repost (sigh)
After 17 months, we are a two car family again!
As those who know me are aware, I undertook the challenge of replacing the clutch on my 1996 Ford Explorer. At work, it became a bit of a joke, whether the co-worker who was building his own house would finish before I got the car running again.
A bit of history, first.
I had been having trouble with the clutch for a while, which manifested as being increasingly hard to get the car into gear. Imagine, if you will, having to slam the gearshift into gear, and you've got a pretty good idea. My dad and I kept attempting to bleed air out of the line, as the books we found indicated that a slipping clutch was an indication of a bald clutch, and that hard shifting was air. Finally, bleeding at home did not seem to provide relief, so the mechanic power flushed the system, and gave me about another week of driving time on it, with the admonishment that 'the clutch definitely needs attention'.
Within a week, I was unable to start the car in reverse, and struggled to shift. The weather was fair, I found a local supplier that had a clutch repair kit with a pilot bearing, pressure plate, clutch plate, and a replacement throwout bearing. Reading in my repair manual, they recommended replacing the slave cylinder as well,so I bought one of those as well. It being the mild part of fall/winter, I started out working on the driveway, crawling in and out on the concrete. Surprisingly, it wasn't long before I had all of the pieces off, to some extent or another. My one 'shortcut' that I took was to not detach the driveshafts from their axles, and instead leave it sitting on the rear engine cross bar mounting point, for the front driveshaft, and on the ground for the rear driveshaft.
To get to the clutch plate, I had to remove:
1. The transfer case skid plate
2. Detach the front and rear driveshafts from the transfer case
3. Remove the transfer case
4. Remove one of the exhaust pipe sections that wraps around the transmission
5. Detach the rear engine crossbar, and lower the transmission and engine, this left the engine attached in the engine compartment, and a little bit of a heartstopping moment as it looked like the engine would hit the fan.
6.Removed the starter motor
7.Disconnected the transmission and attempted to lower it gently onto the ground
At this point, I was just using a lot of sweat and swearing to get the parts off, as I thought it wouldn't be too hard. I removed the pressure plate, and the clutch plate, and, since it was recommended, also removed the flywheel for resurfacing. Napa not only resurfaced the flywheel, but also knocked out the old pilot bearing, so I was all set to start putting stuff back on. Seemed pretty easy!
As I started putting parts back on, I torqued everything down, and made sure that the pressure plate was tightened in quarter turns, in a star pattern, etc, which ensures that the springs inside are compressed evenly. I was a little surprised by how quickly the torque wrench hit the torque that I had set, but figured the difficulty in getting the bolts off was due to the lock-tight that was applied to them. Before trying to put the transmission back up, I changed out the slave cylinder. The transmission was raised in place by a combination of jacks, jackstands, paver bricks, and holding with various arm, leg and shoulders. Also interesting to get back up was the transfer case, as it has nicely rounded corners, and so was constantly falling or shifting. Plus, since the transfer case sits just in front of the fuel tank, it took some finagling to get it into place. Reattachment of the rest of the parts went pretty smoothly. Bleeding the clutch did invoke a brief incident, as I put the cup inside the passenger compartment, then crawled under to open the valve. As I crawled out, I caught the tubing with my hand, knocked the cup over, which dropped all of the brake fluid onto my face. I quickly closed my eyes, and sat up, taking the bottom edge of the door right on the forehead. I then walked as quickly as I could into the house, with both eyes tightly shut, until I could wash my face off. Sure enough, had a nice gash in the middle of my forehead.
But wait - you might be wondering why it took me a year and a half to get a working car...
Starting the car up in neutral, I found that once again, I couldn't shift into first. So, I turned the car off, put it into first, and started the car again. This time the car lurched forward, heading straight for the garage door, before I let go of the key. It was clear to me that I had done something wrong...
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Rememberence
The earliest thing I can remember about my father is riding on his shoulders. At 6'2", it was like soaring above everyone else. I remember riding up there, and learning to be careful to hold on across his forehead so that I didn't mess up his glasses. When I joined a Cub Scout pack, my dad was there with me for the whole thing. I don't think he was officially one of the leaders, but instead of dropping me off and picking me up, I remember him coming to every meeting.
My dad was a bunch of different people - an avid outdoorsman who once traveled to Mexico City alone, unable to speak Spanish, to try to climb up Popocatepetl, but also a workaholic who often had 'one more thing' to complete before coming home. A person who would wake up in the wee dark hours to be on time for a hiking trip, but unable to give a good estimate about when he was coming home.
I don't remember my dad ever pushing me to do team sports - there was one summer when I was on a softball team, which I don't remember being any good at, and my dad seemed ok with that. What I do remember is that we got Pong very early on. We had a small black and white t.v. that we had it hooked up to, no more than 10 inches on the diagonal, and I remember we played that awhile. We had the original Atari, and my dad would buy the cartridges, in spite of the $30 price - in 1980 dollars. We amassed quite a collection of those cartridges over the years, including the ultimate in shovel-ware, E.T. the game.
When we began to get too old for the Atari, my dad got us involved with the Commodore line of computers, the Vic-20 and the Commodore 64. I got a subscription to 'Byte' magazine and would spend hours entering in the machine language programs to play the games. Meanwhile I boggled as my oldest sister was actually coming up with her own games, and actually getting them to work.
I once got in trouble in a middle school class because I had programmed a graphic program that would draw nested boxes on the screen, and mentioned to my dad that I wanted to make it look like you were traveling through a tunnel. My dad suggested that I loop a second time, drawing the boxes in black, b/c that would make the white boxes disappear, as if you were coming back out. When I showed the teacher the result, I was asked if I had my dad's help, which I (thinking that he had suggested it) admitted to. My teacher accused me of cheating, and my dad pointed out that he hadn't helped me out, in the sense of what the teacher had meant. I'm not sure if dad ever told the teacher.
My dad was a bunch of different people - an avid outdoorsman who once traveled to Mexico City alone, unable to speak Spanish, to try to climb up Popocatepetl, but also a workaholic who often had 'one more thing' to complete before coming home. A person who would wake up in the wee dark hours to be on time for a hiking trip, but unable to give a good estimate about when he was coming home.
I don't remember my dad ever pushing me to do team sports - there was one summer when I was on a softball team, which I don't remember being any good at, and my dad seemed ok with that. What I do remember is that we got Pong very early on. We had a small black and white t.v. that we had it hooked up to, no more than 10 inches on the diagonal, and I remember we played that awhile. We had the original Atari, and my dad would buy the cartridges, in spite of the $30 price - in 1980 dollars. We amassed quite a collection of those cartridges over the years, including the ultimate in shovel-ware, E.T. the game.
When we began to get too old for the Atari, my dad got us involved with the Commodore line of computers, the Vic-20 and the Commodore 64. I got a subscription to 'Byte' magazine and would spend hours entering in the machine language programs to play the games. Meanwhile I boggled as my oldest sister was actually coming up with her own games, and actually getting them to work.
I once got in trouble in a middle school class because I had programmed a graphic program that would draw nested boxes on the screen, and mentioned to my dad that I wanted to make it look like you were traveling through a tunnel. My dad suggested that I loop a second time, drawing the boxes in black, b/c that would make the white boxes disappear, as if you were coming back out. When I showed the teacher the result, I was asked if I had my dad's help, which I (thinking that he had suggested it) admitted to. My teacher accused me of cheating, and my dad pointed out that he hadn't helped me out, in the sense of what the teacher had meant. I'm not sure if dad ever told the teacher.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Loss
Saturday morning, after dropping my daughter off at class, I was driving in to work, when I received a phone call from my mother on the cell phone. I had just plugged the cell phone into the recharger, which is at about ankle level in my mini-van, so I was leaned over trying to talk while still driving. Generally, I'm against talking while driving, but having my mom call me at 9 on a Saturday morning is not a common occurrence.
"Hi, Momma. What's up?"
There was a pause, then, "Jon, you need to come over"
"Right now?" I thought maybe she had some work for me to do around the house or something to show me.
"Your father is dead"
Thus began my drive across town. I have often read in stories and accounts about people 'driving on auto-pilot'. I was completely aware of where I was, and what traffic was doing, but nevertheless, my mind was quite distracted.
As I pulled up to my parents' house, there were two police cruisers parked out front. Walking into the living room, my father was as my mother had found him, sitting in his chair, looking as if he'd fallen asleep.
"Hi, Momma. What's up?"
There was a pause, then, "Jon, you need to come over"
"Right now?" I thought maybe she had some work for me to do around the house or something to show me.
"Your father is dead"
Thus began my drive across town. I have often read in stories and accounts about people 'driving on auto-pilot'. I was completely aware of where I was, and what traffic was doing, but nevertheless, my mind was quite distracted.
As I pulled up to my parents' house, there were two police cruisers parked out front. Walking into the living room, my father was as my mother had found him, sitting in his chair, looking as if he'd fallen asleep.
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