powdrhound

I yanked out the aftermarket radio and replaced it with a Toyota set from Ebay. I was able to get one that has cassette and CD. If I ever get modern and go MP3, I will get one of the adapters for that input. Since the radio wiring had been butchered off for the prior installation, I had to go to Pic-n-pull for the Toyota radio plug. Replaced all the speakers and added a powered subwoofer. Sounds quite good. Once I figured out how to correctly tap into the dash lights, the radio lights even work.

Try Mill Supply Co. http://www.rustrepair.com/app2/onlinecat.htm?r=ms&p=wi

I thought the gas smell I was getting was from the carbon canister. I finally saw gas dripping off my gas tank after a start-up. Found that the floor of the rig has sagged enough that it was causing interference with the fuel hoses. There are holes worn into the bottom of the floor by the hoses. This had obviously been a problem for a while, as the supply pipe had been previously brazed. The immediate failure was a re-break of the repair. The just fell off when I dropped down the tank. Short term, I am able to get a good 1" of the hose on the remaining pipe, but because most of this is on the curve of the pipe, I still want to find another pump bracket. I also shimmed down the tank to remove the interference. Long term, I could add a floor cross member in this area. Replacing the tank is also a possible option. It already was the lowest point to the road, and dropping it made it worse. (Has anyone made a gas tank guard?) I am only able to use ~ 20 gallons of it's 26 gallon stated capacity, anyway... On to the Search for gas tank messages....

My local Toyota dealer ordered the left hand nuts. Twice. The warehouse sent right hand nuts along with the two left hand studs I had ordered... Only took a couple days each time. Amazing how much easier to tighten the new nuts.

Greg, one more time... You sold your Turbo because _________________. A. You needed less power. B. Yours was too well fixed up and you needed a project, something to do. C. You now have 5 kids and no longer fit in the 18'er. D. ?????????????????

Noreen, I had several successful weeks chasing the pow. Arrive before the front hits and stay till CalTrans has the road clear. 1. Unless you have double glass windows, make foil-type inserts for each window. Available by the foot at Orchard Supply Hardware, et. al. Add a layer under the mattress, too. Then a thick blanket to close off the cab from the coach. 2. Keep the doors cracked open to all the compartments that contain water lines. I only froze up twice, both nights below 10 degrees on the clear night after the storm. (Too tired to remember to open the doors...?) I believe my weak link is the metal drain valve at the exit of the fresh water tank. Cannot insulate it well and it has some outside exposure, too. (Hmm. Insulate below the floor?) 3. Have a jug of water inside that can be used to wash/drink/flush when the water system does freeze. 4. Don't worry about the holding tanks. Who cares if the cr.. freezes? It will be thawed by the time you get home ready to dump. Less odor when frozen, too. 5. Do pour a little water-system-antifreeze in each of the P-traps, including the shower, each night. 6. The heater can run a lot on the real cold windy nights. Killed the battery several times before I got the little Honda generator. Deep snow muffles the generator well, and it is NOT considered bad manners to run it thru the night. Next year I WILL have a catalytic heater. 7. A carpet runner strip for the winter saves the carpets for summer use. 8. Newspapers. Several layers of papers around the doorway make cleanup of boots & shoes easier. Kirkwood parks us in a muddy pig sty parking lot, so there is always lots of mud & snow. Fold em up and toss the mess. 9. Tires - maybe the Nokian tires are overkill, but I loved the fact that they stick like glue to ice & snow. They work better withOut the chains. Put several thousand miles on frozen roads without any hint of a slip. Make sure the ones you have are Not a Summer Rib tread. It is not easy to find M&S in a D load range. 10. My four-banger has no guts when above 8,000 feet. Just take your time. (you have little choice, anyway) Maybe I am in 1st going up the final climbs, but this little truck WILL get me there. The SkiBumMobile proved to be a wonderful base of operations. A warm, dry & cozy retreat from the storm. Best of luck to you. Let is Snow!

I used the 273-0071 chime. My lady says it sound like a two-tone doorbell. I don't care. It will get me to turn the lights off. Yeah, they had all sorts of buzzers, but who knows what they each sound like. This will work fine. Changed out the spark plugs today after loosening a couple of the valve clearances (#4 exhaust valve had zero clearance). Amazing how worn spark plug electrodes can get. Should run like a sewing machine now.

I hope you fight the ticket. That is crazy.

When we first got the rig, my lady insisted that the rocking was too much, making her feel odd. So I got some of the aluminum trailer jacks. We used them for our first camping trip to the lake. I have not used them since. It is just not that much of a problem.

I am getting real tired of forgetting to turn off the headlights before exiting and locking the cab. Thank you to toyotanation.com for the idea to add a $10 Radio Shack chime to the headlight circuit. I had been toying with the idea of adding a couple more clearance lights, right outside the doors, so I see the lights on before I lock up... Something... Adding the chime was super easy. I mounted the chime under the dash cover, next to the speaker. Remove the lower dash cover (unplugging the dimmer switch) and the kick panel cover. The chime I bought has three wires. The red wire is tapped into the dash light circuit, the black wire to a grounding bolt, and the blue wire tapped into the door switch wire. The door switch creates a ground connection for the cab light when the door is opened. It now also fires off the chime. Working Excellently now. My most accessible place for the Green wired dash light circuit was under the steering column, the wire going to the drive indicator light. (Also used this tap to power the lights in the upgraded Toyota radio and the lights in the new pillar post gauges. If you want to control the new lights with the dimmer switch, hook up the lights ground wires to the the dash light ground wire in the harness, a Red/Black wire. My tach did not have a separate ground wire for the lighting, so that and the radio lights cannot be dimmed. The transmission temperature guage did not have a separate ground connector for the light, so I did a little trimming of the lights ground connection, soldered on a trimmed spade terminal and attached the assembly back to the gauge with JB Weld. Voila', dimmable.) While I had it all apart, I added Whitney's variable speed wiper controller. Removing the lower steering column cover exposed a connector. The wires on the driver side are wiper motor. For my 1986, Blue is ignition, Blue/Black is Low speed (the one you will cut), Blue/Orange is High speed, and Blue/White is the Return power. On the controller, Red wire to fused power, Black to ground, Green to the switched side of the Blue/Black, White to the motor side of the Blue/Black. The controllers Blue wire is tapped into the Blue/White wire. Other than the Mist button on the controller not working (going to have to talk to Whitney's about that) I now have dialable speeds between 2 seconds and 20 seconds. A busy couple days completing projects that have been on the table for months. I am rewarding myself with a few days of Summer skiing at Mammoth this next week. The SkiBumMobile rides again, improved.

Some signs that a Reflect-o-lite 1400 has a bad ground connection: Right Brake light is dim when lights are not on, no right brake when lights are on (and turns off tail light too); right flasher not working sometimes; right turn light on dash and front right turn light dimly lit when lights on. This evidently had been a problem for quite a while before I got the SkiBumMobile. All the back right side wires had been hacked for probing and taped. I finally discovered the bad connection after replacing all the wires from the end of the Toyota wires to the fixture and adding a ground lug to the chassis. The ground wire going to the unit is riveted to a strip of metal. The strip is screwed to the back of the three fixtures. The screw to the stop/tail fixture appeared tight, but still gave an intermittent lack of ground. Cleaned the surfaces and re-tightened the screws. Lights now working! Toyota Ground - White\black stripe Fixture Ground - White Toyota Tail\Clearance - Green Fixture Tail - Green Toyota Brake - Green\white stripe Fixture Brake - Red Toyota R Turn - Green\yellow stripe Fixture Turn - Yellow (Toyota L Turn - Green\black stripe) Toyota Back Up - Red\black stripe Fixture Back Up - Blue

I would get the two lights when I got a trip of the automatic-reset circuit breaker installed between the alternator and the isolator. The breaker quickly resets, so I still read power with my voltmeter, but the two indicator lights would stay on until an engine restart. But then it would trip again, depending how dead my batteries were and how hard the alternator was working. I could hear it click when it tripped. I could see the two indicator lights momentarily dim when it tripped again. And again. One time when both batteries were down and I had to use the lights, I could not get it to last more than seconds. Finally disconnected the coach battery until the chassis battery was charged. I do not recall seeing the problem until after I had replaced the isolator solenoid with the solid state isolator. I tried replacing the original 25 amp breaker with a 50 amp breaker. Still got the trip unless I just by-passed the breaker. Finally decided that I did not want a breaker in this position. I do not want to limit the output of my alternator. The standard pickup does not have this breaker and there is a breaker next to the coach battery. I left the breaker there to use as a terminal block. Maybe the original purpose is to protect against a hot wire rubbing through... Do cover all of the hot terminals for the breaker and the isolator, they are just hanging out there exposed. I do not want to accidentally make a fat short to ground. I used a crutch tip for the breaker and a piece of milk jug for the isolator. Good luck John

I just had the muffler and all the tailpipe replaced for $155.

My learning for the additional backup lights was using too small of a fuse holder in the wiring to the Rear Window Heater rocker switch. (It lights up when turned on. Couldn't find a Toyota switch that day at Pic-n-Pull, but a Volvo was a willing donor. I have nice heavy wire all the way, except for the section around the fuse - used a holder I had in the wiring drawer... While backing up a snowy winding road that went nowhere after all, I had them on for a couple minutes. Then they stopped working. Later found that the fuse holder has melted enough to nearly cover one of the contacts and held the fuse away from the contact. Took a while to find. Did not take long to replace the whole section with a good fat fuse holder and real wire. Fixed. They are really handy. Hope you have a Fresnel Lens in your rear window too. Onward to Spokane this week, with stops on the way home at Mount Hood's Timberline Lodge and the Palmer Glacier, then a few days at Mount Bachelor. Ski season is NOT over yet!

One of today's projects was installing the Bargman assist handle. Only had to widen the hole ~ 3/16". The new assembly is a bit shorter than the old one, so had to be Very careful with vertical placement. Otherwise, went pretty smoothly. May never use the light, but at least now it is covered... Going back to Kirkwood tomorrow for another set of spring snow storms. Have only frozen the pipes on two nights this winter, one 9 degree night and one 7 degree night. Running the generator overnight is NOT considered bad form in this parking lot. Foil insulation in all the windows at night. Dual pane windows would be real handy... John

My search for the 3 pod a-pillar led me to http://www.truckpillars.com/ He has them for 1984-1995 Toyota trucks. 2 or 3 pod. $79.50 to your door. They look nice.

PartsAmerica (Kragen) shows 4 clutch kits for an 84 Toyota Pickup, ranging from $83 for their cheapo to $169 for the HD Performance kit. Refinishing the flywheel, tranny oil, clutch cylinder rebuild kits & fluid - add another $50 - $100. http://www.partsamerica.com/ProductList.as...244&PTSet=A A clutch is really not that hard to replace, if you have the tools and patience. Loosening the flywheel bolt is always the hardest part for me.

Following the instructions that came with the trans temp/filter kit, I put the plastic bags over the open ends of the trans hoses, cranked the engine a couple turns (coil wire removed). Confirmed that the forward trans line is the outlet pipe & the aft line is the return to the trans. If all else fails, read the instructions.

I installed a deadbolt in my Sunrader yesterday. Was getting Real Tired of the door opening while on the road. The chain latch kept it from opening too far, but... Had to use the die grinder to cut the 1" hole, and shape the aluminum door frame. Cut just enough of the frame to slide in the latch. As Nibs said, ground off half of the bolt so it catches behind the outside frame. I had Lowe's setup the pins to match my Schlage house key. This feels Much Better now. John ps. The SkiBumMobile, with foil insulation in the windows and a little generator keeping the heater going and the battery from being dead in the morning, has been working great in the snow. Seven degrees on Wednesday morning, and I was warm and happy. In the ski area campground (dirt parking lot), it is Not considered bad form to run the generator at night. And I LOVE my Nokian Hakkapeliitta CS tires.

And the per fillup MPG over the first 4,200 miles ranged from a high of 17.2, mostly downhill and freeway, but included a real good climb, to a low of 13.5 mpg on my first trip up the Sierra's. Total Average is running ~ 15.14 mpg. John

I find that my '86 Sunrader with a 22RE automatic is a bit slower than that uphill. Any hill slows me a bit, and when it gets steep, I keep downshifting as I slow down. Around 40, I drop it into 2nd. REAL steep puts me in 1st, maxing at ~ 25 mph. Maybe I should get the filters and headers... Or just take my time uphill. I had no problems taking it over the 8,000' pass near Kirkwood. Try not to stop while facing uphill. But I am still learning my rig. John

My complication is that the 2800 is bigger than the available compartment on my 86 Sunrader.

What drives this relay? Not the wire, but what/where is the device that picks up the elevation change - it has to be a pressure switch somewhere. Starting around 2,000', mine starts clattering like castinettes for the next couple thousand feet. Finally settles down and shut up. Overdrive stops at the beginning of the clattering. I have been considering installing a manual switch to override the relay input. I really don't need a relay to tell me that I am liable to lug the engine.