Grumpy Bear

Sir I made my living doing just that. I wore allot of hats in the field that chose me but the one worn the best was just being a good old fashion troubleshooter. I fixed stuff companies didn't even know was broke and a few things that were no one else seemed to be able to get a figure on. God gives everyone some gift, right? Processes. Equipment. SOP's. Methods. It's all fair game. Know why Harley Davidson refuses to use 10W40? The buyers perception that 40 is for Asian bikes but 'real bikes' use 50 or even 60 weight. I'm not tied to any such 'man card' thinking so I get to reap the benefit of not following a popular misguided thought. Just picking the low hanging fruit. Using my education to make adjustments that allow more effectives means, methods and/or products to be used. But sometimes an idea persist due to conflicting goals. OEM's want good economy sure but they also want some other things too. Longevity. Emissions. Buyer perception. Mostly they want to remain in control of the product no matter whose name is on the title. They get to decide how long it last and how well it serves it's host with the end game in mind of keeping the next product cycle going. Give that some thought! Some of those goals align with mine. Some are diametrically opposed. There is also this Stan; and you actually know this, in fact, I'm likely preaching to the choir; the end user has the most impact on what and how a product performs. Royal Enfield Motorcycles are a great example. The Bullet 500 was a bike unchanged over 50 years in production. In point of fact it digressed when production moved to India from England. Cheaper raw materials and a failing quality control system. If you understood this you didn't try to ride it like it was a Honda and got great results. But most buyers tend to want to treat a thing as they believe it 'should be' instead of 'what it is' and never even explore 'what it could be'. I'm the guy in that last group. A guys MAN CARD can only be revoked with the permission he gives by submission to fear, ignorance and stupidity. Well...and telling God to leave the buss can get your ticket punched. He's the guy that made the laws of the Universe and somehow when those laws become troublesome to someone they tend to reject those laws and NEVER does that favor them. Fuel economy is just one on a long list of subjects where people ignore his laws to their own demise. People will argue till they drop over 'the why of a thing' or a 'how' but the results are harder to call out on, right?

Oh it's crossed my mind. I have four tracks within two hours in three directions. Union Grove, Byron, Cordova and Chicagoland Speedway US 66. A few more within 4 hours. Indy and Humboldt Iowa, Eddyville Iowa. I would have to address the transmission tune for that me thinks. Sound right? Do you think people understand that the last bump in mileage came from the 0 in the 0W20 vs the 5W20?

5,574 miles / 189 gallons = 29.56 MPG. Pretty sure I can call this a trend. Including the 714 miles of thermostat failure. Entire summer to date has averaged 29.82 mpg up from last summers 27.24 mpg average. Up 8.7%. This amount the data definable result of lower vis Redline allowed by better heat management. Trans pan is the next project as soon as I can get in touch with my head wrench. Vacation season. Jury Duty. Interruptions of my plans.

Saw this happen on a 70 Chevelle a week old. It was a primer prep issue. You are looking at two panels complete. I just had the lift gate on the wife's Terrain done for $600. Two doors on a Scion cost me $800. A quality shop is worth it $$$$ price. I had two other shops to the Scion the made it worse than is was when I brought it to them. This third guy can paint.

Stating a thing as a 'fact' is proof of nothing but ones personal convictions. Stating a thing that's a lie as a fact is something else altogether. That's one Paradigm. And the other would be........

It isn’t very often things just go my way. Over a thousand miles (as of today) on the new thermostat arrangement and solid as a rock. The 180 F unit seems about right for my particular driving habits and it’s yielding the type of results I expected it might if I could get it to work long enough to collect the data. I wasn’t unhappy with the 170 trigger point but this is more to my liking. Today on roughly 300 miles and on a mid 80F day I saw a pretty steady 184 F water temp. Mid 150’s for transmission although it will creep up near 180 F in town and takes a good long while on the open road to get back near 160F. Oil temperatures at my chosen speeds run 199 to 210 F. The factory housing is now empty of its contents although I refrained from cutting off the retaining ears just in case I might want to move the IPSCO unit to a different truck. No, I have no plan to trade Pepper but it’s when I don’t have a plan, one is made for me. Deer, hail, you know. There is a bleed hose on that housing that returns to the surge tank that has about an 0.50” orifice. Good thing I looked too or I would have drilled to large a hole in the Stant. 5/64” is what I settled on for a first run at it and it looks like a winner although I will not be fully satisfied until I see it work this winter. I will hit mid 190’s to open on a restart which is a bit high but let’s look at it for a while. I have several irons in the fire at the moment.: 1.) Getting that PML alloy trans pan installed for one. I’ve heard it helps quicken heat spike recovery times. This will be an 8 quart drop and fill with a new WIX filter. Depending on that result I’m still looking at: 2.) an auxiliary trans cooler and a: 3.) 160 F trans thermostat after the radiator cooler and in front of the aux. unit to kill the spikes and add some hot day capacity. 4.) Perhaps a inline filter as well. I am loving these 600# King springs and so having put on about 3K since the install time to: 5.) Check and adjust the alignment once more. A little more tweak to the castor is in order. Less. I’ve decided perhaps about: 6.) 50 psi less N2 in the back side, remove two leaves and a .180” left side shim is about all the rear tweak I might want. That happens before the alignment. 7.) Needs a full on detail. I’ve done the box and under the hood over the last few days and a quick and dirty interior clean up. Paint needs some correction. 8.) More rust proofing. Line-X the bumpers. Cosmoline the front fender interiors behind the sound deadening, cab corners and rocker panels along with the rear wheel arches. I will be using a different Line-X shop than the box. I paid for a rust proof they never did. 9.) And I still want to re-gear this thing and add a Torsen diff.

Honey I'm home! 387 mile trip that averaged 30.01 mpg. That is six of the last eight tanks at 30+. Previous to this run Pepper has had five tanks over her lifetime that high. Note the recovery in todays updated graph. Verification that viscosity has a HUGE influence on mileage in motors with AFM. Which by the way is on almost constantly these days without a Range or Marathon device. Shuts of on hills over 3%. Head winds over 20 mph or when the timer times out. Couldn't be more on. 55 mph on a Federal Highway whose speed limit is...55 mph. East west round trip that started with a 15-20 mph wind off my 10. A two hour cool down during the visit and lunch during which time the wind shifted with a storm putting me into a 15-20 wind off my 2. Air temperature started at 72 and two hours in over 90 peaking 96 F. Ran the AC about half the time. Some minor idle time for one lane road construction. So at speed, into an all day unfavorable cross wind with the air on and STILL 30 mpg. Remember I running at 28-30 psi in the tires. These are NOT DIC numbers. This is hand calculated numbers with a corrected speedometer. I use to get an occasional tank that for maybe half of them were tank fill variations which went away with the level. The variations that is. What use to come with some difficulty and randomly sometimes under the speed limit is now just about turn key at local speed limits. With a tail wind she will tag some numbers I won't even mention cause you would call me a liar. Two in a row. I am not hating this.

I'm siick of the every few months or weeks, sometimes days failure of the Jet/Summit series thermostats and Mishimoto is just to cold for day in day out street work. Truck would be down 10 days or more sometime waiting and fighting with suppliers over replacement or repair work. Crap parts from crap vendors at ridiculous prices. The GM 207 F factory unit is ignorantly hot and I wanted a colder unit. Stant has been my bread and butter go to for nearly 50 years. Maybe I've seen one failure in millions of miles. To use a Stant Superstat I either had to heavily modify a factory water pump to accept a Gen 1 SBC neck housing OR place the thermostat in the upper hose. A thousand times more reliable than either the GM factory part or any Asian stat on the market with a wide number of set points avialable and at about 30% the cost. I could have spun this up myself but.....Mark does such nice work. Reliability and efficiency are tied at the hip to heat management and in some misguided thinking GM has opted to thin fluids with temperature instead of chemistry to help company fuel averages. It's one way but in my estimation it's the wrong way. In the graph you can see the incremental step improvements I was making as I cooled, modified and changed out fluids....until....the stat failed...again tanking the last two tanks before I caught on to what was going on. The seal would seal overnight and act fine for about a half hour. I'd switch the Scan Gauge to some other thing I wanted to watch then BOOM the seal would pull away, jamb the valve partially open and run 150 - 155 F. Those modifications and test are further back in this tread. Intermittent in the beginning. First outing today 184-186 F water. 153-163 F transmission. 204 - 210 F engine oil. 82 - 87 F air temperature. 60% humidity. 55 - 60 mph. 12 - 15 mph wind on my 12 then on my 6 round trip. 30 mpg two way average to pull this last tank back to the lifetime average. Whew! Anyway now I can get back to my experiments. Detailed under the hood today.

Please excuse the mess during the remodel. Installation and operational details to follow soon. Real soon.

Before I went to school I spoke words I’d learned from those around me. Parents mostly. I couldn’t read them. I couldn’t write them but I knew them and I knew their meanings. I would latter learn the alphabet. Learn to arrange letters into those words and words into sentences. Compose a paragraph, Tell a story or record a history. I would have to expand my vocabulary and learn the meanings of the new words I spoke or wrote to progress to more complex expressions. To do this I needed to learn composition, punctuation and grammar. I would have to learn the rules of the language. I would have to learn some of its history and understand its fluidity. I would have to trust my teachers, regardless of their motives to the degree that purpose was served. If I cared to do so for a second or third language; it would be rinse and repeat. If I cared to translate from one language to another I would need to understand the differences in grammar and meanings of words well enough to duplicate a thought or series of thoughts accurately to the degree those two languages permitted such thoughtful exchange. If I could do that I would be like Steven T. Byington, a language expert foremost in his field. I’m not; so I’m going to have to trust some people to do it for me and trust God to keep it pure enough to allow me to understand what he said in the languages we no longer speak but were delivered in. I trust him like that. It should be a cakewalk after creating a Universe don't you think? Words in translation need to accurately translate a thought more importantly than a word for word exchange which in many languages is literally impossible. When discussing Christianity the bases of sensibility is in the fabric of an agreed foundation and its rules. Those rules and that fabric are consecrate in the Bible. Every translation is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy….he KJV is no exception. We don’t read Koine Greek or Ancient Hebrew (both dead languages) or even Aramaic. Translation in to another language is going to be problematic even for experts in the field. That is sensible, rational, reasonable 1 Corinthians 10:25 KJV reads: Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake 1 Corinthians 10:25 NWT reads: Eat whatever is sold in a meat market, making no inquiry because of your conscience, This comparison should be effective in showing that translating into a ‘dead tongue’ (language) would be as fruitful as studying your Bible in Ewé if you don’t speak Ewé. Well, I nor anyone I know speaks nor understands fluently Shakespeare. While I use the KJV on occasion for the purpose of study; the language of the NWT or Byington’s for that matter is quite current and updated as our English language devolves. God doesn’t make mistakes, Men do. When I find a problem with a translation I compare until the truth reviles itself by removing any seeming contradictions or bias from the translators influences or his politics. You can't find an answer your not looking for. When a person wishes to read, write and understand English he learns to alphabet and the rules of composition, speech and grammar. I have no idea what a person wants that attacks the origin of that languages alphabet or attempts to discredit it by any other means. That lacks sense-able-ness. I have a great interest in knowing what the Bible contains. I have no interest in debating things such as its source. I know it’s source. 2 Timothy 3:16 NWT All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight,* for disciplining in righteousness, That’s what I’m interested in. That's what's sensible. Hope that answers your question Luke.

Form that same link: and as Paul Harvey would say. "Now for the rest of the story" Quote: "0W-20 and 0W-30 engine oils, with their extremely low temperature performance requirements, will continue to be dominated by PAO-base fluids for the next few years. (bet it's longer than that unless they find a way to defy hydrocarbon physics) And what is the current trend in OEM specs for viscosity? From that post the only example where they were offering a VI advantage was at 4.3 cSt at 100 C. That is the 100C viscosity minimum for a 10W. Not happing any time soon. What was that number? 123? You can make an argument from cherry picked information. You just can't run an engine on it. Shall I continue? There's a reason they said 'can' and not DOES or WILL. My grand-pappy use to say, "Every really good lie is 90% true"! Mom said, "IF (can) frogs had wings they wouldn't bump there butt when they jump". I'm not picking on you sir. Liars are good at their professions. If they can't trick an informed guy they won't have a job long. Oh, love this one: Consequently, they ( severely processed Group III) have exceptional purity with aromatics levels of much less than one percent, resulting in high thermal and oxidative stability. On the other hand, PAO stability depends largely on residual olefin content, which can be present at significant levels - up to five percent. There's that Can word again. So the point is that if I compare the WORST PAO to the BEST Group III the group III wins? No, tell me it isn't so! Oxidation test benefits were only valid in turbine oils with specific add packs. REALLY? The test in part were run on Hydraulic Oils? Because? Because any advantage is in stocks with 100 C viscosities below 4.3 cSt. Jack oil. Words say Group III exceeds Group IV n NOACK and yet the graph show otherwise. Should have left that graph out I guess. By this report Exxon/Mobil, the largest producer of PAO, should be shutting down all it's PAO operations. Anyone find it funny that the one who started the PAO rally quietly withdrew that material from the 'brand' that made it's name on it's back? Thank you Castrol. Well they are not; so bean counters being what they are???? Yea this is drivel. They pulled out because the lower group oil was cheaper. Thing is with the two additional refinery steps to get close to a PAO the cost is going to be greater than a PAO. This is long term recon at it's best. There are several improvement statements made comparing the "severely processed Group III" to 'conventional synthetics' and even some more refined Group II stocks. What is a conventional synthetic? Non-severely processed ? Note the date on one charts base oil 1923!! Well I hope so. C'mon man. Okay, okay.... So we need a new use for PAO's. How about blends with NP Esters? Wait!!!! Red Line?? Redline is not on the list of oils at PQIA. In fact I can't find a single Ester listed there. Why is that? How about VI's in clouds and NOACK a fraction of the 10W Group III's without major loads of any viscosity improvers nor solubility issues. Red LIne 0W20 VI is 172! Noack is 9%! Pour point is -60 C - 76 F. 100C 9.1 cSt. 40 C 48 cSt. CCS 55 Poise at -35C (that's a mind numbing number). Group III numbers at any processing level are not even in the same zip code.

I love learning new things. GIVE me Give me!!!!

Depends on the base stock. Ground crude mineral oils, absolutely true. Even hydrocracked Group III's don't fair all that well. Esters not so much. How much will be required is a function of the Viscosity Index, the slope steepness between the 40C and 100 C viscosities. There are several Esters that are naturally 0W20 without any pour point suppressants. 0W15 is in the future. Some POA/Ester blends that the add pack is under 10% of the can. Not unusual for Mineral based oils to contain 30% +. Boy howdy! The fewer the better. The entire reason I'm such a heat management freak. Or...maybe I'm just naturally freaky. I'm 5K on Synthetics and I use good ones and have lots of reserve cooling. If I were to return to Mineral based oils it would still be Phillips Trop-Artic, Shell Fire and Ice or Havoline 10W30 summer, 5W30 winter and 2500 mile changes. I use to be 7500 on my Honda's and never had an issue getting a quarter million from them. Body would fall apart sooner than the time it took to get than many miles one. None of those were DI however nor CDC equipped. Besides with as many as I have 5K is a number my mind will still process. I'd rather eat a dull razor blade that use anything marked "Blend". By law it can contain as little as 5% Syn. product and qualify. The add pack could be that much. The rest could be Group I Panther <$&#.

Wife drives it a week. 26 mpg. Next week 22 mpg. Says there is something wrong. Drove it a 360 mile loop. 30 mpg. There is something wrong I tell her. Your attitude is not MPG friendly. Just drive the speed limit and it will get close to 30. "I can't" she says.

I grew up on Phillips Trop-Artic 10W30, Ford and 2500 mile oil changes when one could buy a case (24 quarts) for $12 following Dad and Grandpa. In that day a motor with 60K was a trader and one with 100K...well...those were walk by cars/trucks. Thing is Dad and his brothers were not having much trouble getting three times that much mileage of an FE based Ford. 239 Flatheads went 600K to a million. I saw the internals of some of those motors when dad would drop a pan for an oil pump. Impressive. Unlike me, Dad likes to drive fast. Even at 90 years young 85 is his slow lane. Boy did things change after 1970. The heat of the first generation SMOG motors was an oil killer. Thing was there wasn't ready access to synthetics yet and the ones that were, problematic and oil changes sooner than 2500? Oil prices were creeping up and motor life was again just average with 100K being a walk by. When I got out on my own and started refining I gained access to a whole new world. Refineries have some pretty impressive laboratories. Oil and Fuel. I had a front row seat. Did two three year stints in Research on TDA's. Now there are some lab rats that would make MIT blush. Should too. Head Rats in charge of the cheese had multiple Doctorates from places like MIT, CSM & Oxford and with a much larger bank roll than any University. I got to see this stuff at the molecular level. Everyone's stuff. Well retired a decade now and as fast as things change Conventional oils use to have some serious differences in their base, that is ash, sulfur and wax content. You could have given me a Pennzoil Well back then and I wouldn't have run it in a lawnmower. Better living through chemistry they say and today those issues are nothing but lingering memories used best by marketing types and old wives. Entire sections of plants built to remove and standardize products. And yet the best of the best are still ground crudes with their inherent limitations. Add packages have not progressed as far as some would like to believe. Same basic chemicals are being used today that were used 40 years ago. Variance is mainly in concentration and packagers specific selection. Major advancements in oil have come with synthetics. Even synthesized crudes such as Group III's that are just H2 full and finely cut are a good bump up but POA's and Esters are lightyear jumps. Today the problem isn't knowing what a good oil is or even how often to change it. The problem is getting these LIARS to tell you what's in the bottle and no sir, SYNTHETIC doesn't tell you spit because these LIARS have corrupted the technical language to the point the word hasn't a meaning that is definite nor reliable.

Double-base. We live in two very different places. I driven in your area and my preferred driving style would indeed be uncomfortable for your area. Was in fact quite uncomfortable. It's worse than Chicago in my estimation and I'm close enough to there to drive that rats next if I wished to. I don't wish to. I take the train.

Pennies make dollars, right? Lot's of little things. If my motor is running, for example, the truck is moving. That is I don't let it sit and idle unless it is traffic related. I am fanatical about alignment, tire pressures and rotations. Working on heat management and use lighter synthetic Red Line Oil fluids in the entire power train. These are NOT Group III hydrocracked liars synthetics. You have to manage heat to make that work. For instance I modified the transmission thermostat and took advantage of the in the radiators tank transmission coolers ability to double as a heater while the fluid is below coolant temperature. Lower radiator thermostat settings allowed use of 0W20 in a motor that calls for 5W30. My operating temperature oil viscosity is actually higher with the lower viscosity rated oil. Bed cover. Lower stance. Kept the hatted air damn and wheel opening air foils. Bought and use a Linear Logic Scan Gauge II to monitor my driving habits and fine tune my tuning adjustments. Maintenance is done like a religion and I fix everything as it happens, even cosmetics. Keep it clean. I drive the speed limit or a little under depending on how much help mother nature is giving me, how much traffic and lane availability there is for all drivers. But I do not sacrifice my pace for another's hast. That one is huge. I am under no obligation to drive dangerously nor illegally. Keep the load as light as possible. If I don't need it for the trip I don't carry it. Make yourself comfortable and use the cruse control as much as possible. I run the air when needed but I seem to need it less than many do. I am a machine when I drive. Every start stop, every heat cycle and every change of pace uses fuel. I do not employ hypermiling techniques such as punch and glide or rolling stops or anything silly like that. Just steady and in anticipation of everything I can be. I take advantage of my situations. If there is no one behind me I approach a stop sign like I haven't any brakes but in traffic I respect others right to road and a pleasant drive. I use my cell phones 'real time' traffic alerts to avoid sitting is some construction zone for 20 minutes if there is a 'smoother' path available even if it is slightly longer. I drive to my destination in off peak hours when I can. Observe and make use of daily wind patterns and local weather. Example the winds between 4 am and 9 am are lower than mid day so If I have a 150 mile trip to make, I do it early. All in all good economy, in my estimation, is a matter of hundreds of choices rather than a single item or two. It's a choice to create that habit the world is either in to much of a hurry to make, or to vain to. I choose the truck based economy for the task I expected it to actually preform instead of 'wowing' people I neither like or know or under conditions I haven't any real bases for believing it will need to operate under. I don't compare my situation to anyone else's. The guy that really needs a 3500 oil burner isn't going to get the mileage Pepper gets and If I drove a 3500 I would worry much about trying to get the mileage of a 1500 SCSB either.

Ever get a really, REALY nice surprise? I contacted Mark Johnson of IPSCO.ORG yesterday asking for a tracking number, shipper and date of expected delivery. I had forgot to get that info when I placed the order. By yesterday I was getting nervous. Didn't hear from him...hum... I had mentioned that I was a bit concerned about the device weight when I placed the order and we talked about that briefly....and then I dropped it when I realized the photo I was looking at was without an object reference. It's only 3" in diameter after all. He didn't drop it. He responded today with a few photo's of this work of art that was shipped today. He didn't want to reply until and unless I was getting exactly what I wanted. I am stunned at IPSCO's, Mark's commitment to excellence. Why stunned? He took this upon himself; spending his time and his money to write the code.....He spent more on the code/setup than I paid for the part including shipping. I would expect to see this on his web site and in his order books soon. Floored, simply floored. Thank you Mark Johnson (ISPCO.ORG).

Power washed the Line-X box and rubber bed matt. Looks new again. Nice! Refit the Lund soft rollup's rails.

No sir. A true plug and play. There are some 'feet' in the sump that support the factory filter. There are about 3 ports on this pan that, for a price, can be drilled and tapped for ancillaries. Temp gauges or off line cooling systems, augmented filter systems. PATC has an oversized filter that can be used in either the factory pan or one like this. I'm just doing a WIX. You could add a baffle if so inclined. I'm not. It's a street truck, right? BTW, that inline thermostat housing looks HUGE but it is only 3" in diameter. They need to sit something beside it for perspective. Next week is the fourth so it may take awhile to get all this in play. I did take her for a 75 mile spin today. Heat index over 105F, meaning AC on, and some stiff Southwest winds killed the MPG numbers for this tank. I've also kicked up the MPH 5 mph for most situations. Ill control of temperature isn't helping.

Some wear the 17 mpg moniker like a badge of manhood. 26+ lifetime over 67,500 miles here. And no, I don't think 85-90 is the National speed limit.

Pan arrived today! Thermostat housing ordered today from IPSCO.Org. Mid week next expected delivery. These Ecotec3 motors use an oddball sized hose at 33 mm (1-5/16) No one makes one that size and there was a two week lead on custom order. 1-1/4 it is then. Stant #45358 180 F SuperStat and Flepro #35710 Seal.

Ordered a PML 8 quart alloy trans pan for Pepper. Plain wrapper as cast. Why the larger pan? Because is was the same price as the stock volume pan. Why the pan at all? The filter doesn't need a change with every fill service and the pan hasn't a drain plug. This cost allot to have the exhaust dropped, pan dropped just to change fluids. Ridiculous. I could weld a bung in a stock pan I suppose and safe even more....yada, yada. Anyway that makes interval service an at home affair for the cost of fluid and my time. LOL who am I kidding. I'll still have Jason do it but it will cost about $150 a service less. Well...after the first one. Contacting a machine shop to make an inline thermostat holder I can cut into the upper hose. Of the premanufactured units I found not a one was sized for the odd radiator hose ID. Good job GM! IF that doesn't work out I'll buy a chunk of 6061 and spin it up myself.

I know something of Texas heat as it was one of my stops while refining. I feel for you.