sewebster

Well, they are just bushings, BUT you only need one set to do the whole truck, so if you like the black ones better, just use those!

Is the voltage slowly rising? Anyway, if you were reading 19V at your battery before with the old alternator, then that is bad... maybe something got busted? Of course, I guess you are asking what that could be...

It's really impossible to diagnose from pictures like that. If your cap is old, just replace it, they should be cheap. If it IS actually bad then it could cause all kinds of problems. While removing the neg battery terminal is good practice for almost anything, I certainly wouldn't sweat it in your case It's mostly just so that if you touch something live with a tool that you don't accidentally short it to ground.

Jumping on a ratchet and using a cheater bar are kinda in the same league if you ask me. They have their place for sure, but just aren't "best practice."

Doesn't the central contact look kinda bad? On mine it had basically turned to dust and fell off entirely.

My guess is that it isn't the greatest deal, but with these trucks it REALLY depends on the specific condition of the vehicle. The replacement value of some of the modified WD21s that members here own is probably like $10k or something, but they aren't "worth" that much in the book. Lots of trucks are probably worth close to $0 because they need so much work just to make them road-worthy.

Where are you reading 19V? Sounds like you might have a voltage regulator problem.

I think the hardest part will be getting the crank pulley off/back on. Impact gun makes that easy.

Knock sensor could affect fuel economy... if it detects knock it retards the engine timing to prevent it.

I thought you were just supposed to go and drive up a hill at redline. Burn all that crap out

Maybe you had sticky soda in a cupholder and it splashed all over your dash!!!

What's the big deal with changing them? Is it removing the spindle? I have done that before and it was a huge PITA, I'll agree. Is it more beyond that? I actually don't understand how my bushings didn't fall out when I took the crossmember out. Maybe they were just wedged in the arms?

Sprayed another $30 of rust proofing spooge onto and into the frame. Greased the front driveshaft and spare tire carrier. Discovered that my rear driveshaft u-joints have zerk fittings, but that my grease gun nozzle doesn't fit between the yokes (?) to get to them!

I'm pretty sure the thorley's have a 2.5" exit so you need to adapter. The coating on the thorley's basically does the same thing as the wrap so you don't need it. I doubt you actually need to wrap any part of your exhaust unless you have specific heat concerns about a particular place with your custom setup.

If everything goes well, replacing head gaskets only needs to take a few hours. But as nismothunder points out, if you're going to take all that stuff apart, there is a lot of other work you should really be thinking about doing. Also, if anything gets stuck or broken it can easily turn into a much longer job.

I don't know anything about towing a trailer, but if you put enough lights in parallel on your trailer (like running lights) presumably you could get the resistance low enough that too much current would flow and you could blow fuses. I doubt this is likely to ever occur in practice, but the scientist in me feels like pointing out this theoretical possibility

Because of stress concentration? Given the condition of some of these frames before repair... probably that is a small worry!

Now you're just rubbing it in!!!

Be suspicious of the MAF wiring too...

I think extractors=headers? In that case you could expect a modest performance increase and possibly a small improvement in fuel economy.

It's not a terrible idea, although you could probably spend a lot of effort doing your whole exhaust. Usually people just wrap their headers to keep the engine bay cooler.

Well, I don't have any help to offer but that is good information to keep in mind when having starter issues...

The engine coolant half actually sucks at heat transfer. That's why you use water too, it's great. You need to mix.

If you put enough cup holders on you'll barely be able to see the original trim.

You should be able to buy flanges and gaskets and O2 bungs online. Make sure to get the right thread for your sensor. This is all going to take a bit of research to get right.