After the Alternator Incident, I had to execute an Itinerant Air-Cooled marathon of Minnesota appointments to get the schedule back on track. I would have liked to have a bit more time surrounding these appointments, because I certainly enjoy the company of this contingent. Running late, I did manage to catch my Photograph finally. Way back in 2007 or so, I drove past this dinosaur at sundown and regretted not taking a picture. June 15, 2009, I got the picture, but it was not lit the way I saw and loved it:
This year, I was hustling to Minnesota from Montana, and I knew, I knew something was familiar coming up, though in the opposite direction this time. Stopped on the shoulder and shot it with a prayer that the camera would capture it. I was about fifteen minutes late, a little too dark:
So I howled at the:
NEXT year, I will nail it.
Grifftenstein has been wresting his '72 Westy into shape with a few challenges along the way. We were originally going to devote a glorious day to retro-fitting the oem dual carb set-up onto his engine, a sweet classic 1700 that would have sounded better yet with the bark from dual carbs . . . but we decided instead to, you know, tap in a spark plug thread repair kit? That required dropping the engine in the driveway so we could strip the upper cylinder cover off. Fun was had by all. At the end of the day, the engine ran poorly. It ran poorly at the beginning of the day too, but I was blaming the progressive carb for cold-bloodedness, then. Now we had a warm engine with a dead dead cylinder. I assumed that I had left a slag pile of aluminum shards in the repaired cylinder that must have shorted out the spark plug. The WD-40 spray, thankfully, took the heat off of me and pointed towards a leaking chrome intake runner's gasket. Update us, Grifftenstein. Do you have a fully four cylindered 1700?
The visit with Belle Plaine was next. My heart was in knots and you know why, and his now seven year-old daughter was beautiful and chatty and lost in a story that couldn't find its end.
His son AGAIN dropped an opinion that was enigmatic-but-spot-on, this time it helped us zero in on what was plaguing the engine in Spiderman, the vermillion Westy.
In June of 2010 I had written, "He has great verbal little kids, (his five year-old son felt free to wade into our political discussion with 'let me tell you what I think' about Congressional vulnerability to lobbyist money- 'I think they want the money')"
Here in August of 2014, his now nine year-old son pipes up, "I want to tell you what is wrong with Spiderman."
"Uh, okay . . . "
"I think daddy wore it out, the gear and the cam."
Well, actually, that is exactly what I found. Belle Plaine had noted a clank when rotating the engine backwards with a wrench. I was looking at the valve train, and clank! some rocker arm would jump, and the sound was a valve slamming shut. He'd rotate it further, and another rocker arm would jump! and a clank would be heard. Apparently, the cam gear is now wallowed so loose on the camshaft that a lifter sliding down the ramp of a cam lobe will squirt the almost liberated camshaft in that direction. Then, when another camshaft lobe comes up to a lifter, it stalls the camshaft and the Chris wrench-driven gear just moves to the other end of what must be big nasty slots. The engine sounded good at high rpm where inertia prevents the lifter/ramp accelerations from clanking.
Good call, kid!
So we drank beer and discussed engine overhaul/replacement options.
The Miz was next, VannaWhite, his white Vanagon, who has suffered incontinence of a most indelicate sort over the past few years. Our visit was to simply install a stupid isolator relay for the auxiliary battery. Oh, we made it complicated all right. With irrelevant illustrations and garbled directions from GoWesty, we had a grand time calling out the steps to each other.
"Okay, it says to cut the two or three red wires BUT NOT THE RED-YELLOW, at the top of fuse #8, and to cut the red-white wire at the top of fuse #9 BUT NOT THE REDS."
"Are you sure?"
"No."
"Do I have permission to cut your perfect harness?"
"Yes, what's the worst that could happen?"
"It could blow up and burn down the garage."
"OK, let's do it."
We think we got it . . .
Yesterday's final Minnesota visit was an unexpected pleasure at jcbrock's house. His '76 bus is an untouched survivor that has been in the family since it was new. I was there to infuse his "kid" with the beginnings of mechanical aptitude so he can be a competent curator of a potentially very fine car. We did a tune-up and brake adjustment and test-drive. Yesterday, I discovered that petrified old tires do not leave skid marks worth a crap when trying to discover which tire was prematurely locking.
I hope the above visits will chime in with their own stories and photographs, I must now check my own valves, solder the new condensor wire splice, adjust my brakes, change the oil AGAIN, etc.
Colin