Category: Repairs

Weekend Updates, 3 Days Later

I got the steel wheel back from the repair shop yesterday, and it looks much better than it did before. I put it on the front hub and spun it to see how straight it looked, and while there’s just a little side-to-side variation it’s not as huge as it was before. This morning I took her out for a test spin, and when I got up to 55mph I did feel a shake—but not as bad as it was before. At 60-65mph it smoothed out and ran like a champ—the engine was happy at that speed and she felt stable and true. So I think I might swap the newly repaired tire to the front, put a camera on both wheels and see if I notice any vibration at speed. If there’s another wheel that looks bad, I’ll get that one repaired as well. And if I need extra balancing, I’m going to take it to a tire shop and have them add balance beads to each wheel.

Three years ago, after I’d pulled all of the carpet off the interior of the truck, I was left with a bunch of adhesive all over the bare metal. Later on I used a rubber-brush wheel on a drill to knock all of that residue off—the ancient adhesive resisted acetone, and I didn’t want to use anything stronger than that—which left a dull finish on the metal. I did a test run with the cutting compound and found that it brought the shine right back, so I spent Sunday afternoon going around the perimeter of the interior and cleaning up the metal, including the doorframes. It looks a million times better inside.

I also pulled the original steering wheel off and replaced it with the one I refinished a year ago. I had to clean up the threads on the new wheel and sand paint off the copper horn ring, but it went on with no complaints and the horn works fine. Interestingly, there is a turn signal cancelling mechanism in there, but one of the contacts was broken years ago. After a test drive with the new wheel, I found that the left turn signal will now cancel, but the right side won’t. I’m going to see if I can source a new mechanism at Nats.

The outside paint is…better than it was, but nothing short of a full sanding job is going to get it to look any better. The cutting compound knocked all of the oxidization back, but the patchy nature of the original paint, remainder of the clearcoat, my bodywork, and rattle-can IH red gives it a true farm-implement look. Thankfully, the fresh paint on the roof and wheels plus four shiny hubcaps make up for a lot of these sins.

On Tuesday a replacement fuel sender showed up, and I started testing it. Using a multimeter, I tested the new sender to make sure it was working (using the Ohm setting, put test leads on the body of the sender and the contact point, and move the float arm. The reading should rise and fall based on where the arm is) and then working backwards from the tank, tried to isolate where the signal was dropping. It got dark very quickly so I wasn’t able to get very far, but I’ve got a plan for how to proceed.

SendCutSend tells me I’m going to have two modified cupholders in hand Thursday, which I’ll weld up for Nats. The goal there is to show them to Light Line vendors to see if they’ll distribute them for me. I’ve done some basic math, and I figure I can make some decent money producing these in volume if I get enough interest.

At Harbor Freight on Saturday, I happened to spy a speed controller box designed for a router. Essentially a potentiometer wired in between power from the wall and the tool, it’s meant to slow the router speed down. This is exactly what I need for a circular saw cutting steel or aluminum, so I grabbed it and a 10″ aluminum blade for the DeWalt miter saw my brother-in-law sent me home with last Christmas. I gave it a test run with some of the aluminum channel I bought last fall, and it does work as advertised, although it pops the 8V fuse on the back of the box. I’ve got to see what the draw from the saw is, but I can’t imagine it’s any more than a router would be—the Porter-Cable unit I’ve got is a monster. I’ve got a box full of glass fuses for the Scout so I can mix-and-match until I get something comfortably between constant tripping and nuclear meltdown.

The test cuts I did worked pretty well. My idea is to do a carpentry-style set of pie cuts to allow for gentle 90˚ rounded corners, which would then get welded solid after they’re bent. I’m going to need to be surgically precise on these, as well as find a way to lay things as flat as possible for the straightest joins. I bought extra aluminum to practice with, but I figure this is going to take some time to do correctly.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Weekend Updates, 3 Days Later  |  Posted in Future Plans, Repairs, Travelall

Weekend Update, 4 May

Saturday morning I had some time to get out to the driveway. The first thing to do was diagnose the wobble on the front wheel, so I jacked it off the ground and spun it. I immediately found the cause of the vibration above 50mph: the new wheel is out of true. There’s a wide variation in both diameter and depth as it spins, which explains the problem. So I swapped that wheel with the one on the back, and we’ll see if that makes any difference. If the back starts wobbling badly, I’ll swap the tire back on to the odd 16″ wheel until I can get a good set of 15″ wheels to replace these.

With the front wheel off, I started working on the tie rods. After cleaning the accumulated grease and dirt off the fittings, I heated and cooled each side until I was able to get it to spin. Counting the threads carefully, I pulled it off and threaded the new one on at exactly the same length. With the driver’s side fastened, I pulled the passenger wheel off and repeated the process. The steering tie rod ends were just as bad, but I couldn’t get both here at the same time, so I did some cross-site parts research and found a left-hand thread Moog unit on the jungle site that could be delivered Sunday.

Then I went out and swapped the Honda out for Peer Pressure at Brian’s place to bring it home. Stopping off at ACE for fresh grade 8 hardware, I installed the female sides of the lap belts on the rear bench in Darth—so now I’ve got one full lap belt back there until I can source another male belt with a quick-release. With that done, I routed and mounted the fourth tiedown on the driver’s side rear, so there’s one on each side to secure any cargo back there.

Meanwhile, I’ve been noticing the cord on the IH fridge has been getting more and more frayed, and some of the original plastic sheathing was ripped about halfway along its length. Fearing a fire hazard, I took a little time last night to splice in a replacement appliance cord with solder and four layers of shrink wrap to keep it as secure as possible.

Sunday I was multi-tasking on house and truck stuff, but the part did arrive, and after some initial confusion about whether or not it was correct, I threaded it on. The rear half of the steering link is an odd size: the rod section is about 8″ long, which I haven’t seen anywhere. I think my solution to this will be to find a replacement sleeve that’s longer to accept a normal off-the-shelf tie rod.

With three of the four tie rods replaced and the wobbly wheel on the back, I took her out for a test drive. Getting her up to speed on 195, I felt the rear wheel doing its dance, but the other three felt good—and most importantly, as I drove over the traffic calming speed bumps on the way to the highway, I felt and heard none of the loose clanking through the steering wheel  that was there before the tie rods went in. And the steering is still straight and true, which means I did it right.

Something positive to note: I got her up to 65mph with little difficulty, and I believe, once the wheels are sorted out, she’d do 70 with no problem.

Monday afternoon I’ve got an internet acquaintance stopping by to buy a bunch of parts: the Travelall liftgate, the Ford bumper, some doorhandles, and a badge off one of the ’68 grilles. It’ll be good to clear that stuff out and free up a litle cash for some other stuff. He’s picking up a Travelall from Tyler out in Frederick, and I was hoping to horse trade him for the original jack and windshield washer pump out of that truck; we’ll see if we can swing it.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Weekend Update, 4 May  |  Posted in Friends, Repairs, Travelall

Weekend Update

I got the driveshaft back for the Travelall on Thursday. They wound up completely rebuilding what I brought them: they put a new yoke on either side of a larger driveshaft and connected that to the original slip shaft from my truck. The old driveshaft was 2 1/2″ in diameter and this new one is 3″ so there’s some extra beef. I hit it with some self-etching primer and black paint on Friday afternoon and let it cure in the sunlight. Saturday morning, after running some errands, I crawled under the truck and put it back in. This was straightforward, and when it was done I took her for a run around the block. I wound her up as fast as I could close to the house and it looks and feels like the vibration is gone—which is excellent news. I felt so good about it, I took the truck out three times over the weekend to run errands.

Then I put the Scout up on jack stands and started tearing into the hub on the passenger side in order to swap the rotors. All of the videos that I have seen talk about taking the faceplate off, then pulling a snap ring out before removing the outer section of the housing. None of the videos show exactly where that snap ring is, and I don’t see it on my hub anywhere. I pulled the driver’s side off to see if I was missing something, but that looks exactly the same as the passenger side. My spare hub is a completely different design, so I can’t use that as a baseline. So I put the whole thing back together to cogitate on it a little longer.

Doing some organizing in the garage during the weekend, I went looking for some weatherstripping and stumbled on something I forgot I had: a used speedometer cable from the green truck. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to slap myself in the head, because it would only make sense that I would save something like this. Brand new, these cables are $60, so this was a great find. I cleaned the grease off it, filled it with silicon spray and put it in the truck. The needle hops around a bit, but it’s working, and the odometer spins, which is great news, because now I can track gas usage again.

Another quick thing I looked at were the locks on the lockbox under the rear seat in Darth. I’ve had these finger-tight since I put them in, and now that the truck is on the road I need some secure storage. Both sides have needed adjustment since I put them in. The driver’s side needs a new slot to be cut into the side of the box for proper alignment with the key, and the passenger side needs a longer catch made for the lock mechanism. I think I’m going to draw up a design and have SendCutSend cut me two new ones instead of trying to cut and fabricate one here. Along with that, I have two modifications to make to the C-series cupholder I designed—I want to increase the diameter of the cup cutouts by at least 1/2″ to allow for some rubber bumpers around the edge, add a little more height to the gusset at the bottom, and have them cut the two bolt holes for the seat hoop. So I’ll gang those two orders up and maybe save a little on shipping.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Weekend Update  |  Posted in Brakes, Repairs, Travelall

Wednesday Musings

Back at work, I’m sitting through some training sessions for new operations software and multitasking while they go through stuff I’ll never need to know, so I’ll list out some updates here while I’m thinking about them.

I dropped the driveshaft for Darth off at a shop in Baltimore on Monday. The quote to fix it is a bit more than I was expecting, but I’m not going to find one of these just laying around a junkyard, so you gotta do what you gotta do. The shop caters to the large trucks in this area and the guy I talked to was sitting in front of an industrial lathe the size of my car, which gave me a good vibe.

The next big thing I want to tackle are the front brakes on Peer Pressure. I can’t find a shop around here who will touch her— I keep hearing, “We don’t work on anything over 20 years old,” which makes me nervous for the 19-year-old CR-V in our driveway, but I digress: I’m gonna have to figure this out myself. There are YouTube videos, of course, in varying degrees of quality, for removal and installation, and I’ll have to study these for a while before attempting this myself. I think the only thing I’d really need is a large 2-1/16″ socket to take the big retainer nuts off, and I found one on Amazon for $14 which will be here Friday.

Something I’ve been curious about ever since I got the new PT Cruiser seats is a little switch on the driver’s side. I’ve never known what this thing could be, so I did a little sleuthing this morning and found that the seat height is adjustable.

Which makes me wonder if it’s locked in a higher position than normal. I’m gonna put 12 volts to the switch and see if it will go down at all.

 

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Wednesday Musings  |  Posted in Repairs, Seats

On Hold

Update Monday July 28: the second clutch I ordered is on its way, as per FedEx, and should be here by COB tomorrow evening. The first one is still stuck at the warehouse.

I’m currently waiting on two clutch kits from two different vendors which both happen to be shipping from the same warehouse in Kearny, NJ, where everyone seems to be smoking weed out back.

To recap: the transmission shop called me last Monday while I was in a car driving through Pennsylvania, and I used my phone to jump on RockAuto to find the proper 12″ clutch kit and order it. They promised me I’d have it by that Wednesday, which came and went. The FedEx tracking system said the label had been created but they hadn’t received the package yet—which is how it stands a week later. I got impatient on Saturday and figured I’d nudge the universe by going to a second vendor and ordering the same clutch kit to see who could deliver it first. But the joke was on me: both vendors use the same warehouse (both FedEx tracking updates point to the same location, and when I look at the inventory on RockAuto, it says there’s only one left, down from three last Monday.

It’s been too damn hot to do much of anything outside—we got back on Wednesday and I spent pretty much all weekend hiding out inside, apart from taking the Scout to the local Lowe’s for a sheet of plywood and sanding down a fresh skim of filler on each of the doors to cover the PO’s ham-fisted install of cheap mirrors.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on On Hold  |  Posted in Repairs, Travelall

Clutch Update

The transmission shop dropped the clutch this morning and found some very interesting things. At some point in the recent past, a new clutch was put in with new freeze plugs, pilot bearing, and (possibly) a flywheel. But the crank bolts weren’t sealed and apparently backed themselves out, smoking the clutch surface and possibly the flywheel. Jack sent me photos of the inside of the case and all of the parts, and it’s just puzzling. He gave me a disc diameter and a spline count, and I jumped on RockAuto to find the right replacement. Within five minutes I’d ordered it over the phone, to be delivered Wednesday.

I’m so glad I didn’t continue trying to mess with it in the driveway; I never would have sorted this out myself.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   1 Comment on Clutch Update  |  Posted in Repairs, Travelall  |  Tagged