Ginger Wick

I've never used gradients before and found them less than intuitive.  I think I dragged it the opposite way (top down), but the dark part was still on the bottom, so I figured it was okay?  It was gray though, not black as you had in your example.

Before I go any further with this edit, can you take a look at my sky replacement?  When I applied the gradient to the sky layer, and then masked it off of my subject, I sometimes ended up with white borders/halos.  I tried to address them by lowering the opacity on my brush, and re-painting over them, but due to the gradient I sometimes ended up with obvious brush strokes because the opacity was different.  I'm concerned that if I sharpen this image with the intent to print it, errors will become more apparent.  So, I'd love any feedback.

Follow on question... by following your tut on sky replacement and putting in a solid white fill layer, I lost the cracked back truck window.  Is it an all or nothing thing, or is there someway I could bring back the crack?

 Last question on this one... should I even be bothering with a sky replacement on this image?  I'm okay with the clouds as they are, but I'd really like them to have warmer sunset tones.  So, should I just leave them as they are and then dip into your magic bag of tricks to make their color better instead of swapping them entirely?