yeah I love cragar soft 8 wheels. I have a set on my 67 mustang as well.

Thanks man, I appreciate it. I forgot to etch the lettering off, but its whatever. they'll get messed up again eventually.

 

Very shagadelic baby!

 

thanks man.

I can officially drive the truck now. For some reason, when I installed my hubs back on they were clicking, almost like they weren't disengaging from the hub correctly. after pulling them, tearing them down and putting them back together I was about ready to just give up. worked on them from 8:30pm to about 11:30 pm last night and after thoroughly inspecting everything. The damn spring on the paw/gear wasn't wrapped around the groove of the gear correctly, not allowing for the hub to disconnect completely, thus making a loud clicking noise past 30 mph.

anywho, got it working. drove the truck to work today. cruises at 80 mph with no shakes ( wonderful going from unbalanced tires to balanced tires. )

now I just need to address my smoking issue. on start up, it clouds the court with a bluish tinted smoke. oil pressure remains perfect and the oil level is fine. so its got a tiny oil leak internally somewhere.

 

No thanks needed for the help. Don't even need to link the writeup you used. I'm sure the person who provided you with text support and advice/ideas is ok with not being mentioned.

 

lol you replied like 4 times!

 

11 times... and I'm the one who told you to pull em apart and rebuild them. Also the one who told you to make sure you followed my guide... jerk.

 

haha I had pulled them apart like 4 times that night! at around 10:30 I decided to redo it all over again, rip it down to the guts and double check it all, but used your guide as a reference, yes. lol

 

Well, I've had a day that's for sure.

I changed the oil today, and with it smoking for awhile I expected a lower than usual amount of oil to come out... right? wrong. 6 quarts. So after scratching my head for about an hour or two. I'm like how in the hell is that possible?

Lately my power steering has been giving up the ghost, and I've been keeping it topped off with ATF to keep it going as long as possible till I find time remove/rebuild/reinstall. Well, I look down at the air control valve and its completely corroded. I follow the two vacuum lines to the intake manifold, pop the hose going into the intake manifold off. ATF drips out. No... F'ing... way...

So after calling around to see how much a new valve is:

$130 typical price.
$80 online
$373 at the stealership.

So I jumped online, found a review that its basically a vacuum assist. theres no other benefit other than making the truck easier to turn under load. so F it. I capped it all off. jacked the truck up, topped off the power steering fluid, and it no longer smokes, or has issues with the power steering, other than it drips a little.

Here's the vacuum lines capped:


Here's the valve recycling everything:


That's the culprit


Just posting this for informational uses. The smallest things cause the biggest problems. Truck no longer smokes, and runs like nothing happened.

 

AWESOME FIND! isn't it weird how the little things can cause the most random symptoms?

 

haha yeah, its been a pain in the ass. So the smoke issue is fixed. but the power steering pump gave up the ghost while I was camping in Dillon's beach. it basically drains all fluid after about 50 miles. so i'll need to tear into that.

Another thing. While cruising down the freeway, I had to stop and turn my emergency flashers on. well, they worked for about 2 seconds, then nothing. they wont turn on at all, and on top of that. the stereo turned off. probably shorted out the relay and blew the fuse on the stereo. guess we'll find out once I dig into it.

 

just fixed the emergency flashers, stereo and the horn. All of them blew fuses. replaced them and now they're working as intended again

 

I'm curious to see how much you notice it in full turn dug in on the trail, the capped off assist. Very glad you got that solved! Congrats!

I had a similar issue with the blinkers and hazards, and it was a two fold problem. I thought it was the blinker relay or possibly charge circuit( on my 87, I quickly learned, that in Toyotas infinite wisdom, they tied the blinkers to the charge pin on the kick panel fuse block. I was heading up to big bear, and as I put my right turn signal on to hit the turnout and get out of the way of some crazy Canyon speeders, my charge and brake light came on and all of my gauge lights went out and all of the gauges except for the speedometer stopped working. I made it all the way in to Big Bear with no alternator. We screwed with it until a little later in the night and realized 1. I had a corroded signal bulb socket in the passenger tail light, and 2. I had another issue with wiring where something was grounding out. It ended up being two wires in an old corroded original installed wiring loom going to a trailer brake Quick Connect. As I pulled everything out, and cut the wires right at the connector I could see where two different wires, a brake wire and a signal wire or both touching the clamp that holds the heavily insulated wiring loom to the trailer brake Quick Connect . I removed that wiring all the way back and haven't had a problem since! The weird thing was my hazards works fine but the passenger side bulbs were all dimmer than the others and the signals wouldn't work at all. I spoke to RAD4runner on the phone and he informed me that the hazards were on a completely different circuit. Absolutely odd but I was glad to learn how all of it worked & it helped me find a couple of other issues that I cleaned up.

 

Hey mark,

I haven't noticed a single problem with capping off the vacuum on the power steering pump. honestly, I believe the truck runs better. and I never noticed the idle going up when I would full lock. but i'll letcha know. next trail I'm hitting though is Pismo, so it probably wont be much of a test out there.

Yeah the blinkers/horn/stereo was an interesting one. replaced the fuse and boom fixed.

Just replaced my power steering pump last night. I opted for rebuilding it, but when I took it out it was already a duralast/autozone pump. so I returned the rebuild kit, and went and got a new pump ( only 11 dollars more than the rebuild kit from Toyota.... go figure. ) so I swapped it out last night and its all good to go.

 

On your gauges, just wondering how you went about wiring them to the headlight switch to make the dimming feature work? I need to do this to mine, just looking for the easiest way to go about it,

thanks -Ed.

 

Ed - I tied them into my running lights. ( the little corner lights next to the headlights ) You can pretty much tie them into anything that comes on with the flick of the first slot on the headlight switch. ( interior lights )

 

Well I did the power steering pump the other day. I bought a Toyota rebuild kit but when I took my pump out I realized it wasn't a Toyota, so I returned the Toyota rebuild kit and bought another replacement duralast one. worked for two days and now two days later its leaking out of the back of the pump, down to the air conditioning compressor... pretty irritated about this since Monday was the only time I had time to fix it and now I cant address it until Saturday/sunday. and it drains the entire system overnight. Any idea why it would be leaking out of the back of the pump?

 

where is it leaking on the pump? from the screw-on hose connector or from the slip-on hose connector? are your hoses/lines in good shape?

 

screw on hose connector? you mean the banjo connector? its not leaking from there, or the hose that goes from the reservoir. those are the only two hoses that are attached to the power steering assembly. its leaking from the back of the pump down onto the air conditioning compressor, is what it looks like.

 

I learned the same mistake about the autozone pumps with my last truck. I will not go that route again.

 

better than spending 600 dollars at the stealership. hell they wanted 373 dollars just for the air control valve... ridiculous