flagmanruss

I had torn out the panel under the tub so I could seal around the plumbing to keep the mice out. See earlier post: http://forum.mopar1973man.com/threads/3810-Rodent-Combat!! I wrecked the original panel, a vynal coating on about 2 plys of thin wood on a frame of 3/4 X 3/4 wood. After I finished closing up the plumbing access, I installed wood strips to screw to with the new panel. There is sat waiting for me to get back to it. Yesterday I did (finally) get the panel back in. The top has to tuck under the hook on the tub edge & I had to flex the wall some to get past the corner moulding to the left. I ran a row of screws along the floor into the strip I'd installed. The hard part was the getting the top edge up against the tub hook, I'd anticipated this & put a nylon string around the partto draw it out so my screws could bite. One did, one didn't. I managed to drop down get another screw to bite. I have a piece of quarter round oak that needs finish before I finish screw it along the floor to cover the screws. Then I hung the bathroom door again. I'd had it off to make more room as the plumbing was on both sides of that partition. Working alone was a bit challenging but I used shims to hold the door up. I had designed & installed a magnetic cabinette door catch to hold the bathroom door open... sometimes, depending on how the trailer was sitting, it would decide to close when I didn't want it to & I got tired of hanging up on it. I cut a part of circle of fancy wood which i screwed near the bottom of the door as a door stop, and screwed the magnet to the bottom of that. Once the quarter round is on, the matching steel plate will go back on. Today I went out to work on something else. My dear wifee has been emptying the horse trailer to be sold... by cluttering up the camper. It was just starting to drizzle rain. I discovered the big vent hatch (escape hatch for the top bunk which is gone now) slowly dripping onto the pile of storage stuff. I moved things around to put my big cardboard (kneel on this hunk) on top, & put a container on the drip spot. It'll take clearing the floor & then a step ladder to inspect the hatch. The previous owner had installed a drop down Ikea maple table on the right side under the window. We liked the table but the larger cabinettes above made it hazardous... too easy to stand up under them or walk into them. We had decided to move it to the left next to the stove. I used my squeeze clamps to hold the mounting bracket to the window frame & was able to catch a few screws. It took some finness, but it's now attached to the other side of the trailer. I think the support bracket needs a repair but I can just remove the hinges on that & drill / screw it back together. In the meantime, I had been laying out some discount store roll up bamboo blinds for rear windows. It was a tight fit, because of the cabinettes above. In the end, I screwed the left side to the wall under the cabinettes. The right side had different cabinettes & I screwed up into the bottom of them. I had to fold the triangular mounting tabs over horrizontal & screw right through to get them high enough. The trick to getting this done was I used my pair of squeeze clamps... to the window track on the front side & opened the window & clamped the trailer side in the rear... to make a support to hold the blind's weight while I worked. Because the blinds are over the top part of the windows... I'm only using 2' of an 8' blind... there rolled up blind cluts the window area. I'm thinking about super glueing a row across & then cutting them off & moving the groved bottom stick up. I marked across one blind & did the super glue. I left it for the day. I'll check it in the future & see if it took before cutting. (Might not be able to get another exact blind from the Job Lot closeout store... And I don't want to end up with a bunch of kindling!) There were some & I had installed more screw eyes & folding tie anchors in the walls to secure cargo. These changes may require more or moving them. So this is my weekend's worth of progress.

On the draw straw, a lot of people don't realize how much the bottom of the tank flexes. I they measure with it sitting on the shop floor and install to fit perfectly then when the tank is suspended & flexes down, the pickup will be short. To correctly measure, the tank must be supported by the edges. There's another 1/4 tank issue, also. The screens in the OEM in tank filter basket will not flow 150 gph. The pickup & return must both be in or out of the basket or the screens must be modified. What can happen with a pickup in the basket (screens in) but return outside, in high draw circumstances, the fuel level in the basket can be sucked down & if the fuel level in the tank is lower than the top of the basket, the lift pump can draw air even though there is fuel in the tank... because the OEM basket screens just can't flow enough. If you buy a drawstraw kit, they will supply the parts & instructions to do the install correctly. If you cobble one together out of parts... it can be done... but you have to watch for these pitfalls that others have learned the hard way.

ATF contained whale oil up until the 1973 model year. There's lots of info on this out there. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2998/do-the-japanese-lubricate-new-cars-with-whale-oil Whale oil was widely used for lighting even lighting light houses prior to fossil oil drilling. It burned clean & bright... cleaner than todays kero. I never was in a position to use whale/ATF as fuel. Knowing what I do about modern fluids, I'm sticking with my TCW3 2 cycle oil.

Well you'll recall that I had a garage replace the failed transmission lines. They used rubber lines & super-duper clamps. Yesterday the transmission stopped transmitting... the trans side of the engine bay was dripping transmission oil I ended up getting a ride home & AAA took the Cirrus back to the garage. I stopped there on my way home today (had doctor's appointment so I took the CTD to be big city. YUCK!!) The shop admitted their line had blown off. I'm hopeful this will be on them. This will be a test of the integrity of the shop. I know when I was turning wrenches, I never charged for do-overs. Sometimes, we'd find the job we'd done didn't fix it... we'd go on to fix it & sort out the charges in a fair manner after. They think it'll be done tomorrow. --- Update to the previous post... I got the Cirrus back. They didn't want to talk about what went wrong. When I stopped in last night the office mgr said "the hose had blown off but they didn't yet know why". There was no charge.

Isn't the motor on the wrong end or am I looking at it @ss backwards.

I was camping at the NorthEasten Rendezvous (historic encampment). Freaking cops sat outside where the drive entered the main road, pulling over participants for seatbelts. As far as I know, no one got busted for firearms (though everyone in camp is carrying muzzleloaders and a few forgot small pistols & plenty of edged weapons on their persons). One year, a different location, there was a sign on the exit lane "Kindly disarm before shopping in the settlement". One of our friends, a store manager, ran into his store in the mall to pickup his vacation paycheck... did I mention he was dressed native: breechclout, leggings, face & body paint, head scarf, 'hawk, knives, a 1750 type bayonette... He was met when he emerged from the store by 4 cops, having been called by mall security. The security recognized him then & they had a good laught but might not have been so otherwise.I always drive extra careful when transporting firearms... my (almost 10 year) stint as a part time cop was too far in the past to do any good.

I do want to know how one driving a high 4x4 flashes the women? I mean how big does it have to be to get it up to window level or is the jerk standing on the seat? Who's driving? Just saying!

Well, if that's the road you have to take... keep your reg & inspections current, tows legal, exhaust & lights. Cause Kojac is gonna be looking. Probably frustrate the hell out of them if there's no obivious excuse for pulling you over. And cops are not above being gently re-educated... you train them by repetitively being on good behavior. Any if you find the flasher, turn the stupid jerk in yourself!

Yes, they gave you a heads up. Screw the tags... they will stop any truck that "looks like" that vague description... If you don't want to be stopped (and the risk that some cop will want to write a ticket just because they have you stopped) you'll find another route, even if longer. Stay outta Dodge (city) or deal with Wyatt Earp. ended badly for the Clantons!

A couple of times we pullled 6-71s with marine gear & wet exhaust at the 10' point on the forks. The old fashoned way was to build a temporary lifting scaffold on deck, lift the engine that far, set it down on planks & rollers, move it to the cockpit (without leaking fluids on the teak decks). And then figure out how to lift it from there. I had one mechanic (boat's owner owner a used car lot) who thought he was going to bring a GM V6 diesel conversions up a light duty floating dock. We were nice to the guy (mechanic) since the owner was tryingto screw him over by blaming him for the failure of the fresh installation. We had to explain to the mechanic that this was a boat. Boat was a leaker & almost sank on numerous occasions & new motors did not change that. The automatic bilge pump had failed, the boat filled so it was dangerously low in the water. We, the Marina workers, found it & put our pumps aboard & kept it from making like a submarine. What no one knew, was that it sunk low enough for water to flood back throgh the wet exhaust & risers & into a cylinder. When the owner hit the starter the next time, it fired one cyminder before it came up on a cylinder full of (sea) water, bending the connecting rods & etc. The owner tried to blame the mechanic & put the overhaul on him. (What a jerk!) We let the mechanic free the motor up & in one lift went from the engine room to the back of his truck. I think we charged $50 or $100 bucks (2 men, one on the fork lift & one aiding in steadying the swinging motor).

Long ago, in a previous life... the boat marina I worked at had a off road fork lift. We had 10' X 10' negitive drop & extra long forks made up on 4x6" steel tubing. We would sometimes extend the forks even further with wooden extensions in the hollow forks. We could lift outboard type boats out of the water on the forks and put them in in dry stack racks in the building. We could use it to pull motors... we'd walk boats back into the lift slip, put the forks under the flying bridge, with a cross beam & chainfall pull an engine, get it above deck level, walk the boat forward until the motor was over the cockpit (but not the stern rail) and lift it out free. I've been searching for an ID & photos. This is not ours but here's what the machine looked like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmm7qK-_eho

My brother had a run away alt on a Dodge Colt. It was smoking when he got to the shop at the marina. We got the hood up... everything was too hot to touch. It had fried the battery but good... We disconnected the battery cables with bolt cutters & set the battery on the ground. It was still too hot to handle 3 days later. Eventually, the battery cooled off enough to scrap. A new alt/regulator, an Exide Battery from our stock, a few cable ends & he was good to go. I've never seen anything like it. We thought that the regular might have stuck on, put out full power contineously, boiled all the water out of the battery until it failed, shorting internally which was why it stayed hot. (My Dad had been in electronics... started at Philco... which was originally Philadelphia Storage Battery Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philco )

Logical approach: You are reporting dimming lights with corresponding drop in voltage showing on guage which makes total sense. So the loads are greater than the output and are drawing down the batteries. I would start at the batteries. Have you not just checked for tightness but cleaned the connections both at the batteries, inline (a few inches away where my problem was located), grounds. I would also load test the batteries. A shorted cell can be it's own load. I'd look for the key off load as it may be an all the time failure. Let us know how you make out.

OMG, I'm having nightmare flashbacks. I was pulling a carberator off a marine V8. I was threading the nuts back on the studs when I freaking fumbled one, got by the rag I had over the intake & disappeared. I just sat there stunned. I was just hoping it didn't find an open valve. I fished each runner with a bent wire & a magnet taped on. Yay!! Found it!! No, I couldn't charge on the time, but I didn't have to explain a tear down that hadn't been needed. I taped a piece of cardboard on there quick. I knocked a whole set of 3/8 drive sockets off a customer's starboard engine. I tried to fish under it with magnets but didn't recover them. I told the boat's owner & I bought another set of Craftsmen sockets & went back to work. That fall when I hauled the boat for winter storage, the owner brought me the complete set. When he put the boat up on plane (32 foot Egg Harbor) he'd hear the sockets rolling around. He's look back by the rudders & one by one fished them out! Thanks Bruce! I still have that set. I'm sure I did other clumsy things in my almost 20 years turning wrenches on the boats. My brother headed up the yard & dock crew... always bought the discount store hammers. Never wore them out... The hammers had a habit of swimming off the docks & not worth recovery attempts.

Over built is a fine line. I bought a bullet proof stock trailer... It's still in service, but needs a real truck to tow. It's a challenge to get the capacity & strength.

Trailers are very tough on tires it seems. At an event, I met a trader who had blown 4 new tires on his trailer enroute. With the size of his box trailer (race car hauler size, I bet he was grossly overloaded. I don't recall what they were but I think he was sold a bill of goods. I was called upon to tow his trailer out of the primitive camp after the transmission failed on his F-word truck, a 350 I think. I was the only other truck in camp with a gooseneck hitch. With a trip like that, I'd give it up! His hometown dealer put in a good word for him with the dealer there & he had the truck back with a rebuilt transmission before the camp was done 10 days later.

The previous owner of my toyhauler... I don't consider him very knowledgeable as I found the shim pack missing from the load leveling hitch (I'd never used a LL hitch before and after a white knuckle drive home with inadequate front tire contact with the road, I did some research to make that discovery. The trailer has trailer ST type tires on it. Apparently somewhere between Montanna & the East Coast he blew both tires on the front axle which did indeed shred the plastic wheel well. The previous owner stapled a piece to tarp in there which was an acess point for the mice. I used a molded section I cut out of a mason's cement mixing tray which I calked & screwed in place. It seems to have stopped the mice finally. I have no expectation it would withstand a steel belt blowout. I thought I'd posted a picture when I had it open, ok, here's the picture:

I was ready with the plans... not this time!

I made my donation to the pot... I'm still at home & not my way to some remote Caribbean Island with a bimbo (can we say that here? It does not appear to be in this site's prohibitted words list... only my wife's!! LOL!!) And my truck is not in a body shop getting the rust fixed... which I would be if I'd won... Better luck next time guys... (Looks around... who's AWOL?) Mikey??

Outside of Crank Shaft Position sensor... I found a note about wire harness damage causing this around the AC compressor.

If this is the same as my 01, easy check is the battery connections. Power is off one side, ground off the other.

OMG!! I second it!! Don't wanna be in the same county if that thing backfires into those gas fumes! Yas wanna see one HOT fire!

It is very difficult watching a loved one near the end of their life. I've been through it with my father... he was in kidney failure and his cancer had returned. (Cancer removal & chemo was considered a success with 5 years clean... 10 years later... ) Dad's doctor explained that Dad had not given up, he had just run out of options. I do have regrets... my sister was quite young when she was stricken clear accross the country. Everything possble was done but it was a losing hand. My parents dropped everything to go to her, leaving my brother & I to keep the family business open. I regret that my brother & I were not able to say goodbye. Family comes first. Everything else gets put asside. Don't leave any regrets if you can help it.Russ

That's very cool! I love my old South Bend Lathe... Wish I had a Mill.

I have lost or put down animals before... horses, ponies, mini's, dogs... but when I had to put down my wife's horse & my horse colliced the same day... I had the vet out 3 days in a row (thought he was getting better) but lost him the 4th morning. Call me a softie. I still miss him.Russ