Ah! Very good to know! Thanks very much for taking the time to pass that on!
I'm not sure of what I have right now. It's mostly a lot of wander since I was driving down curvy roads at 35mph, power steering going in and out with throttle, and the feel that maybe the tires were wrongly pressurized. So, I did some things to resolve some of that. Well, not really. I checked the tire pressures and had to adjust all four. I feel like the power steering needs to be fixed next, so that's what I'm doing.
I went ahead and spliced new tag light pigtails in, since the originals were hammered at the bulb end. Now I should be inspectable. We'll see.
I think I've isolated the power/rev problem to the catholic converter having loose media stuff and blocking up when under power. I heard a weird jingle and crawled under it, and it's coming from the cat. The lack of power issue made sense when I assigned it to a bad cat. I'll pull the y pipe and cat in one piece, cut off the end of the cat exhaust pipe and then yank anything I can get out of there that's bigger than a quarter, weld it back up, and reinstall it. I would do the old "yank the upstream O2 sensor and drive it around to see if there's a difference, but the O2 points right at the trans valve body. Jet of hot exhaust right on the trans? Negative.
Changed the spark plugs finally. The Autolites were toast that came out of the other heads, gaps were around .060 or so. I installed some NGK v-powers, since the ignition is made to run with resistor plugs.
Got a (real, not fake) brass terminal cap and rotor coming in the next day or so. Wires are fine. I checked their resistance and all are still in spec.
That should get all the inspection stuff done so I can drive it around to the car wash and blast the kilograms of grease caked on the suspension from the front cover leaking for god knows how long. Once I get the suspenders blown clean, it should be easy to spot anything wrong or worn. I still have money in the budget to rebuild the whole enchilada if I have to. Apparently the steering stabilizer is garbage from the factory. Found a Rough Country that's allegedly better for 35 bucks plus the ride. The local NAPA has the track bar if I need it.
I gotta resolve this steering issue though. I bled it with the engine off, bled it with the engine on, then dropped it back on all fours and tried to turn it and got groans of dissatisfaction. So, I'm on the trail of the problem. I just need to get the suspension hosed off to see if it's binding when on the wheels, even if it's super smooth in the air.
Throwing a pump at it will just be wasting 60 bucks if I don't do some diagnostics first.
Found a pretty good deal right now on some Kumho AT51's at Sears for 113 apiece. But I really want to wait to fit new rubber til I get the front end sorted out for safety and fun capacity. There are always some deals somewhere. I'm not super hung up on one tire right now.
On the plus side:
This turned out to be a good running truck, once I replaced the heads and unforked the redneckery in the engine compartment. I go out every morning and check start it to see if it'll crank and idle and all that. No problems at all. Great running mill.
Super happy with how it's coming along, just wish I could do more hours on it to hurry it along.
I'll pull the old rad out of there after a few more hours are on this batch of coolant. Then I'll put that new rad in there and get the shroud back on.
I'm getting there, lads. I'm getting there.
