced front Tow Hooks with D-Rings. Not critical, just a fun thing I've wanted to do. Still, having lowered the truck back to stock ride height, the D-Ring set up looks a little out of place.

66 Items knocked out over the past year, still have a page plus of stuff. Mainly sub tasks to bigger ones like a paint job, rear disc brake conversion or swap in a limited slip diff
I would like a locker on the rear axle.
 
Just returned home from the day trip to the beach. it was a good day! Truck got 15.3 MPG. only issue I had was when running the AC with the recirc off (was getting cold enough to freeze you out of the cab) when we stopped at a light we kept getting the odor of diesel in the cab. I've looked but couldn't find anything before. I will give it a good look again when the sun comes back up.
 
Took another shot at clocking the steering wheel level on the ‘99 and this time I got it:


I first used a white marking pen to mark the current position of the shaft to the steering box. The set screw ends up pointing at the frame. To undo it, put it on stands and turned wheel so it’s pointing vertical. Then return the wheel so the white marker lines were aligned. Then pulled the steering shaft and rotated it one notch to the right and that did it.
 
Gave the truck a good look today for any sort if sign of a fuel leak. could not find anything at all! sitting there in the driveway idling with the AC on I could smell it through the dash vents. Not sure what's going on here. I did spill a little when I moved the LP from under the hood to down on the frame rail with purging air from the filter, but I figured that little bit would have evaporated or dried up by now. I guess I need to wash the engine bay down real good and see if the smell comes back.
 
Gave the truck a good look today for any sort if sign of a fuel leak. could not find anything at all! sitting there in the driveway idling with the AC on I could smell it through the dash vents. Not sure what's going on here. I did spill a little when I moved the LP from under the hood to down on the frame rail with purging air from the filter, but I figured that little bit would have evaporated or dried up by now. I guess I need to wash the engine bay down real good and see if the smell comes back.
Check all injector return lines.
 
Check all injector return lines.
I shined my flashlight looking at them under the turbo and everything is dry there, not even any oil, but on the drivers side my VC is seeping some and one of the injectors had a shine to it, I took it as an oil film but didn't give it the finger sniff test. I hope that is it since they are easy to get to LOL. I will do the finger sniff check tomorrow after work, I think I have a couple of those rubber tubes left over from back when I replaced the injectors. could even be the high pressure line nut seeping. didn't think about that ether till now.
 
I shined my flashlight looking at them under the turbo and everything is dry there, not even any oil, but on the drivers side my VC is seeping some and one of the injectors had a shine to it, I took it as an oil film but didn't give it the finger sniff test. I hope that is it since they are easy to get to LOL. I will do the finger sniff check tomorrow after work, I think I have a couple of those rubber tubes left over from back when I replaced the injectors. could even be the high pressure line nut seeping. didn't think about that ether till now.
Always smell the dipstick…

 
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