Gas, tires, oil.

The whole family is traveling up to the Maker Faire this weekend, if you want to meet up, drop me an email at 445supermag at gmail dot com.

I have previously posted about my quest to visit as many sites as I can that contain the word “devil” in their name. I just got back from several days at Death Valley and added several to my list. I’ll post about them later, but today I’ll show one not listed on any map. American WWII airmen blamed gremlins, but the British term “The Devil’s Spanner” seems appropriate here. I wanted to visit the Devil’s Racetrack, home of the mysterious moving rocks. The map lists the road as designed for “high clearance vehicles” and 4x4s. Truthfully, a car can make it, the problem is that it is 37 miles of the worst washboard road in existance. I could see the bottom edge of my dash vibrating about 3″ in amplitude at speed. Slow sucked and so did fast, but at least it was over sooner. When I got to the racetrack

I heard a clanging noise underneath, both sides of the exhaust had broken off behind the mufflers and were banging the driveshaft.

Not a big deal, I just unbolted them and threw them in the back.
After having a great time at the racetrack (look for an upcoming post with lots of pics) we headed back. During the last mile I noticed that the steering didn’t feel right and the brakes had lost there powerboost. When I pulled into the parking lot there was a spray of oil down the side of the truck; the pressure side powersteering line had come unscrewed. Broken off or blown out I can see, but not unscrewed. So while I’m preparing to fix that I hear a hissing noise, a rear tire had gotten a stone cut and was going flat.

So I’m standing there surveying the damage and this guy walks up and says “I see you just came out of the racetrack, I’ve heard you need special tires to avoid flats, do you think my rental SUV will make it?”. My reply “I can’t think of a better vehicle to take down that road than a rental car”.

Sorry about not posting this week, but I’ve been working like crazy to get the suburban and the camper trailer done so we can to Death Valley tomorrow. In the past month I’ve replaced both axles on the suburban(and not just swaps either, the torch and welder were involved), installed one of the old electric brake controllers (the ones they don’t sell anymore that tap into the brakeline) and put on a trailer sway control mount. On the trailer side I’ve got the brakes going (the damn thing was wired with wire nuts, corrosion had turned the ends of the wires to dust) and installed some 12v sockets inside for lights and stuff. Plus about a million little things (checking fluid levels, belt tension, tire pressure…). I’ll post next wednesday when I get back (no wifi in death vallely I assume).

The take away message here is you can’t just smear grease on a bearing. You have to force grease between the rollers. They make a tool so you can use a grease gun, but doing it by hand is much more fun (and satisfying). First, get a big gob of bearing grease on the palm of one hand.

Then, in little bites, scrape the grease off your palm with the outer edge of the bearing’s roller cage. Here I’m doing the front wheel bearings for the dana 44 I’m putting in the suburban.

You know you’ve got it when you can see grease come out the top of the bearing like above. Then rotate the bearing till you get the whole thing.

Previously I showed the cuts I made chopping the top on my ‘52 chevy pickup. This pic shows the weld on the back of the cab. I cut along the seam at the bottom, since the back of the cab is nearly vertical I just cheated the corner. You can see the vertical cuts in the 1″ band under the weld. I just made the cuts with a abrasive blade on a hand grinder and bumped it in till it lined up.

I cut through the window so it would still be centered top to bottom. Next time I’ll show the doors and the new firewall.