Bad headache this am, having trouble focusing my eyes, we'll see what happens.
An eventful weekend. Started out with pulling apart the rear brakes on the Voyager. Shoes are at about 25%, but the right self-adjuster was frozen and the left self adjuster was broken. There was a piece of metal in the right drum that looked like a broken coil of a spring. Both wheel cylinders are just starting to weep. So, I cleaned and lubed everything, replaced the broken self adjuster, and put it back together. One of the things I wanted to do was fix the parking brakes, but everything was missing. No cables, no nothing. So, maybe next month I will see about robbing some parts from another of my vans and repalcing the wheel cylinders.
Then we drove to Bemidji. Changed the oil in a Jeep (first time I've touched a Jeep in 16+ years) and gave Evan's new car the "once-over". He bought a 92 Ford Tempo. Pretty nice shape, some rusting on the right fenders and rocker but not too bad yet. Changed the oil in it and added coolant. It has been parked for about 9 months but it started right up and runs pretty good I think.
Also fixed the right front parking light on the Voyager. The wires were rotted off of the light socket, so I spliced a socket from one of the other vans. When I was putting it back together the side marker lens fell off. I gotta remember to fix that.
On our way home from Bemidji Saturday as we were leaving GR I noticed a big cloud of smoke in the sky in the general direction of home. As we got closer and closer to home it looked more and more like it might be at home! As we approached 434 we saw it. Turns out that a neighbor, Roger, was burning the grass around his garage and caught the garage on fire. The garage and a shed are total losses. The FD barely manged to keep the fire from the house. Roger built and restored wooden horse drawn wagons in that garage; all of his tools and at least one wagon and sled and a leather buggy top that he was restoring are gone. No-one was hurt as far as I know. The hay baler that I've been trying to buy from him was parked next to the garage; that is also gone.
That is too many fires too close to home for me, we don't need any more.
I was browsing around www.Allpar.com the other day. An excellent website for anything to do with Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth. One of the things I saw there looked familiar; an idle problem. Seems the IAC passage can become gummed up a bit. So Sunday after church I pulled the TB from the 89 Voyager, tore it down and cleaned it up. Then I installed it on the 88. I also recalled something else I had seen at www.Allpar.com about map sensor problems. I looked at the 89 and it had the air bleeder on it, so I moved that to the 88. I've probably started the 88 a dozen times now and it idles just fine. A big "thanks" to the folks at allpar for the advice.
Also worked on the Allis-Chalmers RC/WC a bit. It looks as though the starter needs to be rebuilt, haven't actually torn it down yet but it no longer spins under its own power. So Matt and I are making a crank for the tractor. All that is left is to install a pin. We tried a couple of items we had laying around but a 20d nail just isn't hard enough. It will turn the engine over easily when the plugs are out but it just wrapped up after we put the plugs in. I need to look for a 2.5" x 3/16" roll pin today.
Changed the oil from 5w-30 to 10w-30 in both the Voyager and the LeMans. While under the LeMans I noticed that the oil was just running down the engine on the passenger side. Got Matt and a bright light to look on that side of the engine, Matt thinks it may be coming from the valve cover on that side. I replaced that last fall, but that side is very difficult to reach because of all the plumbing and AC and "stuff" on that side of the engine. I think I need to get another gasket set and redo that job.
Oh yeah, I paid $2.57 for gas in Bemidji on Saturday, I notice that the price of gas in GR is at $2.65 today.
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