Hello Again!

From: Peter Grace (pgrace@fierymoon.com)
Date: Sat May 29 2004 - 14:02:52 EDT


Howdy Crew!

I haven't posted in a few months but I thought I'd come and say hello
and talk about my latest Dakota exploits..

First off, I was getting this dreadful grinding noise in my front end.
At first it sounded as if I had something stuck in a spring, there was
this odd "boing" kind of noise every now and then between the grinds.
Turns out I had a broken hub assembly! Got that all taken care of and
she's good as new.

I also had a chance to (finally) get cylinder 5's plug changed (my
bro-in-law had a big breaker bar which helped) and was able to switch
out the cap and rotor that I bought six months ago! At first, there
wasn't much of a performance difference but I'd say that in the last
month or so the truck has really woken up. Much more power. In fact,
I'd go so far as to say that the power gains I was looking to achieve
from my upgrades was gotten. It drives like how I'd like it to now --
I'm wondering if maybe the last thing I change is upgrading the gears to
get a little more acceleration.

You guys may remember that I replaced my stock exhaust with a gibson
swept side exhaust a few months back. It sounds great and I get a few
head turns every now and then (if I didn't live in suburban
philadelphia, where every other car on the street is a pocket rocket,
I'm sure I'd get a few more)

One thing that I've noticed since I've gotten the new exhaust is that I
cannot ford our oft-flooded parking lot at work anymore. It's very odd.
     Before, the Dak would eat the 1.5' standing water just fine and
laugh it off. Now, when I emerge from the water, the engine sounds like
it's from a 70 year old diesel. I crawled under the Dak to see if I
could figure out why the truck sounded so loud... The catalytic
converter was glowing orange! Is that even normal? I had absolutely no
horsepower (took me about 15 seconds to get the truck up to 35mph).
Both times I tried doing this (I thought the first time was a loose
distributor which I remedied) the engine was cold (just started.)

Anyone have any idea what might cause this? I've been thinking that
maybe the new exhaust system doesn't have enough positive pressure to
keep the water from seeping into the exhaust system? If that may be the
case, would upgrading to a cool air intake help alleviate the problem?
Are there any other things that might help the situation? I'm starting
to feel really vulnerable in the Dak -- I thought it was supposed to
kick butt in the offroad! Now I'm afraid that I'm going to have to wait
30 mins every time it rains to get out of the parking lot at work! :)

Any suggestions would be appreciated..

Pete



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