Sorry I have been gone the last couple days, wedding season is in full swing for the wife and the kids require my full attention at 6 & 7. My time is not my own!
@DOE-SST What are you doing with 12 vans? Are you converting them to campers and selling them? What auction sights are you looking at? Heck, it doesn't matter, just curious, I put my money on this one and hope I made a descent choice. It has been driven down dirt roads, nothing like some I have seen being from podunk South Dakota, but its seen dirt none the less.
I am not sure where my van falls in line. It is two toned, tan on top, dark brown on bottom. 2 front bucket seats and the 3rd row bench, in between bench removed and the rear benches removed and holes plugged as well. It has 3 comm racks on the back and the original roof is also not cut. The high top does exactly that, hide lots of antennas and surveillance equipment. Even has a working fan on the rear to keep things cool. Had a rack between front 2 seats and about 5 CB mounts. 2 things that look like insulated wine bottle holders, and a rifle holder at the rear middle door. Has comm ports all over it "J" style maybe? Or thats what they are labeled. Has miles of wiring as well not cut out, just the infrastructure it served, removed. Mine also has black out lights, emergency switches and others NOT labeled. All the dome lights work, but none come on when you open a door. I was told they were delivered to Sandia National Labs at 200K each back in the early 90's.
Algae issues, OH JOY, how do I know if I suffer from those? I guess I should prolly search that. I sure hope I got a peach (driver seat isn't even worn, pedals look new, etc), I spent 5 hours crawling around every inch of it, and he had another passenger one, had all the bench rows. I chose this one as it was ready to go, and I have a 2k mile trip to South Dakota later this month and another one to Newport Beach for Thanksgiving with the "outlaws".
I have around 1k miles on it now. I have done nothing but drive it. I have started ordering parts.
On the drive back from ABQ, I put opti-lube summer in the tank. When I got to Telluride, I filled to get the local fuel as its starting to freeze here. At that point I put opti-lube winter in it. On my next fill-up I was going to put a quart of ATF Type F from wally's into the tank and put Power Service Diesel kleen in instead (1/2 bottle)
I have ordered upper and lower radiator hoses, fuel filters (mine is mounted on the trans crossmember), ZD-9 glowplugs and a couple of injectors (1992 was a crossover year according to the guy at NAPA). He did not make me commit to buying the injectors.
QUESTIONS:
1. I have a sticky/leaky injector at idle (grayish white smoke at hot/cold idle). Should I try the ATF trick? Or should I just buy 8 new injectors from a trusted dealer here? Also, maybe it is not an injector......more on this below
I have a tick at idle, very light load, and heavy load, goes away on light to medium throttle. Has been getting progressively quieter as I drive it more. Definitely Right bank, sounds like #7 to me. This is the source of my ATF temptation. I was going to use Type F as I figured it had the least amount of additives since its for 70 to early 80's transmissions. I need to look again but I did not find carbon tracing, it does not sounds like a typical exhaust leak, so I ruled that out. When I was inspecting the vehicle, I removed the dog house after a highway run and put my IR Thermometer on all the exhaust manifolds with it idling. They all read right around 200 - 209 F except #7, it read 217. I pray to the Lord it is an injector vs something in the valve-train or a valve. I used a stethoscope as well and that was hard to determine.
2. Sometimes it feels jerky at medium acceleration, It has calmed down, I assume it to be a fuel starvation issue, but if it is algae, what do I do? Search the forum of course!!
3. CC would be jerky as well, the speedometer would bounce around 1/8th of an inch, but this has seemed to calm down as well. I think this vehicle has sat inside so long (door seals and window sweeps are perfect) that it just needs to be driven.
4. Per the radiator, the PH was last tested in 2003. It looks like it has the old green coolant in it. But my questions is I am not sure which cavitation prevention solution it has in it? I read on here that SCA/DCA-4 are not compatible with NAPA/???? and someone else's version. I also read the test strips are not interchangeable. So how do I go about figuring out which ones are in my system? The coolant is beautiful with no floaties or films.
Last observations for the night. It does not use or make a lick of oil, and the oil does not smell of diesel. The E4OD shifts wonderfully, but their shifting programming leaves a LOT to be desired. Shifts my better than my 1991 4L80e. When the doghouse was removed, the engine only seeps from one place I could find, the RH valve cover.
Sorry for the super long post!!!