Well, it looks like the FSD bug finally bit me!

[rjschoolcraft]

Yesterday, on the way home from church while sitting at a stop light, the Suburban just died. Cranked right up and went on. Later that day, while driving to Indianapolis and back, it stumbled 3 or 4 times but kept running. 120,000 trouble free miles on the FSD (PMD) in factory location, but it sure looks like it's giving up. I just ordered Kennedy's deluxe cooler kit with extension harness. I guess I'm really one of the club now!

[morgan]

I gave up and bought a new FSD last week too. I have the cooler, but need to relocate it away from the top of the engine. Buy the l o n g harness from JK while you are at it.

I talked the Chevy dealership parts guy into giving me wholesale price for the new driver - $218. Retail was over $300. Nice guy.

Hope this new one will last longer, and I

[tom.mcinerney]

Ronnie,
Have you re-torqued the transistor mounting nuts?

[gwaidman]

Welcome to the club ronniejoe, seems this week has been pretty nasty to some of us (see Classic PMD Failure). Ordered my new FSD and relocation kit from Bill Heath today. Hope that it and the JK unit work out for us both. I feel your pain! I havent tried to salvage the old FSD, just happy to get my rig home, why push my luck. If anything, be glad it happened now, not on your way out for the family vacation.

[rjschoolcraft]

Tom Mac,

No, I haven't. In fact it never missed a beat yesterday, even while towing over 5,000 lb. of water. Since we are planning a trip to the Florida Keys for Spring Break in two weeks, I don't want to risk a failure on the trip. Therefore, I'm just gonna install a new FSD on a cooler in a remote location. I won't even bother removing the old one right now. Maybe later, I'll play with it some when I don't have a long trip staring me in the face. I've read all of those posts from a few months back and thought of that the minute it died. Again, though, I want minimal risk for the trip coming up.

[rjschoolcraft]

My new FSD and cooler kit from Kennedy arrived yesterday. My 10 year old son broke his collar bone yesterday, so I didn't get to installing the new hardware until late tonight. Spent the morning at the doctor with him. This has brought his wrestling season to an abrubt end. It's a shame too. He finished second at Novice 112 last week at the Indiana State Wrestling Association Folkstyle State Finals. His little brother finished third at Bantam 70. This weekend begins Freestyle season, but only one will wrestle on.

Back to the FSD. The truck died several times today in rapid succession while returning from the doctor's office. So, I got busy on the install this evening. I mounted the cooler behind the driver's side headlight as Kennedy recommended. The hardest part of the install was fishing the wire out from under the pump and intake manifold to connect to the extension harness.

Has anyone else perceived an increase in power after installing a new FSD? I may be imagining things, but it sure felt better on my test drive a little while ago. It even sounded different to me. Anyway, I'll know more after towing with it.

[rjwest]

If you get a short extension cable to plug
into the Pump FSD and leave one end tyed up right
where long remote FSD extension cable plugs
into Harness, The pump FSD can be used as a sppare and switched in rather quickly.

provided it's still good...of coarse...

[gwaidman]

Ronniejoe, just installed my remote PMD kit from Heath and noticed a big improvement in performance.(No stalling either!) Have you towed yet? My last PMD failed when I was towing a 20'TT and I was thinking at the time my truck should be doing better than it was. Maybe I will hook-up this weekend for a little testing... Your comments? Anyone else?

[rjschoolcraft]

Only towing has been with my utitlity trailer and water tank. 6000+ lb. We're leaving tomorrow to head to the Florida Keys for Spring Break. I'll know more then, because the travel trailer will be in tow and we'll be loaded down!

[kowsoc]

One good thing is it happened before your trip. smile.gif When mine began stalling it progressively got worse and more frequent until the following day it died away from home and wouldn't even start after a 1/2 day cool down...had to be towed home. Would have been a real holiday headache if it failed this way. Anyway, welcome to the club :D At least you should be good for a few years with the cooler mount.

Also, my truck ran more strongly after replacing the FSD, but I thought it was just my imagination, but since others have thought so maybe it wasn't. Oh well, have a safe trip! smile.gif

[Marty Lau]

a Tip if your FSD/PMD starts failing and you need to try and get home, get some ice to cool the modual down. When my last one was failing I used snow to help ferry it home 12 miles, it was stalling every mile to mile and half before I iced the FSD or the top of the cooler on the intake after Ice 1 failure in 10 miles. Just a tip to help those in need. :(

[patrick m.]

(QUOTE) Has anyone else perceived an increase in power after installing a new FSD? I may be imagining things, but it sure felt better on my test drive a little while ago. It even sounded different to me. Anyway, I'll know more after towing with it.
(QUOTE)

did you get the #9 resistor with the kit?

[gwaidman]

Patrick m, Yep, noticable increase in power (see post in this thread). Not sure what resistor was supplied (Heath Kit) as I was so happy to get the parts I didnt even look. :D

[rjschoolcraft]

Yes, I put the #9 in, but didn't do a "TDC Offset Learn" procedure, so I didn't know if it would read it. I had the batteries disconnected, so maybe it read it from the power off state?

I am sitting outside my travel trailer at Bahia Honda State Park on Bahia Honda Key in Florida... weather is beautiful, water is nice. No stalling problems at all on the way down. We brought along two extra teen-agers (friends of my oldest two kids) so we had 8 people in the Suburban and extra gear in the trailer. I haven't weighed it yet, but I'm gonna guess we were at around 18,000 lb. combined.

On another note, I met a fellow Diesel Page member, James Springate, at Exit 2 on I-75 in Georgia at the Flying J truck stop. We had a nice conversation and it was a pleasure to meet him. Hope you have a safe remainder of your trip, James!

[ 03-29-2004, 09:10 AM: Message edited by: ronniejoe ]

[Marty Lau]

Ronnie;
Glad everything went well so far on your trip and hope your return is good too. Have a GREAT time, have a Marqurita in the shade for me! :D

:cool: :cool: :cool: :cool:

[jspringator]

Same back at you ronniejoe. It was nice to place a face with a name. I hope you had a good time at the Keys and a safe trip home. I don't think I am going to put the bikes on the rear of the trailer again. They induced sway, even with my dual cam, even after dropping the hitch head. I may put a hitch on the front. At least they can't break a window there!

[DickWells]

Hi James: FWIW, I extended my tongue on the front of our (originally) 25 foot tag-along Sunline lightweight. Put a Quad Loader one wheeled thingy crossways right in front of the house and moved the 30 lb. tanks to the front of that. Put an 800 lb. quad on the Quad Loader. Added about 1300 lb. + total to the front of the trailer. We've put about 9000 miles, towing with it like that, and I'm pretty happy with it. I replaced the 600 lb. dual cam bars with 1200 lb. I also went to load range E Michellens after I towed with C range for about 5000 miles. Not a lot of noticeable difference, but more peace of mind. Added HD air bags after 3000 miles. That was a good choice.
I only had to add 39 inches to the tongue. ALL the new metal is bolted on as a one piece welded unit, and can be removed if I ever want to go back to stock length.The Bombardier quad is 6.5' long and 4' wide, so I got a good return for my 39". The electric lift is still mounted on the new 50 degree socket, right in front of the LP tanks.
If you'd like to get more data on how I did this, just let me know on dwells@pshift.com, and I'll swap snail-mail with you.
Hope this is of interest.
Dick Wells

[rjschoolcraft]

Dick,

I've looked at the Quad Loader because I was envisioning building something like that when I saw their ad. The Hitch Things web site no longer shows the quad loader. Do you know what might have happened to them?

I would like to see a picture of your set-up. I was thinking about doing something similar for my generator, but with adding a Pull-Rite hitch to keep the pivot point near the axel.

[DickWells]

Hi Ronnie: I'm not surprised that you aren't seeing anything from Hitch Things. The Quad Loader is OK, but just barely. It comes with an 1100 lb. rating, but has a tire with only 780 lb. top rating! That's just one of their problems. It handles fairly well with an 8000 lb. Suburban, but is down-right nasty with my 4000+ lb. Astro 4x4. I like a car that over steers, but with the Astro, it's like driving a Corvair with a 454 hanging back there. It makes a super platform for cross mounting a quad on the front of a trailer, though. And, with the Sub., I can use it for short hauls when I'm out camping near the Boonies and need to get to the ATV trails.
I'd love to get some pictures to you guys, but with our cell phone and lap top, it's not going to be easy. Try contacting me at dwells@pshift.com. If you give me your address, I'll take some digital pictures and send them to you by US mail.
If we're going to talk about this in more detail here in the DP, lets get it over to the Forum, where it's less crowded, and more appropriate. I don't want to make the guys with diesel problems mad at me. Goodness knows you've all done a lot for me over the years, and I want to stay in you're good graces.
Dick Wells