The Dutch method of exhaust leak repair

Say you've found yourself with an Eagle that had far too attractive a cat converter for someone else to pass up.  Though you're now minus a cat, they were nice enough to replace it with a straight pipe, but weren't bright enough to effectively seal the switched runner tube connected to the manifold.  You'd find yourself with quite the exhaust leak, despite the thief's best attempt being made to clamp the tube shut with a parts store clearance rack set of $1.50 vise grips.  Here's what to do when that day inevitably comes.

1) Go to the grocery store to get dinner.

2) Before going inside, mix up a generous helping of JB Kwik.

3) Find an extra finger.

4) Break it off, turn it inside-out, slip it over a meat finger, and slather your exothermically-reacting goo all over it.

5) Get distracted by how impressively warm it is.

6) Remember you have a very short set time, and that the heat of the exhaust tube isn't going to help.

7) Scramble to get your sticky finger jabbed up at the end of the tube, while having no regard for personal safety or cleanliness (as per usual).

8) Roll the extra finger off the meat finger and onto the tube, making sure to mash as much already-set epoxy into the tube as possible.

Note: my extra finger rolled off before I could get a picture.

9) Go into the store and get dinner.

10) Return to your Eagle and be amazed that the exhaust leak is gone, though expect to be doing more of this kind of thing.  Kwik Weld is only supposed to be able to withstand temps of 230°.

Working like a whole mule to write this half-assed post

Found the cause of the tcase leak I last wrote about was the output shaft yoke seal being dry, hard, and leaky, the yoke having deep grooves inline with the seal springs, and a spline washer that was rotted and poorly installed.  The yoke wasn't fully seated, as well.

As you can see, the seal replacement is going well.  It'll be better tomorrow, when I return to the place where Eagle is camping across town, with the shop seal puller in hand.

Did a yard run in hopes of finding a suitable yoke, didn't, but discovered the existence of speedi-sleeves and how absurdly proceed priced they are.

Also got new trans lines for the Gremlin (kindly donated by a mid-90's Grand Cherokee).

I've been soaking in transmission fluid for the past three days. Going to sleep now so I can make it four tomorrow.

Boxes are bridges to fences

Awareness is kind of a problem.  See, we base all of our decisions on it, have no way to escape it without putting ourselves in some degree of danger, and arguably case to effectively exist in its absence.  The real fuck of the situation is that awareness is just a product of our constant internal comparison of pieces of information.  As though that's not enough, it's not even "true" information, since it's internally-recorded and based  on our recollection of that information.  It really amazes me that we're able to get anything done at all when I consider how much of a fundamental challenge to effective action that condition presents.

Even though navel gazing is a great way to figure out the most expedient way to talk out of your ass, I promise I have a real point to make here:

My transfer case only had about 3oz of fluid come out when I drained it.  

Seriously.  3oz is a lot less than the 2.5 pints it has the capacity to carry, and the groaning, hopping nastiness that I thought was the transmission dying, or the torque converter not being secured to the flexplate, or whatever other ideas I had started over 1,000 miles ago.  It's incredible that things worked at all.  It's also incredible that my tcase housing didn't fragment like a party popper on the highway or any of the thousands of steep-ass hills I traverse all day, every day.

And here's what that paragraph has to do with the one I started this update with:

It took a long damn time for me to figure out that the problems were coming from the tcase, due in no small part to my lack of familiarity with troubleshooting and investigation flows for 4WD/AWD machines.  Coupling that with the experiences I've had with the transmission in the past, I had a pretty large gap in my awareness of what was actually occurring.  As a result, this con/perceptual void kept me chasing what I knew of that could potentially explain the behavior I was encountering.

Form was brought forth from the void, though, when I lucked out and actually managed to get a good listen to the sound when it happened today. It was distinctly coming from under the car, where I knew the tcase to reside.  Once I got where I was going, I set about changing the fluid and just got done taking the first steps hill I've taken at a speed over 15mph in quite a while.  It felt effortless, I felt good about it, and I think things may be moving ahead without binding up.  It would've been nice to get this fixed much earlier in the game, but at least it happened before I lost the tcase while driving in traffic.

I guess that the end result is a pretty unpleasant experience may have been avoided, and this reminds me of how many problems are directly tied to shortcomings in awareness.  I'm just happy that the issue turned out to be one that I could discover a cause for, and the only barrier to doing it was my lack of information.  

This experience has kind of underscored my objection to opaque digital systems being a mandatory organ in all modern cars.  While my preference is to not have to do network/computer troubleshooting as part of vehicle maintenance and repair, my need to understand how to care and feed for over a ton of steel that is capable of traveling at 100+mph is even more important.  Proprietary digital controller systems are intentionally made to be voids in your awareness.  This is why you have to pay through the nose to get software upgrades and other intangibles that sometimes play a very important part in ensuring the vehicle is operating safely or at all.  No auto manufacturer will give you the documentation on the circuits and code that make up your vehicle's *CM, and it's impractical to impossible for most people to get that information from any alternative source.

If some people end up getting their way, it'll eventually be impossible or illegal to repair or modify your own vehicle.  Hell, you most likely won't even be able to even drive it yourself, despite it costing you two or more years worth of your annual income.  The future sucks.

What's this update share in common with a sack of pea gravel?

They're both full of a crapload of little useful stuff that's set to spill all over the place and make a mess without giving any notice.

So let's get this show on the road!  Here's some developments, odds, and ends in no particular order:

⚡Getting the Gremlin's exhaust routing figured out to accommodate the true dual exhaust side pipes just became a lot easier for me after paying attention to the plumbing under Eagle during some exhaust leak patching excursions.  See, as luck would have it, the presence of the t-case on Eagle demands the routing of the exhaust from the driver's side (where the 258 exhaust manifold resides), across the body (between oil pan sump and inspection cover), to passenger side, where it makes a 90° bend before meeting the cat.  For rigidity, the cat incorporates a bracket in its front collector flange that acts as a hanger and bolts to the transmission skid plate (or thereabouts. Memory is slightly fuzzy on the exact fastening point).

Though the hanger design won't be directly useful, Eagle's exhaust does provide me with a ton of useful reference data for the placement and radius of bends for routing exhaust to the passenger side.  Enough so that, when the stock plumbing is taken into account with the placement of the collectors for the header-style manifolds, I should be able to verify whether it's feasible to get these segments mandrel bent at a muffler shop that has templates for each vehicle.

I'm gonna wander to a shop today or tomorrow to see if I can't get a ballpark estimate of what the cost would be for sections from each, from collector to cat.  I reckon that a little bit of grinding/bandsaw, hammering, and some strategic placement of flex couplers, I should get sorted out at a fraction of the price I'd pay for it to be done up at a custom shop.  There's also the serviceability aspect of basing the plumbing off well-documented (please god, let that assumption be correct) templates that are widely available, versus a custom job that will require measurement, tracking, and manual bending to fab replacement segments for.

⚡⚡ Eagle's TC bolts were checked and tightened a bit.  My half-assed method to check for whether or not a bolt was loose was to get a wrench on it and turn while grabbing the flexplate with my other hand.  If the bolt head turned, it was loose and I cranked down on it until the engine crank & flexplate turned.  If the plate turned, I kept turning the wrench until the next bolt was accessible. 

While admittedly far from correct, it was a good enough method to allow me to find that two bolts opposite from one another were about 1/4 turn out.  That strikes me as plenty of slack to produce the knock at the volume I was hearing it at.  As you may have guessed from the tense used in my  previous sentence, I've yet to hear the sound return since making that adjustment.

The groan at takeoff, however, persists.  I heard it yesterday during a rare moment of my having the windows rolled up and my stereo silent, and suspicions relating to the hub are starting to return.  It's tough to say, though, as it's nowhere near as pronounced as it had been.  It could well just be TC shudder (though I doubt it, since it doesn't happen at higher speeds/RPM).  Next step will be to pull the CV axle stub I've been using since they broke a few months back and see if the splines are stripping out.  If so, that would explain the sound, feel, and diminishing intensity of the groan.  I'd prefer that I catch that before the inside of the hub wallers out, though.

⚡⚡⚡ The F150 that we've been tending to is up, running, and rolling along.  There were a couple slight complications, but I have to say that it was a pleasure to work on.  We may have a little more work coming in from that particular truck, since there were a few things noticed that really deserve some attention, but as far as the idle issues it was having, it was partly from the carb and mostly from a deteriorated manifold gasket that had been causing a nasty manifold vac leak.

The YF's metering rod and jet were found to be pretty messed up during the rebuild efforts.  A channel had been worn into the jet passage, either through the rod being bent during handling at some time in the distant past, or due to a setup error when the metering rod was last installed (maybe both).  Searching online for a replacement jet was no problem, however the metering rods are flatly unobtainable as replacement components.

By grace or curse, I've discovered I have a talent for finding things that are normally in the zone of impossible to source.  Unfortunately, this talent doesn't really extend to things I have a direct need for.  This makes me a pretty handy go-to guy for folks in need of weird shit and obscure parts, so I went to the closest yard to see if I could find any YFs to pull or pull single components from. 

My first attempt netted squat.  There was a total of 5 carburetors (domestic, of course.  Didn't bother looking at imports, though in hindsight it might have been worth checking.  I wouldn't be surprised if Carter supplied a carb or two for imports to employ in the American market.), 4 of them being quadrajets, and the other being a single-barrel Mopar. . . thing.  So I loaded up in the Eagle and took a 30 mile run to the next yard, where I found nothing again.

On the first pass, that is.  On my second run through, I decided to check under the hood of an '89 Ranger, and bam!  Found a picked-at YF that still had it's metering junk, and in perfect condition to boot!  After that, the rebuild was simple (after I remembered the bottom level screws thread in bottom-up, not top-down).

Getting the manifold gasket replaced actually turned out to be a much faster and easier affair than rebuilding and configuring the carb.  I was sincerely amazed.  Not a single broken fastener, no forever-scrubbing off of the mating surfaces, and not a single crack in the intake or exhaust.  It went how you always think of jobs going when you're quickly running through order-of-operations in your head when planning on doing something, and not the doomsday clusterfuck that a lot of tasks end up actually playing out as.

So that's about where we're at.  I'm having a little bit of a challenge with making some decisions with sourcing flexplate bolts for the Gremlin, but that's a different story.

If you think you found the problem, yoke's on u!

One thing I can't be accused of lately is having a surplus of free time.  I mean, I guess someone could make that assertion, but no way in hell would it hold up in court.  That's why my updates have fallen in the band of "infrequent to rara enough to start assuming the project went dead".  My odd jobs have consumed far much more of my time than I think anyone could reasonably assume, and Eagle has become very cranky as this never-ending winter continues to grind down on this god-forsaken territory.  These factors combined have slowed my progress on the Gremlin to the pace of a snail on barbiturates.  Despite this, I still have some news to report.

The last few days have been spent by my friend and I investigating and attempting to remedy the cause behind a 1978 F150 with a 4.9L I6 being unable to hold idle.  I'll bet I'm not giving anything away by saying that it was determined to be caused by the Carter YF that it came equipped with.  After a rebuild and attempted tune, idle is now maintained on both circuits, though low RPM is accompanied by loss of vacuum, making the slow idle circuit require a much higher RPM than is advisable.  Consequently, we may have further work ahead of us in the form of installation of a new manifold gasket.

I've also managed to install the Gremlin's flexplate, though my clearance situation demands an open-ended torque wrench.  I'm hoping to find a clever solution that doesn't hinge on spending more money, but I'm not sure that's in the cards. 

Speaking of things around the transmission and clever solutions, I came across this video that would've been a godsend when I was pulling the trans and will be a huge help when I finally get it bolted back up.  The video covers taking care of those damn top three bell bolts, and the access via the firewall is the same for my '78 Gremlin with AC (not a big surprise there).  Really handy info- check it out here:

    https://youtu.be/Hf3usGA0-78

While Gremlin sits neglected, Eagle is still playing little brother.  Recent developments and persistent behaviors have steered my attention with it towards it's flexplate, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

If I didn't mention it, the problem that prompted me to do the trans fluid change was a resonant groan that would come from. . . somewhere when I was moving uphill under load, accompanied by a lack of power.  If I didn't let off the gas, this would be followed by a hard shudder.  The fluid change had no real effect, and the behavior was intermittent.  Since I usually drive with my window rolled down, it began to sound like it stemmed from the front left wheel.

I checked the torque on the spindle/axle nuts on all four wheels and found that the suspect wheel was slightly below spec.  The issue persisted.

I thought that it could be the slip yoke, so I greased the hell out of it.  No change.

I had some u joints that fit, and Eagle was overdue for a change, so I got that settled.  It made zero difference.

I should mention at this point that the knock I was hoping had been coming from the AC compressor returned.  This is important because I found a video that featured a 4.0L Jeep demonstrating a condition that I had previously never heard of: torque converter to flexplate knock.  Suddenly, all of the problems I thought previously to be unrelated, the bad radiator, the knock, and the slug groan could all explain a cascading failure.  If a torque converter is cooking and ballooning because of a failing radiator, it could make the flexplate to crack, or at least work the bolts loose.

Tomorrow I'll be pulling the inspection cover and counting my blessings that the cat is still pulled to aid in other troubleshooting efforts.  Reason being is the small switched exhaust pipe that runs right in the way of the inspection area won't be an issue.  As an aside, it's pretty irritating that this piping is run like that and the service manuals say jack all about how you're supposed to deal with it in a stock configuration.

Regardless, here's hoping that the lack of usual symptoms of a failing torque converter means that I just have to tighten the bolts that attach it to the flexplate. . .  Good god, do I hope that's all that I need to do.

Putting your best face forward

Finally managed to pull the flex plate from the Gremlin today.  This was after a discovery last night, where it became clear to me that someone (presumably a very crafty burglar) had carefully unbolted the cat from the downpipe flange and cut said flange and the cat's exit pipe with a small reciprocating saw, leaving me to do a parts store run or two and a trip to my friend's house across town with no muffler.  The sound was pretty awesome.

Exhaust repair was the name of the game prior to this evening, as well as driveline greasing at the slip yoke and ujoints in the hopes of correcting a hard shudder from the rear on acceleration.  I'd share any pictures or lessons learned if I had any, but the closest I can muster is "don't do exhaust work on a car on the ground when it's hailing outside.  It sucks."  Since I guess you're supposed to keep rolling when the dice are hot, I trucked on over to the shop after Eagle maintenance and found that it was a damn good thing I decided the flexplate had to go.

In case my crude attempts at making things clear isn't successful, let me clarify by saying that the crack I had noticed was accompanied by three more that I hadn't.  Really, it looks like this fella would've kept working just long enough to give me a reeeeeeeeally bad time. 

Getting the plate out wasn't as easy as I would've liked, mostly because of where the crossbar that my lift is designed to use comes across right behind the transmission bellhouse.  This left me with just barely enough room to fit a socket and ratchet in, and not a bit more than what I needed.

All the same, it really wasn't too bad.  I think the real challenge will be torquing the bolts to spec once installation time comes.  I probably would've had an easier time with the whole thing if I'd used jack stands, but that would've entailed a whole other kind of mess I'm happy to not deal with.

Once I rejoined the surface world, i compared the old flexplate to the older flexplate.  Everything lined up, neither of them had holes where the other didn't, and they we're both made of metal.  Looks good to me.  If I end up having any problems with the replacement plate, I'll likely get the 4.0l plate and starter, which will do me favors as far as parts-availability goes.

I have an update that I'll post as soon as I'm sitting still in a place where I have a WiFi connection for long enough to write it up.  It's concerning the transmission fluid & filter change/low band adjustment I did for Eagle a couple of days ago, so isn't terribly amazing, but does have a few surprises.  Until next time, if it takes me a while to post an update, it's probably because I'm either hard at work or dead.

Go to hell, air compressor.

No updates for Gremlin- yet.  I expect that we should see some developments really soon, though.  If you actually manage to read this with any regularity. . . Well, keep doing that, I guess.  Something's rew bound to happen at some point.  I can be sure of that much.

This isn't to say that car stuff hasn't been getting done, though.  Eagle's been getting a fair degree of attention lately, though I admit the inspiration hasn't been without fear that it's going to die horribly in some way.

There's been a really crappy-sounding clatter coming from the engine bay for quite some time (about a year, I guess?) that has been a pain to diagnose through and around.  My guess was a bad clutch on the AC compressor, since a stethoscope allowed me to trace the source to that part.  I know that it's not difficult to test to see if a compressor clutch is screwed up, but I've had a mental block in the way when it came to actually doing it.  See, by my thinking, doing that work would be either troubleshooting the AC system I could care less about, or chasing after a sound I was pretty sure I'd already tracked down.  In so many words, I'd be needlessly pissing away time I don't have.

Since I've never had a need, want, nor desire for AC up here, all the compressor represented to me was a big, heavy pain in the ass that ate my gasoline and got in the way every time I had to do anything in the right half of the engine bay.  I figured I could cut it out of the belt configuration and then pull the damn thing out when I felt like it.  The only caveat was the fact that the alternator is indirectly driven by the crank pulley via the compressor pulley, so I got a dual slot pulley I pulled off an old yard Ford some time back and a new belt (the one that eventually fit is Duralast part number number 17403), and set to confirming my suspicions and increasing my mileage.

Things have been working fine since doing the bypass the other night, though at the expense of 10 hours overnight in the Asbestos Caverns.  The modification isn't really that difficult, mind, it's just that it was one of those "the impossible becomes the standard in pursuit of all wrong things coming to occur."  In other words, it was a hellish night of me being tormented by circumstance, my own stupidity, and constant sabotage and interference on the part of that goddamned compressor.

You might think I'm being melodramatic by accusing a broken inanimate object of having and leveraging independent agency to the end of purposefully subverting my mundane efforts to maintain a vehicle.  In my defense, I ask you to consider whether you've ever encountered an object that was as directly antagonistic and rude as this:

Since then, the sound has been gone and the alternator seems to be charging just fine.  With some luck, that'll be the new normal.

Driving myself crazy, refueling often

Eagle was thirsty.  All the time.  I've been getting 9mpg since the winter gas change over, so Eagle's been seeing me after class for a while so we could work on bringing this average up.

After changing my motor oil, being vigilant about checking air pressure of my tires, cleaning spark plugs, checking timing, voodoo, hoodoo, begging, adjusting my carb mixture, giving up, and so on, I had one of those "should've been one of the first things to change" revelations: maybe I should quit using Safeway gas.

I didn't use their gas with the expectation of it being high quality.  It was on my shop route and easier to get to than other places.  Laziness and the illusion of saving money.  I decided to fill up with Shell over a week ago, then decided to fill up last night when I was on the way to the house but not wanting to get back to the house yet.  In other words, I filled up 3 days later than usual because I felt like it, not because I needed to.

The result?  I'm now getting 12.43mpg city, as opposed to the slightly under 9mpg I got from the last Safeway tank.  Keep in mind that this is with slightly saggy tires, a dirty air filter, winter gas, and a few hundred pounds of weight (probably about 600lbs, including the dead weight behind the wheel).  I've got to admit, I didn't expect that dramatic a change for an extra .20/gal. 

I also didn't expect to find I was paying so much more for shitty fuel.  For $4 more per tank, I get 70 more miles of travel.  That's a ludicrous difference!

    Shell: $64/20gal tank (248.6mi)

    Safeway: $82.86/27.62gal (amount needed to travel equal distance at a mileage rate of 9mpg)

So I've been paying about $20 every time I try to save $4.  Anyone need a financial advisor?

George Washington's transmission (of Theseus)

My buddy has a 1996 Explorer with a 4R55E automatic transmission.  With around 140k on it and shifting issues that required a full rebuild far less than 2k miles ago, it's back in the shop after we did a hall Mary fluid change yesterday.

See, it's throwing a code and failing to engage 4th gear, presumably due to a faulty solenoid, PCM, harness, gear goblin, or incorrect incantation and burnt offering combination being presented to the machine.  Who the hell really knows?  The reason I'm sharing this is because it seems like people have forgotten what the words "robust", "quality", or "good" can appropriately be used to describe.

When I read that the 4R55E is any of these things, it's quickly followed by a litany of caveats: "as long as the PCM/ECM don't fuck things up," "just make sure you fill it with distilled liquid gold, or Mobil 1 synthetic ATF," "leaving aside the phonebook-thick stack of service bulletin revisions that have to be made to make it operable," and so on.

Don't take this the wrong way - Ford is far from the only manufacturer that has this kind of thought surrounding a product they've brought to market.  To bring this a little closer to home, we can look squarely at the Grand Cherokee and the electronically-controlled TorqueFlite that has been the source of many a pedal turned back and a dollar burned at the altar of Mopar, despite the TorqueFlite being an awesome automatic transmission platform.  God knows I've put eagle's through hell, and it always has bounced back (clutch packs seized? Put that fucker in reverse and bash shit back in line!).  The reason for this, though, is because it's hydraulically-controlled, not electronically-controlled.  Eagle's transmission would've been toast long ago if it were one of the Jeep variants referred to above.

The technology at the heart of the A998 is all built on old, well-tested mechanical engineering principles of leveraging physical properties of fluids, abrasives, and gearing to perform a certain set of functions.  Electronic controllers, while somewhat more mature now than what was used in 1996, are fragile, opaque, deeply abstract in operation, and better suited for use in iPods and throwaway consumer goods than in a machine that weighs a ton or more and is capable of moving fast enough to make an unidentifiable mess of man and raccoon alike.  What's more, they often subvert the appropriate action of those mechanical components that they've been put in charge of.

The point of my meandering complaining here is not that "computer is bad" (though it really is), but that a system isn't worth shit when the subsystems and components it directly relies on in the performance of its functions are temperamental garbage.  In other words, no, the 4R55E is not tough, robust, or even good, because all of the caveats that you tack on after are things that you can't take away and still have an operating transmission.

Hopefully I'll get old enough one day to actually warrant having hard-headed, anachronistic opinions.

Baby turtles and alligators

Once I've committed to something, a short period of time is all that's needed to see it increase its mass fivefold, leaving me stuck having to feed it (if you've ever met my toilet, you know why just flushing isn't an option).  Luckily, I'm not in this latest mess alone.

See, my friend and I have been working to pick up odd jobs lately to carry me over the remaining bit of work left with the Gremlin and put some cash in his pocket.  The first gig we took on was clearing the overgrowth on about 60 square feet of land, followed by building a fence.  To clarify: I don't mean that as a euphemism - we're literally going to be constructing a physical barrier around a piece of privately-owned property.

We went into this thinking that we'd have the overgrowth cleared within a couple days, totally failing to account for the 15' tall holly trees that were part of the 700lbs (and counting, based on the scales at the dump) of plant matter that was slated for eviction.  Long/short, we've been hacking away at this mess for a while and I've not made a lick of progress on the Gremlin.  We got a trailer, though!

After grinding through ad after overpriced ad, we finally found a trailer for a reasonable price, and the owner actually had a title!  See, Washington has to do everything backasswards, which means you have to have a title and register trailers in this state.  Despite this being a strict legal requirement, it seems that people register their trailers, use them twice, leave them to sit and rot for a couple years, then post them on Craigslist for about twice the price that they'd fetch in most other places in the country.

Regardless, we got our trailer, which is a homebrewed number comprised of a 60's Ford truck bed on a frame of unknown origins.  The lights weren't operational at all, but we did a driveway fix (connected the ground) that resulted in rear lights on both sides, brake light on the left, right turn signal, and left turn signal (but not on the left. It activated the right side turn signal light as well).  We made it two houses down the road before passing two parked cops that were facing down the dead end road we were coming out of.  After reaching the stop sign, we decided it was best to turn right.

After a series of right turns through a town neither of us had ever been to, we stopped in what turned out to be the filthiest 711 parking lot I've ever had the pleasure to visit and proceeded to rewire the trailer with materials harvested from a cheap ass (totally inadequate) magnetic trailer light setup.  As I laid on my back in the lot water, running the wiring, I noticed that there was a lot of bailing wire ties securing the bed to the frame, but not any obvious welds or fasteners.  That was Sunday night, and we've still yet to find any.

It's perfect.

If you don't remain flexible, you're bound to get cranky and crack.

I'm going to try and do as simple and clear an update as possible, mostly because my cell provider has throttled my connection and it'll probably take another 10 days for this post to upload (all of my surfing the information superhighway has been done via cell for the past several months.  Yes, I wrote all these posts on my phone.  Yes, I have myself and want everything to be equally tedious and unnecessarily difficult.).

The majority of my time lately has been split between searching for odd jobs to bring in some additional income and waiting for FedEx.  See, while I put far too much time into jig making, I neglected to apply the same thoroughness to confirming the numbers for my measurements were accurately transcribed.  This is diplomatic wording for "I didn't pay enough damn attention and fucked up the backup driveshaft."

So with that, the hunt for an appropriate replacement began.  This is what we ended up with:

It's a quarter inch longer than the stock driveshaft, which should be within the amount of play my slip yoke can provide.  If you're wondering why it's not installed yet: it was delivered yesterday while I was fighting against throttle valve linkage issues that Eagle was having (luckily, this was remedied by switching out and repositioning my throttle return spring).  Oh, and also, my flexplate is cracked.

I have no idea who or what managed to do this, but I've not done anything that would cause this to happen.  Luckily, the Sportabout provides once more and I've got the plate that came with the transmission.  As to the best of my knowledge, it looks to be a plate for the 258/232, and not the 304.  While some online stores say they'll work across the board, I'm really skeptical because the 304 wasn't internally balanced like the I6s.  I doubt that they swap out just fine, and a number of AMC greybeards are adamant that my suspicions are correct, so I'm going to take their word for it. 

So given that the flexplate is cracked, the trans is in the process of being decoupled as I type this.  I'll do a strict comparison once it's out, and that'll determine whether the Sportabout plate goes in or if I'm waiting for FedEx again.  Thankfully, should a new plate be needed, I can get one for under $40. 

Once that's done, I'll need to get back to doing the ujoints I'd started on, as the ones that came with the replacement shaft are of a different type (and the rattlecan spray isn't really confidence-inspiring).

Not thrilled about having to get conversion joints, but I'm not sending a ton of power or an unreasonable amount of torque through them, nor do I intend to take this car on the trail (at least until the day comes where I convert it into something along the lines of an Eagle kammback).  That said, I'm sure they'll do fine.

Lastly, in honor of the donor Sportabout I never met, here's a picture of a local Sportabout I've been trying to catch standing still for a couple years.  It's a '75 with a 304, and appears to have formerly been a city government vehicle.  The owner says he drives it constantly and has had it for over 20 years.  While his enthusiasm for his wagon seemed not to match mine, there's gotta be some love for it to be kept going for this long.  You can see Eagle creeping around in the upper left corner.

Alright, that's enough fucking around.  I'll let y'all know how things turn out when they get where they're going.

I'm finally done with prepping the driveshaft for the big day.  I made three sections for my jig, pictured here:

The first one ("A") took up way too much time and patience, as I was fucking it up because I didn't know what I was doing.  Not unlike raising kids (or so I'm told).

I was relieved once they could finally do what they're supposed to on their own, because that meant I could actually get back to doing what I needed to, instead of constantly correcting and messing with them.

Driveshaft is level and looks to be straight.  I'd go ahead with cutting it to get it over with, but it's too late to be running the bandsaw in my tarpaper shack, 20ft away from people's beds (though that's not to say that hasn't happened many times before).  Now that I think about it, there are balancers on each end of that thing, and I haven't marked their corresponding end with the radial point to line them back up correctly.  So I'll be doing that first thing when I get back.

Earlier in the day, I did a test on a new pair of "clench" wrenches I got in the hopes of making my ongoing struggles with line fittings lean a little less in their favor.  I decided to give them a shot after seeing a video a guy recorded, showing him loosening a brake line fitting with one hand.  The other hand was filming.

Now, I'm not a greedy person, so I wasn't hoping for anything more than the ability to consistently work on my line fittings without concluding the work by saying, "well, that's the last time that's going to be put on.  Better make a note to get a replacement tomorrow."  No need for one-handed sorcery- I'd just like to be able to perform maintenance on a critical system without mutilating its vital components every time I touch them.

I didn't want to jeopardize Eagle's brakes to test a wrench out, so I took a couple of spare line nuts and put a healthy amount of blue thread lock on before getting them good and tightly fastened, then set them aside for 12 hours.  I'm completely aware of the fact that this isn't even close to getting the salty brake line, but it's what I had on hand without going overkill or spending a ton of time on poorly trying to determine something I'll figure out at some point anyway.

I loosely clamped one fitting in a small vise to keep stuff reasonably in place, but still be a challenge, then decided to try and see if I could round off the vise nut with one hand turning  the wrench, and the other in my pocket.  Turns out it turned out.  I was able to easily free the top nut with one hand and without chewing the corners to hell.  I guess I'll need to go play with the brakes on the AMX to see if they do just as well with real world bullshit.

You should see this fence I've built. I've finally made it past journeyman.

Around a year ago or so, my friend and I were debriefing each other post-repair, which is nicer than saying we were screwing around and bitching about self-inflicted misery.

He started talking about how he has more stuff to do than time to accomplish it, and mentioned the fence around his backyard needing to be rebuilt.  To illustrate why this was a big deal, he started giving a loose description of prerequisite tasks that quickly became recursive. I said something to the effect of,

"Don't forget the time you need to spend learning about CAD software, so you can decide which program's going to be best to use for rendering a model and plans.  Not to mention the research on different material options and projected weather patterns for the next 10 years."

(NOTE: As I was writing this section, someone walked by the Eagle and said "nice fence!" to the owner of the adjacent house.)

We started joking more about it and coming up with more absurd dependency actions until the project would've cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $500K and a year's worth of man hours to complete before we'd had enough.  Since then, we've referred to situations where you're oblivious to the fact that you're adding many layers of needless complexity to a project, to the point of making accomplishing it less and less likely, as "building a fence", "fence building", and so on. 

The reason I'm sharing this anecdote with you is because I've been building a damn fine fence and want to tell you about it.

I'm lucky enough to have a driveshaft that I can use to make a serviceable replacement for the old one, and I don't want to waste my good fortune by being careless and sloppy when doing the work.  This means making sure the workpiece is secure while still being easily rotated when welding it, my cuts are square, and so on.

The crudely scrawled plans in the above image represent my concept for pieces of an adjustable leveling jig to hold the driveshaft in place while it's undergoing surgery.  The full jig is made up of three of these specialty tool and angle iron assemblies, which can be adjusted by adding washers to the joining fasteners, between the iron and wood. 

Far from a perfect solution, sure, but I'm just too damn neurotic to accept using big C clamps and winging the rest of it as a proper way to do this.  Regardless, I'm about to finish this smoke and go back in so I can get them wrapped up.  I just need to drill and countersink the bolt holes for two more and they'll be done. 

After that, I'll be able to waste hours on getting them adjusted until things are perfectly level from end to end.  If I complete that before the next ice age, then it's time to get to slashing and hacking the driveshaft to the point of ruin, followed by preparing a list of shops to call for quotes on Monday. 

If you can read this, you'd be home by now.

This update is going to be mostly a craft corner post, though I manage to free the prop shaft from the old driveshaft without ruining it, which took a loooooot longer than you'd think because of the level of attention demanded to keep it and myself from being rendered worthless.  The rest of the time was spent in transit and preparing the driveshaft operating table.

Something that was taken care of, though left undocumented yesterday, was bench testing the subject of our craft activity:

This is a compressor used to inflate GM Autoride bags, and was pulled from some  Oldsmobile mall assault crawler made in '01.  Due to its age, I was pleased to discover that it sounded like it runs without any problems at all.  It took a while to find documentation on the pinout, but basically all of the wiring beyond that tied to the momentary switch and the larger gauge orange (switched 12V) and black ground wires don't affect its operation; they're all connections to robot brains that make it turn on and off at different times.  Have a wiring diagram, if you care:

The amount of current it draws is enough to warrant mentioning.  If you get one of these, you'll end up needing to have a good couple amp source of 12V power.  When we tested it, my buddy's little bench power supply started flipping it's breaker at around .62A or so.  We ended up just taking it out to Eagle and connecting to the battery terminals.  It ran perfectly well at 12.8V, so I think it's gonna do just fine with a charging alternator providing juice.

After getting it all set up, I'll have a sort-of onboard air setup.  I won't be able to run air tools, but I also won't have to use any of those crap ass car lighter air pumps to air up my tires.  I'll also be able to use it to drive a pneumatic jack, and maybe blow filth off of things in the field.  I think it's a fair compromise between carrying a portable tank compressor around, and installing another heavy ass AC compressor in the engine bay.  What I'd really like to see how much effort it would take to set up a one-person brake bleeder.

I keep falling asleep as I'm writing this, so I'll share info about the driveshaft leveling jig once wakeup time rolls in.

The most helpful vehicle I've never met

While we strive to maintain the highest levels of accuracy in the information we provide, human error makes it inevitable that mistakes will be made at some point or another.  With this in mind, I'd like to issue the following correction: the driveshaft length between ujoint centers is 38-1/4", not 38" as previously reported, and there's not a single goddamned driveshaft I can get ahold of on this planet or its moon of the correct length.

So does that mean that the Gremlin is dead in the water?  Not a chance.  After having used the transmission that came out of a Hornet Sportabout when it was discovered that the Gremlin's transmission might not be the best candidate for a rebuild, that noble wagon has again stepped up to offer its body in service to a cause for others whom it has never even met.

See, the spare parts pile contains the driveshaft that accompanied that same transmission.  While it will have to be shortened from it's current center-to-center length of 50-5/8" to step into its new role, it's looking to be as though it should work out okay. 

I'm going to try to continue using the Gremlin's propeller shaft, though, since this one's seen better days.  It may have been a long-ass time ago, but days were seen.

There are also weights at each end, so it'd been balanced at some point; I'm guessing from the factory? 

At any rate, instead of being SOL when the old driveshaft got fucked up, I ended up with the opportunity to ruin TWO of them!  I mean, I'd rather not have to cut down a Sportabout driveline that appears to be in decent shape, but abuse what you can use, right?

I'd like to know why being in a comfort zone

Is so damn uncomfortable.

After a short burst of productivity and progress, things hurried back to business as usual.  It was time to get the ujoints sorted out, and lacking a vise with adequate jaw spread to do things the service manual way, I set about making a vise (of sorts) with the threaded rod I had left over from when I made the coil spring compressor tool and some angle iron. 

It kinda worked, in the sense that it performed the mechanical tasks it was designed to.  As far as actually serving to press out ujoints, though, it was unmitigated shit.  Not due to any fault in its part; it was just impossible to summon all the hands needed to make it go, even with a helper.  So after spending a few hours on that, I said to hell with it and drove across town to once-again make use of my friend's press.

This was a huge improvement.  Until it wasn't.  Long short, previous wear combined forces with slight misalignments that normally would've quickly self-corrected and caused the yoke ears to get eaten up by the bearing caps.  Seriously.  Both goddamned ends. Its fucked up.

The red circle surrounds a point of wear that caused binding with the bearing cap as it was being pressed back out, and instead of slipping past and leveling out, the cap decided to just send everything straight to hell. Again, this happened on both ends.

I knew what to expect when I checked, but I still find myself amused by the Google search results for a replacement part.

Close to 0 sounds promising, though 38" from ear to ear sounds better.  Let's see what we can find to use off-lable.

Here's hoping this is the last of it

Winter usually marks a period for me that's made up of spend-frenzy holidays that I vainly hope to avoid, several months of depression, and two (sometimes more) sleeping marathons that run anywhere between 72 hours and a week and change and bookend that piss-poor excuse for a season.  By the looks of the hideous claws that have erupted from my fingertips and the blurred passage of the first half of this month, the beginning of winter's end has arrived.  So this is probably a good time to discuss heat shielding for some reason.  I don't know.  I'm still waking up.

Anyway, here's what you get, straight from the hell of cold dreams to the hell of cold, glowing rectangles:

1) Want some fancy ass, moldable aluminum stuff like the BMWs get, but don't want to pay $40 for less than a square foot of material?  Too bad. 

What you can do, though, is get some cheap aluminum sheet (roof flashing, garage dog trespassing sale shot signs, whatever) and sandwich fiberglass mat or ceramic insulation material (maybe header wrap if you happen to have some extra) between two aluminum sheets and roll the edges over to seal the deal.  If you want it to be embossed, get a shaped rolling pin or some perforated steel sheet and mash it down on the surface to emboss your pockets.

2) This one's probably less likely to be useful, but I have pounds and pounds of thick-ass copper clad board from a free lot of surplus electronics components I picked up a few years ago. The copper can be etched away with a muriatic/hydrochloric acid and peroxide mix, and the byproduct will make a handy etchant solution for future use, should I need it.  If you're unfamiliar with the process, here's an "instructables" tutorial that covers the details:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Stop-using-Ferric-Chloride-etchant!--A-better-etc/

Once the copper has been etched off, the heavy-gauge, bare board material can be epoxied together for carb spacer material, since I suspect that having an insulating spacer is going to be a pretty handy thing to have alongside the mixture jet kit.

You may have noticed a change in tone with this update, and I wish I could attribute it fully to poor temperament after a week-long nap, but that wouldn't be honest.  See, I found a perfect solution to my column shifter cable need.  Yeah, I'm in a pissy mood because I have a cheap ($17 vs $60) and easy solution for what could be a challenging problem.

If you're wondering why this may be, the answer's actually really simple: it's a cable for a Toyota Camry.  This is the first part from a non-domestic make vehicle to go in Gremlin since I started all this. 

Now I'm going to directly contradict myself here and acknowledge the fact that the 4.0l head, intake, and exhaust aren't technically domestic, as they're design iterations that were developed when Chrysler was actually DaimlerChrysler AG.  So my hair splitting has once again allowed me to come up with a thin, yet convoluted excuse to compromise on an important requirement for this project (an American AMC restomod, if it could be called such).  Either way, I'll probably swap the cable out one day in the future for one that doesn't start causing the xenophobia to act up.  Looks like a nice cable, though.

No mas piranhas, indeed!

So the transmission cross member fitment issue turned out not to be an effect of how fast back the motor was seated.  What actually happened was a result of my mixing up which cross member was from the Gremlin, and which was from a Sportabout.  Whoops.

Luckily, it took less than 10 minutes of messing with stuff after getting the motor mounts cinched up to figure this out.  It probably took longer to scrape the ATF mud off the correct support, and it installed with no trouble.  Check it out;

The Gremlin's going back up on the lift next, at which point the rest of the transmission bolts will get fastened, along with the torque converter and inspection plate hardware.  The driveline gets put back in from there, and the engine bay will be populated shortly after. 

In a bit of good bad news, I found that the cooler lines I had ordered wouldn't fit my application, so had to cancel the order because it would take longer than my timetable have allowed for them to be delivered.  Shortly thereafter, I un-misplaced the original lines and discovered they were nowhere near as bad off as I remembered.  I'll actually be able to use them with a slight amount of work- far less than if I went with the original plan I'd had before placing the order in the first place.

If all this progress is making you feel uncomfortable, don't worry; it's strange to me, too.

Old transmission sits in the corner and sulks. The reason why may surprise you!

It's because I managed to do this after crushing my ring finger like a grape:

If the image doesn't make it clear, I got the engine and the rebuilt transmission together!  They were a little shy when I began introducing them, but friends can quickly be made when a bleeding and angry ape with a wrench in his good hand screams threats at you about what will happen if you don't act polite.

Now it's a matter of finishing my smoke, going back inside, bolting the cross member (back) on, and fastening it to the frame rails.  After that, I'm done for the day.  Mainly because next steps involve getting the Gremlin off the ramps and back up on the lift (after I reassemble it), and I just don't have the nerve left in me today for that mess. 

Once suspension resumes, I have to get the rest of the bell and torque converter bolts done, then it's time to start loading crap back into the engine bay.  This thing may actually end up looking like a car at some point, as opposed to the boat it's been for so long. Time will tell. . .

Shop-borne Illness and Disease Index, Vol 1, Chapter 9: Bigfinger

Bigfinger is one of many conditions that can affect the digits when present in a workshop, and should be safeguarded against whenever possible.  Bigfinger generally occurs in situations that include, but are not limited to, the swinging of a hammer (actual or improvised) or the maneuvering of heavy objects in tight spaces. 

Bigfinger is not a pathogenic affliction, rather, it is brought about by the introduction of an object consisting of harder-than-finger material, possessing considerable weight or moving at a fair rate of speed (usually both) that becomes introduced to the last segment of the phalange.  A transmission falling from a jack is a prime example of such an object and conditions that can produce bigfinger.

It is generally accompanied by some or all of the following: loud verbal ejections from the mouth, feelings of numbness in the affected digit, blood, waving of the hand, and in some cases, improvised dance.

Bigfinger is common enough to expect that it will not be a matter of "if" you contract it, but "when".  Depending on the severity of your case, treatment options range from ignoring the affliction until feeling returns in the digit the next day (when it will no longer be something that can be ignored), to stitches, to binding in a splint.  As usual, amputation is an alternative treatment method, though may not be optional in some cases.