Decenber 2008 - Performance Zone
GEAR-HEADS & SLEDS!
By Performance Specialist Bruce C. Mallinson
It’s time to make your plans for the annual Owner Operator Snowmobile Conference! This year’s conference will be held in Cooke City, Montana. We will be riding snowmobiles all day and having trucking-related seminars at night. Last year, we had 22 owner operators from Utah, Oregon, Idaho, and Washington riding in the John Day, Oregon area. Two owner operators are working with me on this conference and their names are Ken Billings (989/413-1819) and Lynn Bierschenk (406/670-9283). Both of these owner operators snowmobile in this area, so feel free to contact them if you have any questions concerning the area. Cooke City is in the Yellowstone Park area.
This year we will be staying at the Super 8 Motel – the rooms are $80.00 per night for a single and $85.00 for two. There is also an $8.00 tax on each room. I currently have 20 rooms set aside for you. The phone number for the motel is 406/838-2070 – ask for Bill Lloyd. The dates for the conference are Saturday, February 28th through Wednesday, March 4th. I will be arriving on the 27th to get things ready. If you want to ride on Saturday, you should arrive on Friday evening.
To get things started, Lynn will be giving a snowmobiling seminar on avalanche beacons and I will be giving one to riders who have never ridden on powder snow. I will also be talking about how to do serious hill climbing. Yes, you may get stuck at times, however we will be there to help you get out. Rental snowmobiles are available at Cooke City Exxon Polaris and Ski-Doo. The price is $175 per day for a 600cc sled and $185 for an 800cc sled. Their phone number is 406/838-2244. If you’re from the east and have a short track sled, you will be able to ride it in the deep snow – just make sure to follow a couple of other sleds and you will not have a problem.
The Super 8 Motel has a conference room and we will have seminars on diesel engines, trucks and trucking in the evenings. We may have Kevin Rutherford there from XM Radio 171 doing some of his seminars on how to make money with trucks. We will surely have a fantastic time and the scenery will be beautiful. We all know that truckers do not like to be passed while pulling a mountain. Well, the same holds true when they are driving their snowmobiles. At this time, there are only 20 rooms available, so please call now and make your reservations – you will not be disappointed! Don’t miss this terrific opportunity to learn more about your truck and your profession – and have fun, too.
Many of you have heard Kevin Rutherford and I doing the Friday Night talk show on XM-171. The main subject over the past few weeks has been crankshaft dampers (this was also the main topic of last month’s article). As we discussed last month, most people still improperly call it a harmonic balancer but it is not – it is a torsional damper – and its purpose is to remove the twisting of the crankshaft every time an injector fires and slams the crankshaft to the bottom of the stroke. As we all know, you can only bend or twist steel so many times before it breaks. Well, the damper’s job is to help eliminate the torsional twisting of the crank, which also helps to reduce vibrations from the engine.
I have written about crank dampers several times over the years but still many owner operators, mechanics and service managers do not understand what they do. Yes, they wear out! They start to fail around 300,000 miles and are shot at 500,000. There is a Teflon ring inside the damper that wears out, and once that happens it begins to contaminate the layer of silicon around it. A chemical reaction causes the silicone to harden, which keeps the dampening ring from turning freely. At that point, the damper is junk.
As you continue to drive with a bad damper, you create many problems for yourself and for your truck. First of all, your body now has to absorb all those engine vibrations, and that makes you tired. In regards to your truck, a bad damper can break a crankshaft, flywheel bolts, flywheel housing bolts, the center of your clutch disc, alternator brackets, accessory drive shafts and camshafts. All of these problems are expensive to repair and can be avoided by replacing the damper. Dampers range in price from $365 to $630 and can be easily changed in your driveway in about three hours. Do yourself a favor: replace the damper on your engine and enjoy a smoother ride.
We now have 24 ISX Cummins engines out there running with the Pittsburgh Power computer. We even have two 2009 ISX engines equipped with DPF mufflers running in Peterbilts and they are doing well. We are still making a few changes, so if you have already purchased an ISX Power Box, we will be updating them at no charge as we finalize all of the settings. I will be writing more in the next several months about the ISX Cummins as we learn about this sophisticated engine. Of all the Pittsburgh Power computers we have built in the past eight years, the ISX Cummins has been the toughest to produce. We’d like to thank you for bearing with us – it’s been a tough battle. But we never give up.
Like all engines, as power improves, fuel mileage improves and the life of the engine is extended. A fuel-injected engine will only deliver as much fuel as your right foot tells it to, regardless of how much power it produces. It’s up to you to know when and how much power to use. Power, properly used, will render more fuel mileage than a stock engine. If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to e-mail at bruce@pittsburghpower.com or call me directly at Pittsburgh Power at (724) 360-4080.