Haulin'

Or, "Will it Fit: Mobile Edition"

Last Friday we stopped in to a Goodwill store, and there was a fine looking recliner. Great condition, and a great price. On Christmas I had been lamenting that another Christmas come and gone, and still no new recliner. Of course, with the three of us, there was no room to haul it. Headed back the next day, but in the interim, came across a futon!!! My younger has been wanting one for quite a while. I actually told my parents that if they could find a good used one, he'd like that for Christmas, but once again, no dice. See, I was hoping that would happen, as they have better equipment for hauling.

So, him and I took Scruffy out there the next day, first stop where the futon was. Brought along much rope with the thought of, if it'll fit, hang it out the back and strap the hatch down with rope, a la the water heater adventure. Try as we might, it was a big no go for that, too. Headed over to the Goodwill, and picked up the recliner, which of all amazements, fit!!! As I had thought, it has to be in a reclined position, but that's all.

Called up my dad and asked if I could borrow his Trail Blazer. Don't think I'd made mention, but he got a Trail Blazer. Someone turned left in front of him in his Durango around a year ago and totaled it. The Trail Blazer is its replacement, and a fine machine. He took it off road a few months back for the first time in 29 Palms along with my mother, and they managed to get turned off the trail onto a crossing dry streambed, so they did do some trail blazing!!! Anyway, they got stuck in the loose sand and ended up spending the night in the desert, and found the cargo area to be lacking in length to sleep in. Thus, when I asked to borrow it to haul a futon, they said they didn't think it would fit inside. Well, still have ropes and tie downs, one way or the other, we got this. Well, surprise!!! Just a little tilt, and it fit in without any trouble!!! I took this picture and sent it to my dad with the message, "Don't know what your problem is!!!"

This last shot is the recliner again, only with no flash. It's a little fuzzy, but I liked the look!!!

Life Hack (SAW!!!) My Car

Back in February I did my last Life Hack post, about a way to stop small water leaks in your car. I had made mention that it works more often than not, but that very incident that inspired me to write that post turned out to not be one of those times!!!

I had been driving my wife's car, Scruffy, around that time, and it had begun to give me the low water light a couple times a week or so. Huh. I didn't ever see any water at the pump, radiator, or hoses. It wasn't leaking from the heater core. Not losing a lot of water, and never getting hot. Well, I'll season it with some pepper, and if that doesn't do it, it will surely get worse, and I'll be able to see where it's coming from then!!!

Well, it got worse, but I still never saw a place it was leaking from. Finally, it got to where it was needing filled up any time you would drive it for about 15 minutes. The only thing I could come up with was a leaking head gasket burning off water, but it's not running bad or showing any other symptoms. I ran it past a friend of mine who's an awesome shadetree mechanic, and he suggests a compression test to tell the tale. My wife drives it over during the week, and he does the test. Compression is good, so he leaves it running a while to get it hot. I just had been driving it, he left it in one place, and it made a puddle after a while!!! He checks it out, and where the overflow line goes back into the system is leaking some. He touches it to see if it's loose, and the hose fitting breaks off!!! I had known the 2000 and up Saturn 1.9 engines had plastic intake manifolds, but didn't realize that this skinny little part was on it!!!

Turns out there's a couple companies making a repair kit for this problem. First thing, though, had to get it back home to work on, so the tiny little hose barb you see in the first couple pictures is the fix I did on it. Got a stainless hose barb and epoxied it in place!!! That part worked fine, but in the second picture you may be able to make out a crack running down the large hose fitting that I added in a helpful arrow to. I bought it from CarSaturn, who seem to be the original, and looks like a better quality part. A little bit more, but I think it better to buy from the originator, and it's made in the U.S.A.

To install is a little bit involved, as it requires the removal of the intake manifold. Not super tricky, but a lot of things have to come off to get it. Here's something I noticed when I got it off, the EGR tube comes way out into the airflow of the intake. Common sense to me always dictates that the smoother airflow you have, the better things are going to run!!!

So, while I had the hacksaw out, I shortened that sucker up, too!!!

And hacksawing??? Yes, that's exactly what you end up doing, is hacksawing the end of the intake manifold off!!!

Something Like 12 Years

Perhaps you recall several years back, I did a post about my cool lunch box. This post is about what happens to this lunch box if you use it five days a week for around 12 years (so, in a way, it's a 5-12 post!!!)

Remember that molded plastic Coke bottle handle??? Probably six months or so back, I saw that the plastic on the bottom of one end was almost worn through. I put a glob of epoxy on it to try and build it back up. It worked for a while. Then, a week ago, it cut loose as I was walking into work. I knew this day was coming, but now what was I to do??? If I were at my old job, I probably would have machined up some kind of cool aluminum handle.

No fancy CNC machine, or even the old school machine shop tools I cut my teeth on, but I should be able to come up with SOMETHING...

And, here's the result!!! Pretty much all I did was got a couple split shaft collars and a bar of aluminum. Drilled and tapped the ends of the bar, and melded the three into one. A bit of time with a file, and a 3M Scotch Brite pad to put a nice finish on it, and there it is!!! If I'd had access to the aforementioned equipment, no doubt it would be fancier, perhaps finger notches or more rounded edges, or even a Coca-Cola logo cut into the side faces, but this gets the job done in a clean, understated way.

No one I work with has noticed yet. Or at least not made mention, if they have.

Something I've not made mention of, my work issued everyone water bottles. Not only have they put in all new work stations in the newly remodeled offices, but also out in the area I work in. When they did this, they didn't want people spilling on the new stuff, and if you don't have a spill proof bottle already, now you have no excuse. The company colors are yellow and green (the company name is on the other side, they prefer employees to not share about them online for some reason) and while I like it alright, it looked the same as everyone else's. At first, I'd put my 512 on the lid, but it wore off pretty quick. Next, I took a couple of the yellow bands off. That distinguished it from everyone else, but I wasn't satisfied with it. The bands looked like they were the size of those rubber wrist bands, so I had my eye out for them. Eventually came across a green one, which went well with the text, but I only had one. Later, at my wife's doctor's office, they had a bunch of orange giveaway ones, so I grabbed a couple. They go together pretty nicely!!!

Life Hack... MY CAR!!!

The second in a series of at least two Life Hacks, here's another one!!!

This one may just fix your car. I sometimes tell people, just like the human body, one of the keys to keeping your car alive is to keep the insides wet!!! If you've got an oil leak, better put more in at a corresponding rate or do something to stem the flow. Coolant can be even trickier, as you don't want to be opening a hot cooling system, nor be putting cold coolant into an overheating engine. Especially with the aluminum block and head engines these days, overheating can rapidly destroy an engine. Lack of a good seal in the cooling system will cause a pressure loss, which in turn lowers the boiling point, further exacerbating the problem. Whenever I'm looking through used car ads and come across one where they list several new cooling system components recently installed, that's an automatic pass.

So, if there's a small leak in your cooling system, like a pinhole leak in a radiator or heater core, here's a simple fix that has worked for me on several occasions.

Add a tablespoon or so of black pepper to your cooling system (while it's cold, of course) next time you're adding coolant!!! It doesn't seem like it would do anything, and I can't remember where I heard it from at first, but it works more often than not!!! Of course, it won't fix a leaking seal on a water pump or a bullet hole from a .45 through your radiator, but for a pinhole leak, it'll do. The theory is that the pepper granules will lodge in the hole, and when heated and exposed to air, will swell up and seal the hole.

Life Hack ... MY PANTS!!!

You may have seen around the interwebs various "life hacks", little tips for making this or that easier or more organized or cheaper. I happen to enjoy checking them out, although I don't seem to implement many of them. The one I can recall having done that worked very well was getting a couple of large carabiners, then hooking several plastic shopping bags on each one to make a lot fewer trips from the car when coming home from the store. Worked great (except when you'd forget to take them back to the car), then the nanny state of L.A. outlawed plastic bags.

Anyway, here's my little contribution:

I had a pair of pants (Calvin Klein, no less!!!) that are still in good shape, except the fly had broken. It would not latch in the full upright position, and would usually be at half mast, no matter how many times you'd zip 'em up.

My solution: I put a key ring through the tongue of the zipper, then once I zip it up, loop the ring over the button before buttoning!!!