Grumpy Bear

You have an interesting handle. I like it, It fits perfectly.

It’s a good Oil Cadillac Luke and thanks for your support. I will be trying the other two in this truck though. Different base stocks have different thermal capacities. I’d like to see about another 10 to 15 degree reduction. If I can accomplish that without a cooler…KOOL! 1.) 33% lower tire wear rate. That’s how much the alignment was worth. As far along as this set of tire was before the alignment my calculations over the last 6,500 miles say it still will extend tire life @ 11,000 miles. 2.) Okay on to today’s test session was 60 mph and 90 F air temp. So what do we have. (Lower speeds done and not earlier reported in this thread). 30 mph = 199 F 35 mph = 199 F 40 mph = 199 F 45 mph = 201 F 50 mph = 203 F 55 mph = 206 F 62 mph = 208 F 70 mph = 213 F And graph it. I didn’t check above 70 mph because I don’t drive that fast EVER. (Track time excepted) If you go back over the previous records you will note a shift in the mpg numbers that favor this lower temperature even though the data base sample volume is still quite low. I’m fairly certain this will hold. That may seem odd at first blush but consider, fuel tables are temperature corrected and the CPU is thinking about now that this truck isn’t warming up to full temperature. Not enough to toss a code but enough to richen the mixture a few percent. This often results in a fuel efficiency increase. Dad use to tell me that lean motors are neither powerful nor economical. Yea it runs against the grain of what “they say”. I prefer data over conjecture. Hey, but that’s just me.

55 mph documentation after an hour and fully up to temp. 95 F day. I'm about 5 gallons into this tank of fuel. Mixed driving. ​BTW and FYI on a 95 F day. 70 mph pace on 207 F thermostat = 245-250F oil temperature. Any questions about the requirement for a Dexos 2 certified oil? How close to the cliff would you like to stand? Oh...are we are not towing anything yet? Not so much of an issue at 182 F water temp, right? ​

Installed a Jet Performance 180 F thermostat.

I installed the Jet Performance 180 F Thermostat today and glad I did. It is 92-97 F today along the routes I drove to test the finished job. Bought this truck late last August so it hadn’t seen temperatures this high until this week. Still yesterday was 92 F and we logged some miles. 341 of them to be exact. What we measured: Air temp 92 F. Inlet temp 95F. Trans temp 187 F. Water temp once up to heat and lined out 204 F and oil temp 223 F. This is with the load applied for a 50 mph drive. Mileage 27.3 mpg. That’s the reference. Today. Air temp 95 F. Inlet temp 100 F. Trans temp 190 F. Water temp once up to heat and lined out 184 F and oil temp 206 F. Same 50 mph load with a bit more wind today. Pretty impressive. Let’s just call it 18-20 F out of both water and oil temperatures. I noted after a few hours that the water temp cycled as it should with hill and dale between 182 and 188 F but struggling to recover. No one could plan this. We just happened to be sitting at the radiators capacity with the coolant mix we had in the system. I had lost about 2 quarts of coolant during the install and left it such as the tank was still plenty full. I stop at O’ Riley’s and picked up a container of Red Line Water Wetter and grabbed a gallon of distilled water from the truck. A slightly weaker antifreeze concentration and the wetter. Bingo, now cycling between 179 F and 186 F meaning the thermostat actually closes sometimes and yet is quick to respond to loads. I’m pleased as punch. The oil temperature will now recover and is running a bit cooler at 204F. I head over to Illinois Rt 73 and run it between US 20 and Illinois 72. This is a nonstop rolling 5% grade set of hills that goes on and on and by chance is into our 25 to 30 mph headwind blower from the South southwest. The water temperature roams between 181 and 186 F and the oil temp peaks at 206 F with a floor at 203 F. Still 50 MPH. Next I head to Interstate 39 getting on at Illinois 72 and chasing it down to Illinois 38. Not quite 20 miles and I do this at 70 MPH. The speed limit. Water temperature climbs to 186 F and holds rock steady. The oil temperature climbs to 213 F and under hood temps break 100 F as air temp is now 97 F and we have a fairly steady 30 mph dead south head wind. Transmission finds home at 190 F and I have the air conditioner on and the cabin cool. Puppy is feet in the air and dead to the world fast asleep. Will it recover? Yep, back on Illinois 38 rolling along 55 mph then up a state secondary at 50 mph and we are down to 182 in less than a minute and the oil temp recedes to 206 F for the ride home via the filling station. 451 miles for this tank. Instant meter showing an average for the 20 miles at 70 mph of 19.9 mpg but the tank, a three day burn down, calculated to a respectable 28 mpg. It’s a thousand miles to the next oil change yet and the OLM says about 44%. I change at 5K intervals. I’ll be monitoring this along with mileage for further evaluation of its effect. Makes me wonder what the oil temperature would have been on a day like this with the 207F thermostat in play running 70 + mph. What can GM be thinking. I know there are faster limits and more hostile environments than what I have recorded here and it makes me wonder. I’m not a big fan of ‘THEY SAY” this or that about coolant and oil and trans fluid temperatures. My 40 years engineering stationary power and five years in QC and five more in Research says otherwise and I find this acceptable but borderline. It will be fine locally where I don’t mind the slower pace but I might want to take the truck to Colorado next time across Nebraska on a 100 degree day at 75 mph. Wife has designs on a small pull behind self-contained camping rig. She’s getting the itch to travel. Any part of that is straw on a camel’s back. Death Valley at 115 F plus. LOL. Last minute notes. Oil pressure climbed about half the loss incurred with the switch to 5W20. Neither and earthmover. Lost about 5 hot psig at 1500 rpm and gained, like I said, about half that back. The water temperature gauge only moved about half the width of the needle. Pretty much maintaining its 210 F reading no matter what thermostat was installed. There's cause for pause. Should be about two marks lower. The photo was taken after about 2 continuous hours’ drive (50mph) at a stop sign so I could get a focused photo.

It has plenty of radiator Dan. The thermostat set point is just silly high and is lazy to open the first time in the day. 215F is the highest opening temperature I've seen. 211F is more the norm. Modulated temperature runs 202-207F. When that thermostat first opens it will drop to 198 F and then rebound. I'm convinced in fact that I have enough fan and radiator to run below 200 on a 100 degree day IF the thermostat will stay open. In fact I'm betting it would run in the 160 range. I've seen a fellow drill holes in the factory thermostat's rim to bring it down that cold.

Ordered a 180 F thermostat from Jegs tonight to be installed at the next oil change. These Ecotec-3 motors, IMHO, run too hot as is in evidence by the ridiculous oil temperatures they run. Mine is running 215-225+. No load either. 202-215F on the water. It's only in the mid 80's here. These sorts of water temperatures would have had you pulling over to investigate 40 years ago. GM didn’t buy my truck and they hope it croaks about one second past warranty. They worry about numbers. But not any numbers I worry about. This is one of a few moves I will be doing in order to bring things to reasonable conditions. Oil and trans temperatures are affected by water temperature. Trans via the in radiator trans cooler. So until I see what effect this move has I can’t size coolers if they are needed at all.

Factory rear shocks on this RCSB are 25” eye to eye free length. Compressed length is 16”. That’s 9” of travel. How much can I drop the tail and keep the factory dampeners? Ideal I’m told is a split on the travel that favors compression by 60% and 40% rebound. That the case 60% of 9 inches is 5.4 inches. Added to the compressed length we get 21.4 inches. The distance eye to eye when the truck is sitting on her wheels loaded going down the road. So I crawl under Ol girl with tape in hand and find this length to be 22”. I have a full tank of fuel. A Line-X premium spray in bed liner. A thick rubber bed mat and a Lund soft bed cover all sitting on the rear axle. And my 200# isn’t in the cab yet. Now the shocks are laid down at 20 degrees meaning this isn’t a straight measurement. We have to solve the right triangle which works out to be 23.5 inches vertical for the 25” free length. At 22 inches on her wheels that works out to 20.7 inches. See what happened there. Ride height change is less than the shock length change. Solving for the 21.4” shock length we get 20.1. So the ride height could come down 6/10 of an inch and have the shocks at the ideal height…unloaded. So that’s ideal. What is workable. Shock guys say your shocks can have a long and functional life at a 50/50 split. So we can figure the shock length then at half the 9 inch travel added to the fully compressed length for 20.5 inches. Working that out we get 19.3 inches. Subtract that from the original we get 1.4”. So…we can remove the 1.25” spacer and be somewhere between perfect and acceptable. Just for fun I’ll work that backward and it comes to 20.7 inches of shock length. 52% compression, 48% rebound. One last thing to check and that is bump stop. Measured distance is 3.75. Removing the spacer moves the axle closer to the spring but the spring is still the same distance from the stop. Non-issue. Since I could not get anyone to just tell me what the leaf spring rates are on this truck I measured them and used the calculator at Suspension Maxx. 1 leaf 2.5 wide X 64 long X .408 thick 56 pounds per linear inch 1 leaf 2.5 wide X 54 long X .450 thick 126 pounds per linear inch 1 leaf 2.5 wide X 38 long X .506 thick 520.5 pounds per linear inch The first two are clamped together and the third is the helper whose tips sit about an inch off the primary pack. So the initial rate is about 180 pounds per inch. That doesn’t seem excessive given the 42% back half weight bias on a 4500 truck. Know what this needs? Some better shocks with some compression adjustment. Shock extenders if the blocks are to be removed. Why extenders instead of just a shorter shock? Glad you asked. Spend some time in the catalogs and you’re going to find that what the shock guys preach about shock length isn’t what they practice in sales. Just say’n. No matter what you pay for a street shock the body rod and piston are functionally common to all. ALL the magic happens in the valving. Sleepy Puppy

I have never owned a vehicle that is as hard to keep clean as this one. Wait, I still don’t. It’s the wife’s. 35,000 services and all it good. Real good. Do have an issue with the visor over the information screen. Clips broke and new is on order.

Ran it off against the mile markers down I-39 last night and I must have nailed it the first time. Off short about 50 feet in ten miles. Not going to get my cake and eat it too. (500 mile range). Not without a 45 mph ceiling and that is too low even for me. ​Okay so I've been monitoring oil, trans, inlet air and water temperatures. Today was our first 90 F day of the season and we took about a 300 mile trip to Mineral Point Wisconsin. Air temp runs 2 F over ambient on the highway. Water 204 - 207F. Trans 185 - 195 and oil hovers 225 F. All pretty warm by my standards except inlet air. Factory system and K & N drop in filters are doing their job. We need some coolers and a colder themostat however.

Long drives make me think. More than I should maybe. The Scan Gauge on the Honda’s were pretty much one and done calibrating the fuel usage. Buicks were about two hits to get them squared away. The truck…every day is a wild guess. Driving me nuts. I swapped gauges to no avail thinking perhaps I had a finicky unit. Not so. Okay, old school. Shake is down full and forget the auto shut off. Even though it works fine on every other car on the lot the vent must be different on the truck. Matters not on a full to the neck fill and so I did, repeatedly until I got fills within 0.01 liters back to back to back. The number is 7.7% gain. Been hit and miss both sides of this number with a huge standard deviation. Learned something else too. There is 1.6 gallons of room left after auto fill has it’s say. 6% of the tank volume. That’s nuts. Learned something else on the Colorado trip. Even though digital there is a disconnect between the odometer and the speedometer. Roughly 2% on the Buick. I had calibrated by GPS speed for the miles driven correction. I will revisit this on mile poles in a few days.

What I do most every day. Clean the bird sh*t off it. I either need more stalls or fewer rides.

Been off line a few weeks. Vaction. Something I haven’t done in years. I did not take the truck. I did take the dog, Rex. Left the wife at home with the cats. Loaded up my 2009 LaCrosse CXL and headed to the kids in Colorado for the middle granddaughters graduation. Two weeks with a dog in the luxury car…no, a puppy…there is a difference brought me to a few conclusions. I have six children and fourteen grandchildren and my dog. I really like my dog…allot. I don’t care how well people claim the current crop of light trucks ride and handle I LOVE my Buicks for such trips. That said there are a few fundimental traveling items I was reminded of that are universal to auto/truck travel I thought worth the share. Four days travel and all but a few hours of that was in the rain. Much of it in hard rain. The kind that leaves standing water on Nebraska Interstates. There is no substitute for a properly cleaned/prep’d and Rain-X treated windshield with good Anco wipers. Downpours that had others slowing to 40 mph I didn’t even have the windshield wipers on for at 70 mph. Semi truck slop would get a wipe or two but on average...didn’t need them. That in itself is a nice to have. What was great was the fact I could see far enough ahead to read brakelamps and deep water areas giving an errie confidence to the situation. I treated all glass, including mirrors. Eldarado Ledgend, best tire I have ever owned for wet work. Mountion Goat sure of foot and a very plush ride. Not a truck thing but but I felt compeled to share such a great product. You do have other cars, right? Almost the entire trip I drove 72 mph. 2,000 rpm. That’s two over in Illinois and Iowa and three under in Nebraska and Colorado. Funny thing about folks west of the Missouri River. They just are not in that big a rush. I’m passing more than I’m being passed and those that do pass are not locals as a general rule. Just an oddity worth note. Iowa has the most dense truck traffic of any state I’ve ever traveled and I traveled every state of the lower 48 but Delaware. 87 Octane gas pricing was all over the map. Even from ramp to ramp. In Nebraska you get a choice. Alky or no alky and the ethonal lobby has the locals hood winked. Straght fuel costing 10 to 20% more. Casey’s of all places was the highest priced fuel bar none. That said I bought consectutive tanks and found no alky gas worth 5 to 7% on fuel efficiency. Pretty short test but all Interstate so take it for what it seems worth to you. Colorado had the only fenced, off leash dog run along the Interstate and provided clean up supplys. Iowa and Nebraska have exersise areas on the fringe of the rest area that are not always dog friendly. Hip deep grass and and glass. Illionois I think hasn’t heard of dogs yet.

For this update I’ve removed the control limits to simplify the view. As I now have 39 tanks logged I've also extended the moving average to 12 points. Less volatile than a 6 point. Both averages are on the actual calculated mileage instead of the meter. ​

Armor All Tire Shine Spray. Pump spray. Does it shine a tire. Oh yea. Like the kitchen floor. Any it gets on everything within aerosol distance. Paint, wheel liner, wheels, brakes and floor. Does it last ‘for weeks’. Not for me it didn’t about a day actually before it dulled and flaked. I didn’t spend much and it still ticks me off. Another item added to the list of things that don’t meet the hype of the sales pitch. What’s new, right? Ya know what would be new. A product that simply does what it says it will. What a concept, right? Getting your money’s worth. ​

Finally! Got the box corner protectors installed. Chips were fixed the last day above 55 F which was about 30 days ago. Long enough. Getting a 70 F day was another thing. Isopropanol 91% strength was used for the dewaxing. Black Silicon seal applied and clean up with again, Isopropanol and red shop rags. Use and toss. About six rags total. Getting it off me is another thing. Fully sealed. Another task off the books.

That is exactly what I had in mind. Thanks!

Some light spring cleaning. I'd prefer a tire with a matt finish instead of this floor wax want a be. Anyone know of one?

Orange line is mileage mile over mile. I logged the fuel used each mile for 35 miles. The mile was divided by the fuel used to obtain the fuel economy in liters per mile. Why liters? Precision. The Scan Gauge II will show for the first ten liters 0.01 liters resolution or .00264 gallons. Set to gallons the resolution is only 1/10 of a gallon. The red line is the running average of that data. The real thing to note here is that the orange is significantly above the red the entire test cycle, and is still on the rise itself; meaning the running average was still on the rise at test end. Blue is water temperature ending shortly after the thermostat opened. Ten miles. Green is the oil temperature. Lined out at 23 miles. Transmission temperature log starts at mile 12 and lines out at 33 miles. It’s starting temperature was 56 F as were the other temperatures, water, oil and air. I only have four channels so I couldn’t start recording the transmission until I was done with the water temperature. Let’s go back to the orange line. That undulation is ever hill, wind speed and direction shift. Every traffic stop or speed limit change. I ran on cruise control at 50 mph as much as the law and prudence would allow. This would be the equivalent of the ‘instant mileage’ meter in your truck if so equipped. All temperature traces in this graph have a scaling factor of 10. So what does it say? It says that the amount of fuel used cutting through cold oil is 2.13 X or 213% more than warmed up. There isn’t much temperature induced fuel wasting with direct injection motors. There was but a 19% reduction by the time the thermostat had opened. The obverse? A fully warmed system uses only 47% of the fuel a cold drive line system does. It says the motor isn’t warm when the water temperature stabilizes. It says that even the fairly thin transmission fluid presents significant resistance to motor until fully warmed up. Wheel bearing, differential and universal joints are long in warming. It says this is at 56F. Imagine it at from a starting point of say 0 F, with a load pulling or hauling. In the winter I have logged heat up times of 20 miles water, 35 miles oil and 100 miles transmission. Winter warm ups from sub freezing temperatures take 3X + longer. How did this test translate to MPG? 13.51 mpg cold, 28.73 mpg hot.

An initial look into the effect of lubrication temperatures on fuel efficiency. First pass looks promising. Working on procedure. This chart is three consecutive runs over the same 11.1 mile course clearing the fuel 'current trip' monitor each time. (Scan Gauge II) ​Almost everyone knows the effect exist but some doubt the magnitude. At the end of the first pass the thermostat opened with a peak temp at 217 F. At the end of the third pass the transmission had just made it to operating temperature. 33.3 miles. I ran out of time this day and would have liked to run a fourth leg at stable temperature. ​In the winter I have logged distances to 100 miles before the transmission is up to temperature. If the majority of your driving is under 30 miles between cold starts getting good efficiency is going to be a real challenge. ​Fuel measured in liters, recorded in mpl and converted to mpg. Percent increase is above the initial pass. Temperatures in F.

The Rock River along former Illinois state highway 2. One of my favorite drives takes this decommissioned highway from Wisconsin to Iowa down western Illinois along the Rocks path. My favorite car wash, M & M, is in Byron along that route. Or was until the owner decided that having the best wash in Northern Illinois was a distinction he no longer cared to hold. It's a fifty mile round trip for us. Now it is just average after his "upgrades". Upgraded the price $2 and deleted two soap cycles, lost the wax and lowered the spot free rinse. Now you are allowed to donate $7 to his cause and you get to keep your dirty truck. I do it myself now in the hand wash bays. The equipment is still top notch and I like the drive so....whatever. ​Sad. I'm taking half the olives out of the bottle and charging 30% more. What a concept.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Idiots with tools. Sorry that happened to you. When I take mine in I walk the service writer around the truck and show him every flaw. Easy enough there are few. Then I tell him I am not bringing it here to get it back in worse shape than I delivered it. If the dent it, scratch it, soil it or mar it they get to pay the repair. I reminded them while it may just be a truck it is not their truck. I might also mention the cost of a wheel so he gets the idea. This will get one of two responses. Okay, I can do that OR I don't want to work on a truck whose owner is that fussy. Solutions for both are obvious.

25K mile service was routine. Oil/filter change. Tire rotation. Checked brake slides and greased. Checked brake pads. Check diff seal. Tread wear rate still exceptional. Seems the slightly lower pressures are hurting nothing at all. Over 75% of the pads left. Slides perfect. Seal holding up. Top off fluids and call it a service. I am not very hard on parts.

Rex takes allot of time and so does spring yard work meaning the truck is doing more work and less pleasure cruising like the vet, pet store, big box for yard stuff, trip to the dump and a few hundred pounds of salt for the softener. General bruising about. Enough to burn a tank in a more natural setting experienced by a larger number of users. Result for the tank was a bit over 25 mpg with a second tank not yet complete doing about the same. Living 18 miles from the nearest town with more than three stop lights this is what I would call more mixed driving than city. That sound fair? Dogs, especially little cute puppy dogs as you know are chick magnets. It takes a hit on the fuel efficiency and raises the eyebrow of the Mrs. Mostly as she laughs at these young ones all goo-goo over the pup ignoring the old fart holding him. He hasn't noticed the truck FOX yet. Good!

Cell phone picture. Palisades Kepler State Park near Cedar Rapids Iowa. I need to start carrying my real camera. This phone thing is awful. I actually do more than just drive. Part of the days 501 mile road trip. Visit my Aunt. Test my wind adjusted mileage plan. Think ALLOT and make a decision on a new puppy. Aunt is doing fine. Dog is a go and the fuel test a success. I get the pup tomorrow. 16.652 gallons. 30.1 mpg doing 85 kph (53 mph). 10.6 hours motor on time for a 47 mph average. 12.5 hours seat time. 40.1 mph average. It’s how time slips by and averages fall. Left this a.m. heading west into a light and variable west wind and a temperature of 54 F. At the half way point I’m clocking 28 mpg. Heading home I have a 10 mph tail wind and average 32.9 mph on the Interstate clocking 55 mph. About 25 miles from the barn the wind shifts hard east by north east and the gauge falls to 24.6 mpg. I dial back to 50 mph and settle in at 27 mpg. High for today was 74 F and by the time I rolled in I’m a bug covered 62 F. Note. 53 mph is about the point the air goes sideways on this truck. I could run a bit quicker with the wind and improve my clock time. The last time this truck clocked 30+ mpg I was doing 45-50 mph. Making progress.