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It’s been a while since I’ve last posted, and we’re out enjoying a stay at a RV park, so with the welcome downtime, I decided to post an update. I’ve made several small adjustments to the truck, and a few major ones, since last posting.

Among those changes were tuning the engine and transmission, and changing the fuel pump from a CP4 to a CP3 unit, which is much more reliable and doesn’t grenade when it fails, taking out the entire fuel system. There is a lot of information to cover about those upgrades, so I’ll save them for another post one of these days. In summary, though, I swap out tunes depending on what I am using the truck for, and have about 400rwhp for towing with some towing-specific parameters (“heavy tow”) and a 550rwhp tune I drive daily with – the tunes burn clean, with no black smoke (maybe a tiny bit for a fraction of a second at wide open throttle) and are a great improvement over stock. Those changes took about twenty hours to complete, mostly due to the complexity of the fuel pump swap. The mods are listed over on the Our Rig page, in the Engine & Performance section.

The truck is filthy now, as we’re camping and tracking mud in and out of the truck, and the dogs have shed all over it, but I did purchase new floor mats. I’ve had WeatherTech liners in the past, which are considered the best of the best, but wasn’t real happy with them and wasn’t sure I wanted them for this truck. I looked at the Husky liners but wasn’t terribly impressed with them either. I ended up buying the Aries Styleguard mats, which are amazing. Here is the driver’s seat floor mat:

The driver’s mat is the only one I wasn’t happy with as they shipped. The mats are all designed for specific make/model vehicles, but the fitment of the grommets that hold them wasn’t right. They didn’t grab onto the factory pieces and floated loosely in the floorboard. I ended up swapping the OEM grommets from the factory mats onto these, which took just a couple minutes to do but yields much better results. These don’t come up as far as the WeatherTech or Husky mats, but come up far enough, and have full coverage under the gas pedal as well as over the door jam, and have a very premium feel to them. The backing is almost like velcro, and seems to work better than the underside of the WT or the sharp plastic cleats on the Husky mats that tend to damage carpet over time.

Also, I moved the aux light and air bag switches out of the path of my legs, in case of an automobile accident. They fit really over the bin on the wall of the center console.

The new device under the grab handle is a Edge Insight CTS2, which is essentially a bunch of digital gauges to let you know where various parameters of your vehicle are sitting. It has some accessories you can add, such as an external EGT probe, which I opted for. I added the probe pre-turbo on the passenger side exhaust manifold, which required drilling and tapping.

You can see the back mat here, which is full coverage including under the seat. I added Du-Ha tool storage under the seat, which helps organize my mess and allows me to reclaim the floor space that was taken up by my Makita tool bags sitting in front of the seats.

With the seats down, I have fully functional back seating now and manageable storage.

For the outside of the truck, I decided to try adding some in-channel EGR visors. Driving with the windows down on this truck is a pretty loud and annoying experience, and I’ve never had them before, so I figured I’d give them a try. They really seem to work well, and look nice. They are the SlimLine series, and the install took less than ten minutes. I read that the OE visors they sell are rebadged EGR, and that played a role in my decision to purchase these over the WeatherTech ones.

Last, I lowered the front end of the truck approximately two inches to try and ease suspension wear and increase fuel mileage. I had to get an alignment afterwards, but aside from that, there is little to the process (just turn the torsion bolts). On this trip, we have averaged 9mpg with the trailer and 17.5mpg unloaded according to the DIC. My speedometer seems to be reading about 7% low, something I need to contact my tuner about, which means my mileage may be up to that much higher, assuming the DIC is close to accurate.

I had to move some wiring and airlines out of the way, cut the heat shield, and hand guide it into place to clear everything which almost makes it a two person job to get up there, but I now have a spare tire.

I wasn’t thrilled with the stability of this setup, so I fabricated a mount to hold the back of the compressor box to the side of the pickup bed as well, so it’s now mounted to both the bottom, wish six bolts, and the side, with two.

I spent most of yesterday evening relocating the air compressor, dryer, and 3 gal tank to the bed of the truck. I had to fabricate some mounts but didn’t have many scraps to work with, so they didn’t turn out very pretty, but they’re functional and I can always replace them later.

Clearance should be okay with the fifth wheel, but I need to test it to be absolutely certain.

The underside of the truck used to look like this:

But now has what I believe to be room for the spare tire:

I’m a little concerned that the sway bar won’t clear the spare tire, but think that, in the worst case, I can probably let the air out of the spare tire to make a little extra room, and air it up if needed with the onboard compressor.

Also, I added this little switch panel for my front and rear light bars, which gives me two spare switches for future accessories:

The headache rack I bought has a notch in the top designed to house a 14″ light bar. I bought an inexpensive bar when I bought the rack, but never got around to installing it. While working on my truck this weekend, I went ahead and threw it on.

I also took the time to wash and wax it, and glad to see it still can have a mirror finish. The paint has a lot of rock chips and I have far more small dents than I expected on the truck, though from what, I have no idea. I suspect a possible hailstorm, since a lot of them are on the roof of the cab and on upward tilted body panels (though none on the hood, which is odd). I applied some touch up paint to some of the rock chips to keep them from spreading.

The new light creates a ton of light, as you would expect from new LEDs. I have it on a separate switch from the front, and it’s a lot of light for around $20.

Because the bed of the truck had to be removed, back when I had the Kelderman suspension added to my truck, I took it to a shop. I believe I told them I would like to keep my spare, even if that meant mounting components for the air suspension in the bed of the truck, but the end result was that they mounted the air compressor, dryer, and main tank where the spare tire used to be. I didn’t think too much of it, because I was happy to have the air suspension and do run 19.5″ tires, which are extremely difficult to damage, especially compared to car or light truck tires.

That being said, I don’t ever want to be caught without a spare. I could always throw the spare tire in the trailer, so we have it then, or maybe on the roof of the truck if I were to get a roof rack, but that looks pretty tacky, especially on trucks that aren’t lifted to oblivion. Instead, I decided to take on the project of relocating the air components to the bed and putting the spare tire back where it belongs.

When I picked up the truck from the shop that did the air install, I requested that they provide me with all of the original components. They gave me a small box of junk that, more now than ever, I know was very incomplete. To add the spare back, I had to spend about $150 on components, which gets me everything but the locking cylinder that I would usually use to keep it from being stolen. I could order a replacement for $70, and then pay a dealer to re-key it, but compared to other things on the truck, I’m not overly concerned about the spare being stolen. I’m still waiting on those parts to ship. The parts I ended up having to order were the hoist, the exhaust shield, the guide tube, and a few bolts.

In preparation for moving this equipment to the bed, I decided to go ahead and put my tonneau cover back on. That will help to keep it away from most prying eyes and the weather. I ran out of space for the tonneau cover in my garage, so it has been sitting outside in the weather for a few months. Fortunately it is still in good shape, and just needs a good cleaning. I’ve never had it on the truck with the headache rack at the same time, so I was curious how they would work together. I had to make a small modification with the reciprocating saw, but it all clears fine:

Also, in this photo, you can see that I opted to swap out the 2′ fiberglass FireStik CB antenna for my old Procomm 3′ base-loaded whip. Also, the Tarheel antenna is no longer on the headache rack. More on that in a bit.

The rails for the tonneau cover create a fairly wide lip over each side of the bed, and under that lip is where I intend to mount the air components.  I will be drilling a fairly large hole in the bed of the truck to run the air lines and electrical through, and backfilling the hole with Great Stuff (the expanding spray-foam), then spray painting the foam black. That should provide a nice seal and protect the lines from sharp edges.

Here is how it all fits together with the tonneau cover closed.

Another issue I’ve been mulling over for a long time is height. I’ve ran into a couple places so far that I couldn’t go due to height, and the fault is not that of the truck body, but the Tarheel antenna that was mounted on the headache rack and the light bar over the cab. In addition to them adding about 6″ of non-flexible height to the truck, they gain a lot of attention, not all of it desirable. I decided to relocate them.

I don’t use the HF radio when driving very often, if at all. It’s something I’ll mess around with at a campsite, or an occasional stop. HF requires a lot more fiddling with the radio than VHF does, and really isn’t well suited for use in motion. If I’m on the radio while driving, It’s almost always VHF. I don’t want to completely get rid of HF in the truck, but I don’t need it to be constantly accessible. Tarheel makes several mounts that are designed to let you lay down your antenna when not in use. They’re really expensive for what they are, so I’ve been looking for used ones. Finally, I found one for a decent price on Ebay and bought it. It’s not the specific model I wanted, but I was able to make it work by mounting it near the tailgate. The antenna lays down when not in use, and the lower height is a wash (or potentially even better) because it’s far less obstructed.

I have two whips, a 32″ and a 72″, and both are on quick connects and ride behind the toolbox.

The last change here is the light bar. I wanted to get it off the roof due to height, due to appearance, and possibly most of all due to noise. It creates a lot of wind noise when going down the highway, and can be exhausting to listen to. I found that it fits nicely between the bumper guard and the grill of the truck, matching the curvature of the grill almost perfectly. Unfortunately, all I had were short feet on hand, so I ordered a pair of 3.5″ feet that should lift it above the bar that is partially obstructing it in this photo:

I ordered new feet to raise it up another 2″ or so, which should be in today.

The end result of all of this is that I should have a slightly more aerodynamic, quieter truck, with less unwanted attention, and I have laid the groundwork for moving the air compressor, dryer, and primary tank into the bed of the truck, where it will be covered and kept out of the weather when not towing, and once again I will have a spare tire. This mostly used parts I already had on hand, so was a cheap and quick improvement that will better prepare us for the holiday travel season.

I spent an obnoxious amount of money on the Alpine X110-SLV system I installed in my truck about a month and a half ago. I detailed the install in my Goodbye CarPC, Hello Alpine X110-SLV post. I follow Alpine on Facebook, and on their wall today was a promotion for the X110-SLV selling for $1200 less than I spent.

I called Crutchfield, explained the situation, and they refunded the $1200 to me. Excellent customer service and an unexpected $1200 today!

After much delay, I finally have the lift pump installed. The install took about three hours, including drilling the frame and mounting, running fuel lines, running electrical, and bleeding the air out of the lines afterwards. With the aux tank I’m running, I’m going to feel a lot more comfortable with the extra filtration and water separator.