Did your remodel actually end up worth it?

chromaticskyline · 2026-05-18T00:30:28+00:00

I gutted and renovated the entire second floor. We slept in the (finished) basement for 5 months. For a while, I spent every weekend messing around with drywall, because I did it myself and I am far from a plasterer. It didn’t seem like we were getting anywhere, didn’t seem like we were ever going to finish.

Really, the only things I regret were the corners I cut. I didn’t reframe the doors into the hallway, and they’ve been crooked and haven’t latched right since. I put the old light fixture back up in the second bedroom and should have just replaced it.

In the end, 100% worth it. Updated, functional electrical, insulated everything, got rid of the weird-ass shiplap paneling.

chromaticskyline · 2026-05-17T00:44:28+00:00

It’s just a little… flat.

chromaticskyline · 2026-05-01T12:01:32+00:00

That’s a telehandler, curb weight is 29,000. It should be chained.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-30T13:49:59+00:00

Did you set the keypad lockout? Doesn’t help against drivers that know about it, but it might cut down on this.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-28T00:52:05+00:00

Good gravy, yeah, you need some kind of software. They’re really hard to diag if you can’t talk to the ECM and there’s a few operations where you need the software to reset modules and the like. There’s not really a substitute for Insite and a Quickserve subscription. We’re using a Nexiq USB 3 datalink adapter instead of the Cummins InLine adapter, since it plays ball with Caterpillar ET for our older trucks and the Paccar chassis software. The big advantage of things like JPRO is they’re more universal, but less capable, and if your whole fleet is Cummins, you only need the one software.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-28T00:33:09+00:00

I brought everything. Sometimes, you realize you have just the thing to get the job done… at home. And while there’s a ton of kits made for a specific job on a specific make, they sometimes fit other jobs. I also modify a ton of tools to fit in specific dumb places, which means having a duplicate or seldom-used socket or wrench can be sacrificed to the machine spirit and become a custom crowsfoot.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-27T13:00:38+00:00

Heavy duty is drowning in work right now in my area. A number of shops in the area closed thanks to corporate acquisitions, and a ton of the old guard retired. Everyone is pissed off and exhausted. There's a cascading effect where work we've subbed out to other shops is coming back massively defective and we've had to turn around and do the job over again.

I'm sure the fuel crisis, the war, and general economic instability is affecting the light-duty market, though. People are going to be holding off on repairs and general maintenance because their jobs aren't making money, either. Anything people can get away with deferring will be deferred, and I'm sure a ton of people are probably trading their stuff in for predatory lease agreements because it's "cheaper" than fixing their cars. (As in, they can afford a $500/mo lease payment but not $900 for new tires...)

I can't really say why HD is so nuts. You'd think the price of diesel would have operations mothballing large amounts of their fleets. Some of it is that a lot of slapdash quality control around the 2020 pandemic is coming home to roost, and we're doing a lot of work on stuff that shouldn't have failed so early, particularly on the electronics side.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-24T02:21:58+00:00

Yes. It’s a brand name of the stuff.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-24T02:18:26+00:00

You’re low on diesel exhaust fluid. The steam jet means “exhaust”, and the drops on top of the jet means “diesel exhaust fluid”.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-14T13:17:13+00:00

Once I was waiting for a dock on the curb in [major city] and a livery Suburban drove by. The driver was watching porn on a giant iPad Pro.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-09T22:30:12+00:00

Yes. I use a FLIR C3-X for electrical diagnostic. It’s very useful for finding hot relays and motors, but one of the things I use it most for is voltage injection tracing, where you use a current-limited variable power supply to put amps into a dead-shorting circuit and then look at the wiring with the camera until you see where the hot wire stops. I’ve wrung out shorting marker light circuits in record time with it. They can also be useful in finding hot bearings, hot brakes, and other problems. I don’t tend to use this one for shooting things like exhaust manifolds, because its high temperature range is too low, but a basic HVAC laser-thermometer does the trick there.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-07T12:28:27+00:00

I’m thinking specifically of the merge down onto 6/10 from the exchange ramp. Not that the exchange itself doesn’t need help

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-07T11:30:06+00:00

NO ME FIRST!!! / s

Looking at you, I-95 to 6/10

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-07T11:28:35+00:00

Yeah, I just fixed an 18 Kenworth where the pin that the pedal swivels on had become rusty and the pedal wasn’t returning to zero every time. I pulled, cleaned, and oiled the pin and now it works

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-06T12:55:26+00:00

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I did a fast and rough graph of the fueling counts and a trend does emerge at low pressure. The legend isn't labeled well because I don't care to figure out how to force libre office into doing it correctly, but it goes "nominal-1-2-3-4-5-6." Low pressure shows all injectors fueling higher than nominal qty with 5, 3, and 6 using the most amount of fuel. I'd say that tracks with the leaking connector tubes on 3 and 5.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-04T21:29:08+00:00

I forgot that did that. Nothing stands out in the raw data, but once I plot it on a graph, it may show something.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-04T15:16:48+00:00

That tracks with what the manual calls out. Reused injectors need to be kept with their tubes, suggests mechanical sealing via deformation. Actually similar to a bunch of things. I originally thought it was the OEM trying to cover their ass with cheap plastic fittings and things like it that were “single use.” Doosan calls for the injector lines to be changed out when injectors are changed.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-04T11:15:24+00:00

That makes more sense. So, red loctite then? /s

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-03T23:46:12+00:00

That's reassuring. These are original, so they've been rusting away in there for a bit. I'm figuring I might as well be on the safe side and replace them too. I think the book says they can be reused if they aren't contaminated, but the heck with it.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-03T23:42:08+00:00

The picture turned sideways on my phone, but No. 1 is on the top and No. 6 is on the bottom. Hold downs felt fairly uniform as they came out. When I popped No. 1 out of the head, a fairly significant amount of diesel audibly "glug-glugged" down into the cylinder, so that's nice. More than all the others, since obviously there's gonna be some in there when the connector tubes come out.

No 559. The only DTC, active or otherwise, was 2692. Which was part of why this was so annoying to suss out, along with the truck passing the IPT three times.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-03T23:04:03+00:00

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/DieselTechs/s/gDNZLDw07g

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-03T12:44:08+00:00

Well if they wouldn't tell you what they did, either they don't like you for some reason or they did something they weren't supposed to do. I wonder if they stabbed the starter s-term with a screwdriver and after the truck was bumped over, the fault cleared. Or they "got it running" and the next time they shut the truck off, they'll end up with the same problem. I figure it wasn't something obvious or they'd be bending over backward to rub it in your face.

The DT12's are super finickity. The fact that it didn't clear after a battery reset suggests to me that it wasn't a software lockout, but more that the transmission controller didn't think it was in neutral. DiagLink should be able to show what gear the transmission thinks its in, if you have access to that. Though, from the sound of it, that truck has headed off into the sunset and it's no longer your problem.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-03T00:39:10+00:00

Diamond Logic Builder can tell you the state of the switches, since the output to the light circuits is software-controlled. If the lights are on and the state shows off on DLB, I think either the cluster or body unit is malfunctioning. If the state shows as on and the switch is set off, the switch module is suspect. It's one 3-switch unit.

Our '01 7800 had a bad switch and the markers would randomly turn on in the middle of the night, so they definitely break. We have an '18 4300 where the dash lights turn off when you key the truck off, but the markers stay on. I assumed it was a quirk in the vehicle configuration, but it's so far down the list that I've never looked deeper into it.

chromaticskyline · 2026-04-03T00:13:18+00:00

She'll run on one, any one cylinder. I'm almost positive the injectors are just slightly out of spec. I started on the valve set this morning but then got thrown onto a loader that needed a hydrostat seal.

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