The truck flunked emissions again Wednesday night with NOX up a touch to 5.72. I also learned that I ordered the wrong rectangular headlights, since I ordered under a Mighty Max instead of a Power Ram 50 and the MM uses the larger single headlamps and the PR50 uses the smaller 4 lamp set-up. So Wednesday pretty much sucked.

The new headlights will be here today, and they were cheaper, so with the windfall of savings, I ordered new breather elements for inside the air cleaner (both of them), a carburetor mounting gasket and windshield wipers. Big Whoop.

I am next going to pull the carb and intake manifold off and replace those gaskets and replace the vacuum lines, hoping to improve on any small leaks there may be there, resulting in the high NOX readings. It's about the last thing I can think of to improve that, since the other two measured pollutants are still so low, I know it's not catalytic converter related. Then we'll find out how much timing advance this thing can stand (after it passes emissions) and make a real runner out of it.

Also, in tune with the "I can't believe I missed this" section, I noticed that the front suspension is cranked up against the untrimmed bump stops. No wonder it wasn't riding so well. Naturally it's not easy to pass a blade through bump stops with a load on them, so I'll have to uncrank it, trim, then crank back up. I blame Toasty, even if he didn't do it.

John B.