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Date:         Tue, 8 Apr 2008 22:25:23 -0700
Reply-To:     Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Subject:      Silly mistake: Closely related to "how not to bleed the brakes"
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252"

Reading about 'wimmen-N-vanagons' and how one listee's woman bleeds brakes with the best of em....Then about the "oops" with the power steering fluid..

My gal, she likes the van just fine (except the "bed's too small"). She loves old stuff....cars included. I had a mint 2002 beamer years back that I would find "missing" quite often when I would come home in my work truck...then I would listen and hear it going up Teton Pass at full song...That one, I made her buy from me..since she loved it so...She still has it, but I had to build a tube frame for the rear because it rusted out and the wheels began to wander around...I digress.. Then we moved from Big Wonderful Wyoming to Washington state, where things are a little more "urban" and I didn't feel right about her heading out down the freeways with her horse trailer behind her '77 350 Chevy truck. So she got a birthday present of a new Ford diesel..But whenever we travel without the horses any more, it's in the 84 vanagon now a days..with diesel coming onto $4 a gallon.. So her father owned an auto service business and when I asked if she'd give me a hand (foot, actually) bleeding my clutch in the van while we were down in the desert this winter, she said.."Hey, I used to help dad do that all the time" and she came out of the camper (she pulled her horses down to the desert, too) morning coffee and newspaper in hand and popped into the drivers seat.. "Ok, Down and hold.....release...down and hold....release" (I didn't have room to bring the pressure bleeder along on our road trip)...So, just a few drips come out of the clutch slave bleeder..."Hmmm" I think. Again, down, hold and release..drip drip...I ask if it feels weird, is it going all the way to the floor? and she says..."Nope...Wait! there it goes...all the way down now"..but underneath, it is still....drip drip..Not Squirt squirt..So I go round to the driver's door, thinking "better check the clutch master, that fluid has to be going somewhere"...and I see her with the BRAKE pedal all the way down! Ooops! Silly me, I thought she heard me say "bleed the clutch".. So far, though, after about a month and a full brake bleed, no more air has come into what has to be a fully abused brake system...Having a bike racer exerting full leg strength (she's a big strong woman, too) onto the brake pedal, repeatedly...that couldn't have been good for all the seals, hoses, etc.... So, this could be titled "How not to bleed the clutch" with a subtitle of 'by hoofin' on the brake pedal'...or something like that..

And one more 'silly mistake'...When you change camshafts in a 4 cam 32 valve motor, be sure to count how many shop rags you put in during the work, and don't start the motor till you have the same number when finished..After a cam change, .I towed my racecar with a motor like that all the way to Phoenix (3 days on the road) only to find it was unexplicably (is that a word?) losing oil pressure...Towed it home and removed a shop towel from the oil pickup screen after about a week of hunting for the cause of the pressure loss...That was silly.

Don Hanson


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