DRIVE

…your product does not, in fact, smell “just like” that cologne i kind of like but not enough to give up bay rum for on a regular basis. in fact, it kind of smells “just like” a urinal cake.

that said, the high alcohol content makes it a fantastic disinfectant for minor home first aid situations, like excising the dead section of a split toenail using nail scissors and crimping pliers. and it does smell marginally better than alcohol + witch hazel, which is what i usually keep in the house (but currently keep in a storage unit).

sincerely,

“just like william kunstler”

today i replaced spark plugs, one valve cover gasket, oil, oil filter, and oil drain plug on the truck. i also broke one valve cover bolt inside the block, thanks to my shitty harbor freight torque wrench which decided 5 foot-pounds was a lot more than what 5 foot-pounds is.

it’s running worse than ever, won’t idle at all. i’m running out of things to fix/replace, and everything i do seems to make it worse. a month ago i could drive and it would just bog a little if i stomped on the gas. now i can barely make it half a mile without stalling out. i think this is a problem w/ curb idle on the carb…? i did notice that when i push the throttle (w/ engine off), one stream of gas seems much stronger than the other… tried cleaning them out w/ sea foam & a bristle brush, did nothing. tried adjusting the idle screws… nothing. basically i have two options moving forward:

• the cheap way, in which i work really hard and learn a lot of stuff. pull the carb, take it apart, rebuild it, test each spark plug individually, test each plug wire individually, borrow a better torque wrench & check every bolt on the manifold; recheck plug order and find out how one tests a distributor/vac advance/ignition system coil. total cost: $75 for a carb rebuild kit, plus whatever is actually broken (probly under $10). advantage: total cost, plus developing a lot of new skills.
• throw parts at it: replace entire ignition system and carb. start from the ground up with known-good, top of the line, brand new parts. total cost: around $1200. advantage: i won’t have to change anything for another 10 years, and would be headers and paint away from actually getting the thing to be show-ready.

i have to get the thing running this week, so i think i’m gonna take a kind of middle ground, find some known good junkyard parts that will keep it running while i rebuild the carb. but we’ll see.

in related news, i now have only one piece of clothing that fits and is clean; so i’ll be wearing bib overalls for the forseeable future.

oh, also tonight i fell off the truck and broke off half of my left big toenail.

I could not fit in
i was the one who got caught
i was the one who got realized
i was the one who got dropped
shut out banished and locked away
the knife that did me in i was carry to this day…
Rancid, “Rejected”

just taking a quick study break, quick summary of what i’ve done since last update so that i don’t forget.

f150:

• replace engine bay vacuum hoses, discovered lines to be replaced to trans, heater;
• replaced air filter with a cheapo 14×3″ cotton spectre; charged w/ k&n kit. eventually want to put in a 14×5 or 6″ k&n, but this is low priority.
• replace fuel filter with glass one (was trying to diagnose source of lean condition); discovered lines to be replaced under bed and gauge mismatch (are they supposed to be 3/8?);
• totally screw up timing and briefly set the truck on fire;
• adjust carb curb idle & accelerator pump to compensate for persistent timing issues
• add 1q oil (need to replace sender);
• add 1/2q trans fluid;
• install and wear out napa solenoid. to be replaced with Grainger 6C017;
• spray down w/ rust inhibitor ’til i can get to body work
• took for “brake inspection,” received “certificate of rejection” for not having a horn or reverse lights. have until august 14 to rectify (already have horn & magic wand)
• discovered that many of the overheating issues relate to PO’s removal of all emissions gear. plan to replace PVS switch immediately, EGR is out the window since dude used a non-EGR intake manifold.

atlima:

• ran grade 5 bolt (from f150!) through subframe & radius arm mount; tightened with jam nut & grade 8 washers/nuts. used trailer shackle to support it in back (where arm is rusted out), but lost one nut so it’s kind of an enclosed j-bolt. seems to be doing the trick; little bit of scraping noise (probly need a shackle on the other side), car runs fine.
• tried to pinpoint a/c problem, seem to have made things worse (fan now only engages initially upon going into gear).
• identified mystery part that seems broken. looks like a sensor sort of vaguely hovering over the engine bay, a vacuum diaphragm, and two wires. need to shoot photo & post it to nicoclub, etc.

this is a test entry. posts here are now syndicated at monkeywrench.trashdiver.com. mostly because i’m burnt out on that other thing i’m supposed to be doing.

after a very long and frustrating day, truck is running about 50% cooler. most of that improvement seems to have come from burping the radiator, which is such a goofy easy little thing to do i find it hard to believe it could have such an impact. fan kicks in about 90% of the time, and usually doesn’t stay turned on after i kill it. only once did i have to frantically disconnect the power at the terminal because there was no indication the thing was ever going to stop. ever. and i was only stranded by the airport for a few hours.

so i guess that’s progress.

and now, here is a long quote from “zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance,” which i read at precisely the wrong age and therefore took much too seriously and it’s shaped much of my life to date, at times against my wishes. other books in this category are the chronicles of narnia; the way of the peaceful warrior; rule of the bone; and Dvorak’s guide to PC telecommunications.

The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us…these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road…aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts. The handful of sand looks uniform at first, but the longer we look at it the more diverse we find it to be. Each grain of sand is different. No two are alike. Some are similar in one way, some are similar in another way, and we can form the sand into separate piles on the basis of this similarity and dissimilarity. Shades of color in different piles…sizes in different piles…grain shapes in different piles…subtypes of grain shapes in different piles…grades of opacity in different piles…and so on, and on, and on.

You’d think the process of subdivision and classification would come to an end somewhere, but it doesn’t. It just goes on and on. Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins. Both are valid ways of looking at the world although irreconcilable with each other. What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one. Such an understanding will not reject sand-sorting or contemplation of unsorted sand for its own sake. Such an understanding will instead seek to direct attention to the endless landscape from which the sand is taken. That is what Phædrus, the poor surgeon, was trying to do. To understand what he was trying to do it’s necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all.

To reject that part of the Buddha that attends to the analysis of motorcycles is to miss the Buddha entirely.

installed ford-style starter solenoid to replace fried fan relay. guy assured me it’s continuous duty, i’m not so sure- but it seems to be working fine. we’ll see if that continues. fan’s definitely blowing harder, and more importantly, not melting anything anymore.

also used new krikit tension gauge to replace & properly-ish tension new v-belts. i’d tightened them by “feel,” turns out to about 30lbs, where they actually require ~110. had to use a scissor jack to tighten the alternator to proper tension, and pump belt is a little too long, so could only get it up to about 70.

while i was at it, oiled and dropped in a new cotton fiber air filter. it’s shorter than the old one by an inch, but higher flow- and not completely crapped up like the paper one was. once i get the other issues sorted (the inside of the top of the cleaner is actually encrusted in carbon deposits from the backfiring), gonna put in a K&N 14×6″ filter and be done with it.

weird thing is, overheating probs seem to have gotten worse, not better. no more squeal, drives great, but temps shoot up under 35mph. not much more troubleshooting I can do ’til after the bar, though, remaining possibilities are: 1) require fan shroud, 2) require new thermometer 3) require new fan 4) timing is off 5) fuel mix is too lean 6) vacuum hose leak 7) vacuum manifold leak

…which all require more work than i have time right now.

This is what it looks like when your car is so rusty that the jack punches through the designated jack tab.

In other news, I need a new radius arm frame mount- assuming the frame isn’t too rusty to weld one on. Called 3 shops that don’t weld, but have a lead… If I don’t make progress tomorrow will fabricate my own out of angle iron & affix it with 2 medium-grade bolts (so the bolts will shear before damaging the frame)… evacuation-safe if not ideal.

so that was yesterday. today I was stranded in the truck for 1/2 hr b/c something’s up w 4wd, but I have it running again & troubleshooting transfer cases is low priority.