Back from ~1,100 mile trip for vacation

[Matt_INW]

Took the beast to the ocean since our minivan's AC is dead and not cheap to fix. The trucks AC handled the 95-100 degree highway trips, barely. Added a little refrigerant before the return trip helped it, but afraid to add much and risk destroying the compressor.

The new cooling system did just fine. And the apparent rear main seal leak didn't drip at all. I thought it might not leak as it seems to behave when running longer distances. Short distances there will be 2-4 drips every other night or so.

I still need to fill the front tank from part of the trip home. But my fuel economy so far varied as low as 14.5 which included sitting in 2.5hr of stop and go traffic, or heavy up and hills along the coast on another leg. And as high as 19.5 which seems too good to be true so it could closer to 18.5 due to time of day filling up etc.

 

[Matt_INW]

Oh yeah...

On the "bad" side I confirmed the EGT gauge or sensor is bad though it was a 99% known bad already. Even going up a 10 mile hill in 95 degree weather @ 55-60 never got the EGT over 550-600.

And determined the idiot gauge for the coolant temp is even more worthless than I thought. It's always bounced around a bit too much at times. But during this trip there were times it decided the temp was barely above the line by the C! So I think I'll actually just unplug the gauge, and replace the sensor with a new one and route to a real gauge, one of these days...