Itinerant Air-Cooled Greetings From Bismarck ND
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2017 8:02 pm
Yep, 24 hours after leaving BusBerd in the greater Minneapolis metro scrum, I am here in Bismarck North Dakota glorying, glorying in the:
a) big sky
b) light traffic
c) fabulous 98* sunny day finally west of that stupid Atlantic Ocean mugginess
d) absence of mosquitoes and gnats and bugs and flies and creepy crawly insects
e) maximum head temp in a headwind for the past 419 miles of just 363* on a long hot hill
f) quiet generator bearings
. . . but you should know that the generator bearing job that I glossed over in some prior post was actually friggen hellacious:
It was going so well up to this point. I was organized, tidy, in-control, and the car was disassembling like a Bentley Manual Dream:
The dumb details, like successfully removing the thermostat, the hoover bit's 10mm bolt that holds the hoover bit to the fan housing, successfully removing the washers and retainers for the thermostat cross linkage, all by feel, all went fine. The time frame I had given myself was manageable:
* disassembly to commence @ 3:00PM
* generator out by 4:15 PM
* bearing replacement done by 5:30PM
* buttoned up by 7:30PM
Oh ha!
Everything was fine until I had to remove the pulley end bearing. On the Preparation Job on July 4th, I had managed to remove the bearings from the spare generator without any problem, so I assumed that this would be easy to remove the bearings from a Real Working Generator That I had Worked On Before. No. No. The failing bearing had sent some real heat into the armature, and everything was pretty well welded together.
Well, I could not get the three arm puller behind the bearing because there was a trapped "splash shield" between it and the armature. Finally told the splash shield, "ciao, baby" and mashed that thing all against the bearing . . . to no avail. I really cranked on that puller, I carefully hammered and PB Blasted, you can't get too tough on a delicate armature, folks. Nope. Nope. The sun is now behind the trees. I realize that I am losing this day in fits and starts. Seriously was alert to *not FUBARing* my only generator! I had to know when to call it off and reassemble and re-approach the issue later, after the schedule opens up. But I hate that. So I crank that puller some more and the outer shell of the bearing explodes. Now we CAN'T call it off. I peel off the fragments, the balls, the retainer, the seals, and the inner race looks terrible, and the armature end where the puller was grinding a pressed divot, looked terrible, and it is 7:10PM, and I am frantic. The engine compartment looks like chaos:
Worst of all, my attention is flagging. I feel a strong sense of giving up, just tired give-it-up fatigue, the bug bites all day are tormenting me, the filth of all that generator brush dust, the psychological load of keeping all of these parts in mind, the interior is just blown apart . . . . but I HAVE to figure this out! And not wreck the generator armature!
What do I do? The puller has NO purchase on the stupid inner race. I seeth at the race.
"All you had to do was slide off the stupid armature, would that have been so hard? We could have been DONE by now!" (say it in a gritted-teeth whisper/scream, that is how it sounded)
OHHH $#!+, now it is 7:20PM. Come on. COme on. Wait! Dremel. I can dremel the damn race off. Make two slices and chisel the race in half. Out comes the inverter, the dremel, the dissolution of the interior. This is what it looks like one minute after Maximum Hopeless:
Cleaned everything apologetically. Returned most Emergency Surgery Tools to their rightful places. Washed the graphite dust off my legs and face and arms and hands and socks no way. Reassembled the generator hurriedly.
Slapped it into the engine compartment and fan housing which kept slipping off the spacers that held it up high enough to let me clear the intake manifold. Hurriedly assembled the fan housing to the engine, hoover bit, throttle cable tube, dog house cover, conducted a hideously spastic thermostat cross bar washers and retainers installation by feel. Now put the damn fail-safe spring on. By feel. Yeah. Do it. No, you CAN'T NOT DO it. Somewhere within the mosquitoes' human blood cocktail hour around 9:15PM, I actually started the engine.
No more crackling rumbling. Phew that.
Colin
to be cont.
a) big sky
b) light traffic
c) fabulous 98* sunny day finally west of that stupid Atlantic Ocean mugginess
d) absence of mosquitoes and gnats and bugs and flies and creepy crawly insects
e) maximum head temp in a headwind for the past 419 miles of just 363* on a long hot hill
f) quiet generator bearings
. . . but you should know that the generator bearing job that I glossed over in some prior post was actually friggen hellacious:
It was going so well up to this point. I was organized, tidy, in-control, and the car was disassembling like a Bentley Manual Dream:
The dumb details, like successfully removing the thermostat, the hoover bit's 10mm bolt that holds the hoover bit to the fan housing, successfully removing the washers and retainers for the thermostat cross linkage, all by feel, all went fine. The time frame I had given myself was manageable:
* disassembly to commence @ 3:00PM
* generator out by 4:15 PM
* bearing replacement done by 5:30PM
* buttoned up by 7:30PM
Oh ha!
Everything was fine until I had to remove the pulley end bearing. On the Preparation Job on July 4th, I had managed to remove the bearings from the spare generator without any problem, so I assumed that this would be easy to remove the bearings from a Real Working Generator That I had Worked On Before. No. No. The failing bearing had sent some real heat into the armature, and everything was pretty well welded together.
Well, I could not get the three arm puller behind the bearing because there was a trapped "splash shield" between it and the armature. Finally told the splash shield, "ciao, baby" and mashed that thing all against the bearing . . . to no avail. I really cranked on that puller, I carefully hammered and PB Blasted, you can't get too tough on a delicate armature, folks. Nope. Nope. The sun is now behind the trees. I realize that I am losing this day in fits and starts. Seriously was alert to *not FUBARing* my only generator! I had to know when to call it off and reassemble and re-approach the issue later, after the schedule opens up. But I hate that. So I crank that puller some more and the outer shell of the bearing explodes. Now we CAN'T call it off. I peel off the fragments, the balls, the retainer, the seals, and the inner race looks terrible, and the armature end where the puller was grinding a pressed divot, looked terrible, and it is 7:10PM, and I am frantic. The engine compartment looks like chaos:
Worst of all, my attention is flagging. I feel a strong sense of giving up, just tired give-it-up fatigue, the bug bites all day are tormenting me, the filth of all that generator brush dust, the psychological load of keeping all of these parts in mind, the interior is just blown apart . . . . but I HAVE to figure this out! And not wreck the generator armature!
What do I do? The puller has NO purchase on the stupid inner race. I seeth at the race.
"All you had to do was slide off the stupid armature, would that have been so hard? We could have been DONE by now!" (say it in a gritted-teeth whisper/scream, that is how it sounded)
OHHH $#!+, now it is 7:20PM. Come on. COme on. Wait! Dremel. I can dremel the damn race off. Make two slices and chisel the race in half. Out comes the inverter, the dremel, the dissolution of the interior. This is what it looks like one minute after Maximum Hopeless:
Cleaned everything apologetically. Returned most Emergency Surgery Tools to their rightful places. Washed the graphite dust off my legs and face and arms and hands and socks no way. Reassembled the generator hurriedly.
Slapped it into the engine compartment and fan housing which kept slipping off the spacers that held it up high enough to let me clear the intake manifold. Hurriedly assembled the fan housing to the engine, hoover bit, throttle cable tube, dog house cover, conducted a hideously spastic thermostat cross bar washers and retainers installation by feel. Now put the damn fail-safe spring on. By feel. Yeah. Do it. No, you CAN'T NOT DO it. Somewhere within the mosquitoes' human blood cocktail hour around 9:15PM, I actually started the engine.
No more crackling rumbling. Phew that.
Colin
to be cont.