After I finished the MAD New System install I decided to start installing some of the stuff that I bought right after I got the truck. Notably I had put off installing the Mallory Unilite distributor because I was unsure about wiring, ballast resistors and the like and wanted to wait until the New System was in. It was classically anticlimactic and aside from having to find TDC (Top Dead Center) a few times it was almost too easy. The new distributor dropped right in, after a little fiddling the truck started and I advanced the timing a bit and set it with the timing gun and then I replaced the copper core wires with carbon core wires as recommended in the Mallory Unilite instructions. The truck seemed to run just fine with copper core wires but ... what the hell. Yearwood Performance wanted $85 bucks for carbon wires, Napa wanted $16. Guess who got the business?
(an aside on Yearwood Performance and their equivalent in the auto industry: Yearwood sells all types of 'gofast' for cars and trucks, typically marketed for the V8 crowd they have all sorts of generally overpriced bits some of which are purely esthetic and some is good solid perfomance equipment. The thing is ... you have to know what you want before you walk in there because 9 times out of 10 the guys working there don't know what the hell they are doing and are too proud to say 'I don't know, let me find out." I am no expert but more than once I have gone in and asked a question about a piece of equipment armed only with information that I have learned from a website or instructions I seem to know more about it than they do ... which is frustrating when I am trying to make up my mind about what to buy. I have run special orders for an outdoor store and I devised my own system of keeping track of who ordered what, on what day and who to call THE DAY it came in, our store became known for special orders partially because I kept track of them in a way that the customer could be kept in the loop and knew who to talk to and was informed very quickly when their order arrived. I didn't think it was that extraordinary as far as service goes but given my experience at Yearwood and their equivalents it WAS extraordinary service.
After I got the Unilite installed using the resistance wire that the truck was equipped with and a surge protector that plugged inline to prevent electrical surges from burning up the electric eye I didn't have anything else that HAD to happen before moving from Albuquerque to Madison, WI.. Of course I did have time to kill and too much free time is problematic for me and really bad when your two year old daughter is being kept from you by the vindictive ex so ... I decided to replace the solid mounted, belt driven fan with thermostatically controlled, shrouded Derale fans. I measured, I searched around (at Yearwood where I was laughably misinformed) and finally I found some fans that looked like they would be a close fit on Amazon. The fans came and tried to place them in the space available and there was not enough room between the radiator and the bolts on the fan pulley. At first I said the hell with it and got an RA (return authorization) from Amazon. Then I reconsidered and decided to move the radiator forward a couple of inches, which I did, which was a big ol' pain in the ass but I eventually succeeded ... but not without putting another hole in the engine side of the radiator which I fixed with solder just like the first hole. Once I got the radiator in I had to mount the shroud and fans against the radiator in a way that would render it stable and removable if the need arose. This too was a pain in the ass, lots of fiddling and eyeballing. Then I had to wire it and bear in mind that this unit has two fans each of which draws 25 amps for a potential 50 amp draw which is considerable. Each fan has it's own relay so in the end there are quite a few wires that all need to be going the right place. Ultimately I wanted to have switches on the dash that contolled fan functions such that I could turn the fans off (for highway driving),or have them controlled by thermostats or have them both on regardless of temperature. Sounds great right? Well let me tell you what a complete PITA getting all that to happen was ... Good grief.
(an aside on Yearwood Performance and their equivalent in the auto industry: Yearwood sells all types of 'gofast' for cars and trucks, typically marketed for the V8 crowd they have all sorts of generally overpriced bits some of which are purely esthetic and some is good solid perfomance equipment. The thing is ... you have to know what you want before you walk in there because 9 times out of 10 the guys working there don't know what the hell they are doing and are too proud to say 'I don't know, let me find out." I am no expert but more than once I have gone in and asked a question about a piece of equipment armed only with information that I have learned from a website or instructions I seem to know more about it than they do ... which is frustrating when I am trying to make up my mind about what to buy. I have run special orders for an outdoor store and I devised my own system of keeping track of who ordered what, on what day and who to call THE DAY it came in, our store became known for special orders partially because I kept track of them in a way that the customer could be kept in the loop and knew who to talk to and was informed very quickly when their order arrived. I didn't think it was that extraordinary as far as service goes but given my experience at Yearwood and their equivalents it WAS extraordinary service.
After I got the Unilite installed using the resistance wire that the truck was equipped with and a surge protector that plugged inline to prevent electrical surges from burning up the electric eye I didn't have anything else that HAD to happen before moving from Albuquerque to Madison, WI.. Of course I did have time to kill and too much free time is problematic for me and really bad when your two year old daughter is being kept from you by the vindictive ex so ... I decided to replace the solid mounted, belt driven fan with thermostatically controlled, shrouded Derale fans. I measured, I searched around (at Yearwood where I was laughably misinformed) and finally I found some fans that looked like they would be a close fit on Amazon. The fans came and tried to place them in the space available and there was not enough room between the radiator and the bolts on the fan pulley. At first I said the hell with it and got an RA (return authorization) from Amazon. Then I reconsidered and decided to move the radiator forward a couple of inches, which I did, which was a big ol' pain in the ass but I eventually succeeded ... but not without putting another hole in the engine side of the radiator which I fixed with solder just like the first hole. Once I got the radiator in I had to mount the shroud and fans against the radiator in a way that would render it stable and removable if the need arose. This too was a pain in the ass, lots of fiddling and eyeballing. Then I had to wire it and bear in mind that this unit has two fans each of which draws 25 amps for a potential 50 amp draw which is considerable. Each fan has it's own relay so in the end there are quite a few wires that all need to be going the right place. Ultimately I wanted to have switches on the dash that contolled fan functions such that I could turn the fans off (for highway driving),or have them controlled by thermostats or have them both on regardless of temperature. Sounds great right? Well let me tell you what a complete PITA getting all that to happen was ... Good grief.
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