Been a minute since my last update. My wife and I went off to Sedona for some hiking/offroading and relaxation last week.
The new resonators are awesome! They cut out a ton of drone and noise. Really happy with that.
So the Saturday before I left I went to cars and coffee in the morning. Small turnout but got to talk to a few folks, etc. I needed to stop off at whole foods to pickup an Amazon package before our trip. I run in, run back out and try to start the truck and it just GRINDS loud. Like the starter gear was rubbing up against the ring gear or something. I beat on it with a 2x4 I had, even went so far as to walk over to my work (couple blocks away) and got a socket and breaker bar to turn the engine over. Nothing helped.
So I waited 2 hrs for a Flatbed to come drag my ass home. Frustrating.
Anyway so I get it jacked up and take a gander. The gear is engaged on the ring gear when I first look at it. So it doesn't make any sense why it was grinding and not turning the engine over unless something failed inside the starter.
As soon as I loosened the starter the gear retracted. I bench tested it and every 4 or 5 times I spun it up the gear stuck. So something in the solenoid was sticking. So whatever. While I was off I ordered a gear reduction unit from Summit. I installed it yesterday and everything is good now. I did have to extend the wires to the new starter as the terminals are farther reward.
A couple weeks ago one morning I realized I didn't have any heat inside the cabin. The truck was getting plenty warm but no heat. Yesterday I flushed the heater core to make sure it wasn't clogged. It was fine. After looking around the net for a bit I realized I had my heater hoses routed wrong. I had the inlet side to the heater core coming from the return side of the water pump. So it wasn't flowing any coolant. So I had to move fittings and sensors around on the intake to get that working. Gets HOT now.
My heater controls aren't functioning now either. I have 13-14 inches of vacuum at the back of the unit but seem to have a leak somewhere as I can hear it bleed off when I shut the truck off. So I need to get a hand vacuum pump to try and diagnose that. fun stuff.
Oh and the truck has a lean misfire at around 3500rpm now under full load. Need to run some diag on the Holley and figure that out. It seems to have started sometime after my fuel pump replacement but that doesn't make any sense as the fuel pump Im using should support 2x the HP my truck makes.