text: The craziest part is the condition of the trail. The 34 who use it must be really dedicated because it's in top shape right now. The whole loop is clear and raked. Yep raked, it's the sand hill region and it's sand. The pine trees are the problem down that way. The needles cover the trail and pine cones.
  They are not a problem to ride on, but they make the trail hard to follow sometimes. I have been there enough times I know how to go but a new user would have a problem in some sections. I know that sounds weird but you really need to see the trail and the area to understand. The forest are totally different than the Charlotte area. I like change and always look forward to going south every time I go.
  
  The “Super-Truck” project is something that’s been in the back of my mind for a while. The whole idea is to build a plug-in hybrid pickup, which could run off diesel, battery electricity, and biofuels. Imagine if a Chevy Volt not only ran on bio-fuel, but could also haul firewood and tow a trailer!
  So, I’ve been slowly learning as I can, reading books and watching online instructional videos, and chipping away at the project. I have a diesel engine out of a Mercedes 240D sitting in my garage. I’ve already test-run it and replaced the water pump. It’s still using the old-style glow plugs. While I’m waiting to eventually get on the same schedule as my diesel-mechanic buddy to perform some REAL work on this project, I thought I would give a shot at upgrading the glow-plugs to the modern style.
  I ordered a set of four “pencil” glow plugs from Mercedes Source. My order also included a nice little book showing exactly how to upgrade from the old glow-plugs to the new. So, the other day, I set to replacing the plugs.
  To start with, the glow plugs are actually rather difficult to get at with the hard fuel lines between the injection pump and the cylinders getting in the way. The first step was to remove those. I cracked open the connections with a 17mm wrench on both ends of the lines and loosened them the rest of the way by hand. The metal tubes easily pulled away. (I put them in gallon plastic zipper bags and labeled them.)
  With that, I could get at the electric connections on the glow plugs. Each has a nut that needs a 8mm wrench to remove. By removing the nut, I could then take off one electric wire, a ceramic spacer, and the other electric wire.
  Next, I could remove the glow-plugs themselves. However, I didn’t have the right size wrench. The biggest I had was 19 mm, and the glow plugs seemed to be just a hair larger than that. I used an adjustable wrench to get them started and then used an oversized socket to unthread the glow-plugs the rest of the way.
  I had trouble with the plug furthest to the left (closest to the radiator if the engine was still in the car.) Although I completely unthreaded this glow-plug, it still would NOT pull out! I finally figured out that I was spinning only the OUTSIDE portion of the plug, but that the narrow inner part wasn’t spinning at all. It was seized up, stuck in place. I’ve heard of glow-plugs getting gunked-up with carbon, and it looked like this one must have been stuck in it. After breaking the tip off the glow plug with a vise-grips, I started fooling around with several small pry bars. Since the threads were all the way out of the engine block, I figured it was just carbon holding the plug in, and with some prying, I was eventually able to get it out.