Ulu

The Champion story is very sad. My other parts bane were GM hvac blower motors. The ground wire is riveted thru the steel case, but they also put it through this cardboard insulator board. Totally unnecessary, and eventually the cardboard wears and shrinks, resulting in a loose ground wire. I have fixed three of these and they always failed the same way. If you split the motor you can drill the rivet, remove the offending cardboard, and repair it with a screw and nut, staked tight.

Less than 50% here. ;( I got an iPhone alert at 10:48, I first noticed it on my floor, as there was a pinhole in the cloth awning above. My wife pulled out glasses she still had from 2017.

Too much oil can cause it to migrate to the desiccant. It swells the bag, which is mainly to collect water. If the bag swells and bursts, it can clog the expansion valve immediately. Then the hose from the dryer plugs too. But, where the desiccant goes depends on the design. Mopar put the dryer before the expansion valve. GMs put it after the evaporator, and called it the accumulator. I believe that the theory was an accumulator could hold extra contaminants and keep them out of the compressor. My Cadillac and Chevrolet both had this and being General Motors products they probably had extra contamination too. The dryer on the Mopar was on the high-pressure side of the system. It was made of steel, while the accumulator was on the low pressure side of GMs & was made of aluminum, I believe.

These systems run with very little oil. Over-oiling is actually a worse issue. If any of the the old desiccant had leaked into the system, you will likely have a plugged hose or orifice. If the system sucked dirt in the same could be true.

It’s a burn day in the San Joaquin Valley (for Ag purposes.)

More random content… I decided to build another little stove, for my own amusement, and for TIG practice on unusual surfaces. I am building it from a small refrigeration compressor. So far I’m just cutting, and no welding yet, but probably today. The wind is almost gone and it has blown the boatyard 100% dry. A while back I bought three new Oscar fish for my largest aquarium, and I’m sure I have a breeding pair and one runt. This is a pic of the pair. I had to put the runt in a separate tank to keep him from being chewed up and spit out by his tankmates. He looks the same as the pair in my photo, but he is about 1/5 the mass of the largest fish, yet these 3 were all born at the same time. I named these fish “the three bears” when I bought them, and “baby bear” is now in his own 55 gallon tank, with 100 baby guppies to snack on and fatten him up.

If you have that they just rip it all out. Nobody will patch that stuff.

I threatened my wife with that 5 gal bucket, or she could drive to Walmart 1 mile away. I got “the look” . . .

Settlement of the house is to blame. Fortunately we still have plenty of slope. Roots from a rose bush had found the crack and plugged the sewer. This is how we found out.

Nothing intellectual has gone on here. I’ve been clinging to the dumb end of an idiot stick. We had a cracked sewer, so my whole week was shot. We took out a yard of silty clay & brought in a yard of real soil. Really lucky the crack was almost under the garden.

The rain finally stopped, and wind blew everything dry. I had been hiding in the garage for days, building a small rocket stove from some old junk. Last night I fired it off and tried to burn off whatever paint I hadn’t wirebrushed off already. This started life as two boat seat pedestals. I was easily able to boil water over the chimney with a little grate. The sooty teapot got its soot elsewhere. This stove is smokeless. Once you get it going, it has a constant chimney burn.

I vote for gold metalflake on the wheels.

I am plodding along alright. I decided that with 3 vehicles running I had no reason to rush. BUT, this season has been the wettest in 50 years since I moved here. Lots of rain days, and it just started again as I sit here typing... This global warming/cooling/changing Is making us less a desert and more tropical. Things are rusting faster ;-( Anyhow, the metal is cut and there’s no going back now.

I finally got the new frame rails cut, notched, bent, and clamped up in approximate position. Tomorrow I can clean it up a bit more, square it up, and tack it together.

SAFETY It’s all in your head . . .

Yeah, those bits are amazing! I expect them to snap off, then they bend over 90°.

I haven’t had to wrestle anybody since I was a school boy, But I was a regular skater with a huge collection of boards, right up until the time I decided to start building bicycles. My 69th birthday is about 6 weeks off. I think I will tune up my favorite board and take my chances. BTW, I don’t do any stupid skateboard stunts. I ride strictly for fitness & distance. I don’t do serious downhill either.

This thread is about the worst car parts you ever bought. I have been pretty lucky, except rebuilt Ford starters, but here is the real deal: This 50 year old sticker on a fruitcake tin is the only remaining proof that I once owned the worst aftermarket stick shift ever sold. It frequently slipped into the neutral position while the transmission was in second, meaning you were stuck in second, until you stuck your arm under the car and shifted the trans to neutral. I sold the car to a guy who decided not to bother. He drove from Reno down to Sacramento in second and cooked the engine. Good riddance to him, my high school built Ford coupe, and that awful Spark-O-Matic stick!

As it turns out, the inner rails of my jig interfered with the crossmember assembly. I redesigned it a bit and removed them. I also redesigned the crossmember itself. It needed to provide a body mount for the upper cowl, plus support the steering column, provide tunnel access, and mount the master cylinder and reservoir. I cut the big holes with a flycutter. That plate came from some folding RV steps. These access hole covers were cut, bent and flanged from a desk drawer divider. Four little bits of conduit made the clamps. I welded all the corners after stripping paint. The bent 1” tubing came from an electric powered chair. The straight 1.25” tube came from the Brian Wind Trainer. Red flanged plates came from a Harbor Freight welding cart. I made the tunnel closure plates to also clamp the fuel and brake lines. My welding table was once the shelf for a massive 1930s typewriter. Everything gets TIG welded. The electro-seam-welded tubing had some weak seam welding, and popped open here. I ended up re-welding all the seams. It was either that or scrap the whole weldment. You can see it clearly where it is clamped, and here I have started the seam welding. Here it is on the chassis. The seams aren’t all done yet. I need to square up the tunnel a bit more and tack this on, so I can start fitting the rails.

At 53 I was an overstuffed mouse-potato. Decades of good food and overtime desk work made me a mess. I put away the computer games and started skating again at 53 years old, and did it until 63. I lost 70 lbs in the first 18 mos. I could barely go 1/4 mile on the first trial. 5 years on I was doing a 20 miler on weekends, when my Dr. said I’d wind up like achilles. The muscles were ok but my tendons were giving out. I skate seldom now. Knees are getting thin. I’m almost 69, and for 5 years I have been riding bicycles more and more. It is tough sometimes. I still feel sports injuries from the 1960s and 1970s. But I still weigh 170ish and love it.

It officially got down to 33F here in Clovis last night, but still no real freeze. It was the coldest so far this year. I don’t care. I can weld in any temps, as long as it’s not raining.

At my high school in Minnesota, they closed the school when it got to -40 out on the Muskeg. Did we stay indoors? Hell no! I remember kids ice-skating & riding snowmobiles at -40. I was out there with a toboggan delivering the newspapers. They did not show up one cold day. The printers had closed down in Duluth from the cold. Power lines snapped or something. But I was a kid! You couldn’t get me out there now on a bet.

We have had Remarkably warm weather here too, but it is chilly and raining lightly right now. No outside welding for me tonight. No inside welding either. My shed has no fume extraction. Really stopping me is my 68 year old bones. I get cold fast. Then I get grumpy, or start drinking brandy. That just delays the grumpiness. ?

I put a different kind of catch can on my motorcycle. It’s more of a little vial, really. Every time I ride it and park it, she pukes out one drop of oil from the water pump weep tube.

The van looks great. But if those orange straps are the same ones I bought, beware. The hardware is OK, but the fabric strap is junk.