Sunday, March 16, 2014

Blog #13, Sunday March 16, 2014, Toyota & Bus Related

Hello Everyone, 
Well it has been nearly a month since I last posted, I have been busier than a one arm paper hanger as they say, the time is just flying by on us all and with the new time change it seems the time is flying by faster, to me anyhow.   I hope to find everyone doing alright, getting ready for SPRING we all hope, getting our couches ready for rallies, traveling etc. and just getting out of the house finally.  Even in the South Carolina area we have had one hell of a winter, but it is getting better now.  The Daffodils are in bloom right this moment, they are always in a hurry to say hello were here!!

A quite a lot has happened since I last wrote.  I am back on the bus as of day before yesterday, I finally finished torquing my bell housing on my bus engine, I assembled the new flywheel on to the engine and torqued that as well.  For those newbies doing this here is a tip I found out on your fly wheel assembly.   The flywheel will only go on one way, it may look like it goes on two ways but it does not.  I assembled mine at first, All alone as usual, a sort of bastard to do but I got it on, but the flywheel would not go on the two line up pins correctly.  It looked like the pins were lower than the holes, what the hell I thought!!!  I studied and studied and thought, no way would they make it so the flywheel has to be rotated 180 deg. to fit correctly would they?  Well after much debate in my mind why the manufacturer would do such an asinine thing I figured out how to rotate the damn flywheel 180 deg. alone.   Walla the darn ole flywheel slipped right on the pins and the spacer that goes on before the bolts also has to go on just one way as well for the bolts to be assembled correctly.   So if you assemble your flywheel and it does not go on easily or look correctly it isn't!!  Take it from me. 

After rotating the spacer correctly and assembling the bolts with the proper DD thread lube designed for these new flywheel bolts I was able to torque them to the spec and this part of the operation is now done.  I cannot do much more to the engine now until my friend Mike Cezmat comes over to put in the new N65 injectors and adjusts them for me.  So I spent the rest of the day planning how I am going to mount my radiator to test my engine out of the bus with gages etc.  This is just something I wanted to do to test my engine before putting it in the bus after all the things found to be safe and be sure I did all the things I did right especially the blower part etc.  I am all excited to do this test run, it will take a week or more to make up the test stand but it will be fun to design etc.  I love doing that stuff and who cares how long it will take, I am the only one involved here.  

Now to what I have been doing the previous  couple of weeks was still working on my 1982 Toyota Corolla Station wagon project.  Well I got in another can of worms there too but she is coming great, I am so proud of this car, I will post photos also after I get her back from the final shop about Wednesday of next week.  Here is a sort of quick break down of what happened but now I also have a plan that I am so damn excited about I almost need to wear a depends to tell you about.  First the car situation then information on my NEW PLAN. 

As I told you on my last post on the Toyota, I sent out my old carburetor to be rebuilt by a group I found on the internet, Guaranteed Carburetors of Largo Fl. They did a fine job, the carburetor was all shiny, everything worked smoothly and they took only 2 days to do it and it cost only $215 with shipping included!!!  Lifetime Warranty!!.  I put the carburetor back on, the fellow I asked to do it never showed back up after giving him a deposit.  I always get screwed, good thing I am not female, I would have a flock of kids by now!!  Anyhow, how hard could this be, only thing is there was about 30 vacuum hoses that I replaced with new blue silicone hoses I also bought on line.  I took my time on this, took all day so I would not get confused, what a freaking mess but I did it.  I put on the carburetor and finished connecting everything as it was originally to the carburetor as I received it.

Here is some photos after all of how she looked with carburetor installed which I had rebuilt, now all that will change with new Weber carburetor, will post photos of that installation when I get the car next week. 

Look at this freaking mess of vacuum hoses, good god!!



This is all connected up with original equipment, this will all change now with Weber carburetor






I did a lot of things previous to hooking up the carburetor I will list in a moment or two here but to continue here is what else happened.  I put in 5 gals of gas in the gas tank mixed with 2 oz. of Marvel MIracle Oil in the fuel tank, put one oz. directly in the carburetor of raw fuel after hooking up the recharged battery. I took a very heavy bath towel and soaked it in water and placed it on the car fender where I could grab it in a hurry if needed to put out a fire if needed.  I then  had Linda get into our new beautiful little Toyota, turn the key on and walla the little turd started right up and run, sort of fast because of the idle I guess but she run and sounded great, to me, what in hell do I know?  But then I started to hear like a burping noise and I listen for unusual noises all the time, this can be bad but I found out very good most times to be on the alert to do.   Anyhow I also noticed the Catalytic Converter getting super hot, it was glowing red so I had Linda shut down the engine immediately.  Actually, I almost puked!! 

After calming down I had Linda restart the car with the air filter in place and everything connected like it should be, I was assuming that the car would start without a shot of raw fuel in the carburetor as the fuel pump was pumping fuel to the carburetor now.  Linda restarted the car for me and the car took right off, I did two back flips, almost hurt myself of course, I was having medical problems with kidney stones at this time as well and it was getting real bad for me to concentrate with the damn pain in the groin and my kidney.  JC it is horrible to get old!!

Well the car still run fast, I turned the idle down a little but the car still garbled air and I knew something was still not right.  The Catalytic Converter again got real hot so we shut down again. I sort of knew the converter was clogged as went through something like that with our RV  a couple of years earlier on a trip to get the spare engine, thats another story though.  so I went to O'reilly's store next to us where I get my parts and told them of what happened and they told me the converter really sounded plugged or the spark plugs were hooked up wrong, there is only 4 and they are numbered.  So that was not the problem.  So I made a decision, the Catalytic Converter is no longer plugged!!!   Linda Started up the car after unplugging the catalytic converter and the car run a little better for sure but there was still a burping or sucking sound of air.  

Now remember or maybe I did not tell you before but the Previous Owner himself or had someone else rebuild the carburetor or tried to and the guy I hired in the first place said the carburetor was really messed up inside and he could not repair it with the parts he had.  So that is how I ended up having to have it rebuilt by guys online after I found them.  Thank God for that too.  Well I believe also that whoever did that may have gotten the  vacuum lines messed up and I just followed suit and without a schematic I had no idea what to hell I had to work with.  I tried for hours to go on the internet to get a schematic for the vacuum lines but everyone wants $40-70 damn dollars and I just got pissed off, they all want to make a huge buck to me and so I decided to go on line to get a repair book just for my 1982 Toyota Corolla and not one that was Generic for several years like I had already bought for $26.  Well I found one for sale on ebay, of coarse I did, $50 so I ordered it to start all over doing the vacuum lines again from scratch.   Well the book is still not here at this moment, should of been here on Saturday but it is not.  

I went to O'reillys on Friday to get other items and a black fellow was there and overheard me complaining about the book I bought  that covers vacuum lines for 1984 and up but the book cover said from 1980 up.  So I got screwed AGAIN!!  No chance to get my money back on the book.  Well this fellow heard me and told me of a guy here in Greenville that deals only in Toyotas and is about my age, and can sure help me out, not cheap but can fix anything once and for all.  Sometimes you have to just say, what kind of nut want to save money all the time and get screwed all the time trying to do just that.  So Linda and I went looking for his shop.  He was in a hidden area almost but I found him, and man it was like walking into a candy store at the age of 6 years old to me.  There was stuff all over the place, stacked up 7 ft. high, old stuff, valuable stuff you cannot find anyplace else.  I bet he had parts for Jesus's chariot there to be honest.  I hit it right off with this guy, he was a retired airplane captain and this is his retirement hobby and I have no idea where he gets it stuff but he has a bunch.   Again, I almost needed a depends, I got all excited to meet this guy.  We talked over a hour and 1/2 and he gained my confidence within 5 minutes.   Everything he said from that moment on was golden concerning our Toyota to me. 

I told him everything I had done up to that moment we spoke and then he said he could fix my vacuum leaks etc, but he suggested something that threw me a curve that took me about 10 more minutes after leaving his shop to decide to do.  He convinced me to take off my newly rebuilt carburetor, put on a (Weber) carburetor which because of its design does not require all those vacuum lines and vacuum pumps etc.   so to make a long story short, yea right Gary, I decided to bite the bullet and brought him our Toyota to have the new Weber Carburetor installed, take off all the pollution stuff no longer needed here in SC and get some power back to this great car.  He was going to do all this work and with the cost of the carburetor for $530, INSTALLED correctly by him.  So we went for it and now I wait for this work to be completed. 

Who ever the previous owner was also installed a new fuel pump and I learned a new thing here as well.  There is a 1/4" fiber spacer that goes between the engine and the fuel pump that is supposed to be installed to make the fuel pump work correctly but it was not on my car.  I bought a new fuel pump and installed it exactly like the previous owner did, and that also was causing problems with the camshaft and proper working of the fuel pump.  so now with all thing being adjusted and installed correctly this care ought to run like a bear or like she did right off the factory floor when made. So I am learning lessons all around but it pays to listen to those with more experience that really do know what they are doing and I hope we will be without mechanical problems on our Toyota down the road for many years. 

Here is a list of the newly installed items I did on our Toyota that should make here refreshed, and ready to run tip top shape. 
1) New fuel pump
2) New Distributor cap and rotor
3) New NGK plugs
4) New but now rearranged or not needed silicone vacuum lines
5) New Weber Carburetor
6) New Thermostat installed after complete engine flushing, coolant was nearly black, install new coolant.
8) New V belts installed
9) New oil filter and new oil with 1qt. Marvel Mystery Oil mixed in
10)New PVC valve
11) New valve cover gasket
12)New heat riser tubing replaced, will not be needed with new carburetor installation
13)New battery tray installed
14)New Front wheel bearings
15)New front wheel rotors
16) New front wheel pads
17)New rear wheel brake pads, rebuilt kits for springs and plungers
18)New self brake bleeding kit, bled all brakes

That is all I have to report on the car up to date so now I just have to wait till about wednesday to get it back. 

Friday I had surgery in my GROIN area, no picnic there, still having a lot of pain and sex is the last thing on my mind, well maybe I still think about it anyhow.  But I had 3 kidney stones piled up on top of each other, about 10 mm in size how ever big that is.  But I am still having a lot of pain from the instruments they shoved up my penis, so here is another lesson for you to listen to you guys.  Do not dehydrate yourself at our age, late 60's etc.  It is easy to get kidney stones, caused by too much Calcium, eating too much sodium, and sweet tea.  Drink lots of water every day, every damn day.  This surgery will be expensive, painful as it still is and I have another one forming on the right side but hope to flush it down the toilet with water soon, do not dehydrate, period!!!

Now for my new plan I am overly excited about.  I know I will never get our bus done as soon as I should have in the past.  I also know now thanks to Obama and all the other cronies that have ruined any dreams of lots of us making cross country trips camping etc. we will have to change those plans.  I will not tap into my 401K to do this so I have made up my mind and approached Linda just today with this thought.  After our Toyota is proven to be reliable on a few long distance trips I want to purchase a (TEARDROP CAMPER) LIGHT WEIGHT, the "Littleguy" kind that has cupboards in it etc. and is very well built but very light weight.  I want to make a cross country trip with my wife, two chihuahuas and two guinea pigs and go to Alaska as that part of my bucket list I am becoming obsessed with.   This is becoming of more importance especially with the loss of another great busnut, Arthur Griffin and a few more people of my age that we know real well.  I just have to do this trip and have the time of our lives doing it even in a miniature camper like the tear drop camper.  The cost of traveling will be way, way affordable and sounds like fun as well.  I have time to make a plan, purchase a camper of that size and weight to minimize any drag on the toyota as we travel and just do something out of the box.  The bus would of been great but I am not giving BP or those who get the cuts from us getting screwed with the high cost of fuel any more profit than I have to and this is my plan.  I know you will think me nuts, but just think about the fun we can still have, we will not have all the amenities our bus will but we will have the 6 of us and the rest of our lives to look at all our photos and the blog I will  write of our travel to Alaska to remember when we no longer can do anything like this again.  Life it too short not to go out of the box if you are still able to.  

Well now I have to find out the requirements for our animals to go through Canada, all the paper work involved and shots etc. a route to take, I have to find a teardrop camper, I will not build one.  I need to continue working on the bus until our trip materializes, in the time of year recommended by those having done this before too.  I need to gather much information and am excited as hell about it.  I will not let any, I mean any negativity comments deter me from this plan, I hope to get support from those knowing us and knowing my attitude that if I am not dead there is nothing I can't do except brain surgery and circumcisions, period!!  LOL. 
I am open to anyone with ideas and constructive suggestions of places and routes to take and places to see.  I hope we will get to meet many of you on our trip and when this materializes for sure and we do leave I hope you will tune in to our journey and maybe encourage you too to say to hell with it and lets just do it as part of your personal (bucket list accomplishment).  

Well, I think I have burned out my brain this afternoon and this evening, this took quite a while to construct, thank God I can type.  I hope I did not bore you absolutely to death. 
Don't forget to tell those you love that you do, and MEAN IT!!
Garylee 

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