Road trip story

[alienturtle]

Whats up guys. Im a student out in arizona originally from california. I made the trip from az to cali for the holidays with great success. Iv got an 89 f250 idi na. The total miles round trip was about 1450 miles. I didnt have a single hickup with the truck and was getting about 15 miles to the gallon. Granted i wasnt pulling anything other than the bed having 2 450 dirtbikes and packed full of junk i was bringing home. I have a set of aftermarket gauges and this is what i saw

exhaust temp. Flat land at about 70-75 mph @ 2600 rpm was about 6- 700F
we did go up over the grape vine and i saw a max of 1300 with my foot to floor still in 5th gear still doing about 65 over the pass

water temp. Ran about 180-200 range. I saw 210 once but looked back 10 minutes later and it was back down to 190 area

oil pressure. Hot at idle about 20 psi and doing 75 it was about 40 psi area

volts were anywhere from12.8 to 14.4 depending if i had the whippers on headlights, sound system ect

all in all i think everything went well and everything looks ok right?

One thing i did notice was not 10 miles from az home the batt light starts to flickeron and off randomly more at idle than high rpm. What do u guys think about that?

 

[LCAM-01XA]

I'd suspect the alternator, or the voltage regulator. Goes together with how you were seeing as low as 12.8V while driving - with the engine running past 1500 rpms even with everything on electrical-wise you should still see near 14V at the gauge.

 

[alienturtle]

Ya thats kinda what i was leaning too. If im going to do anything its going to do the 3g swap. I just dont have the cash yet to do it. Other than that im really happy with the way she ran for being an older truck

 

[Mikes91]

My experience with the flickering battery light was a bad voltage regulator... Believe I replaced the alternator and VR, but can't recall if they were integrated into one piece on the '91 I had...


Mike

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Mike, on your '91 the alternator is externally-regulated, the VR is on the passenger-side inner fender. Same with the '89 that Alienturtle has, unless he upgraded it to a 130-amp 3G unit, I think we talked about it on TDS but IDK if he went through with it.

 

[alienturtle]

Not yet. It was an option i was considering when i was trying to figure my starting problem. Turned out to be a weak starter but it looks like im going to have to do this swap sooner than expected. Ill have to do a search and find the how to on here for it