Slowly but surely

[Goofyexponent]

Well, ever so sick of that glasspack growling away, I cut it off the truck and stuck the factory muffler back on. My ears are neighbours are thanking me I am sure. It seems to have a little more pep with the stack and glasspack gone, maybe my butt dyno is off a little bit.

I found a set of NICE CLEAN chrome stacks for $150 locally. I WANT to do a dual exhaust setup, but I don't want the noise!! There ain't a lot of room under there for two mufflers, so I am goign to need either two SMALL mufflers, or a single bodied muffler with dual inlets and outlets. whatever I pick has to be QUIET though....any ideas?

I got the cab corner almost ALL welded in..then I ran out of wire. I bought more wire last night, but dad's Dodge is in the shop now, so I am going to finish up the welding and bodywork to the cab tomorrow. That will put my cab back into 100% rust free condition!

Oil change, 80-90 changed in both rearends, T case shanged and I might drain the transmission and change the filter and fluid in that too.

Any thoughts on why I would get a shudder when she is cold....only when the TC locks up? Once she is warm it seems to be fine...however I noticed my front seal on the trans is leaking a touch too....might have to pull it and replace it as well.

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Your butt dyno is off, yes, cause the factory muffler is a very restrictive beast, it goes down to like 2-1/4" inside, if not less - because of this any free-flowing muffler (or glasspack in your case) will actually be an improvement over factory. I'd say if you want quiet then you should get some big muffler that has baffles but no packing, as baffles don't care for soot but packing gets plugged up pretty easy - which may have been the issue with your glasspack too, if the packing don't get burned off or blown out the holes in the steel mesh that holds it in place eventually get plugged thus reducing your muffler to what is effectively a straight pipe.

On your converter lockup issue, IIRC she's not even supposed to lock while she's cold, there's a temperature sensor in the solenoid pack that tells the PCM how cold the ATF is and until it warms up to 150F or thereabouts (someone please confirm or correct this number) the converter stays unlocked. Granted ATF temp and coolant temp ain't the same, and ATF warms up faster than coolant, but still, if she locks up right away after you start up and drive off I'd suspect something ain't quite right with that sensor... Any codes thrown by the PCM?

 

[Goofyexponent]

the only code she is throwing is TPS sensor out of range. I bought a new sensor, adjusted it like 6 times and still no improvement.

I noticed the vibration the morning after I hauled a good sized load on a trailer with the truck...say 7000 pounds-ish? It ran just fine with the load on, and coming home empty it seemed just fine, but it only does it when she's cold. I am changing the fluid and filter next weekend along with the rearend fluids too, I know it isn't connected but it can't hurt!

 

[rjjp]

Mine will not lock up below 100, then between 100 and 125 it will lock and unlock, after it gets to about 125 it will lock up and stay there. On the more pep, with 3.55s I would say that you probably do, back pressure (to an extent) helps the low end torque of internal combustion piston operated motor. Whereas a straight pipe lets you breath at higher RPMs. That is the reason that on a gasser used for towing it is advised to stay right around 2 1/2 or so unless you have a large engine.

 

[LCAM-01XA]

Backpressure does not help one bit, proper scavenging does - by running too large of a pipe you lose velocity of the exhaust gasses, which reduces scavenging effect the cylinders. The factory muffler is a cheap restrictive piece, and so is the Y-pipe for that matter - 3" is what you want in that mid-section of the exhaust, you can step it down to 2-1/2" past the muffler to keep the exhaust velocity high as gases cool down and lose volume, but that 2-1/2" Y-pipe and muffler are some major choking points in the exhaust setup.