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"
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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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