ray...
The happy Nada Farmer, finding new ways to make the same mistakes for 57 years.
Keep coming back , I'm sure I'll screw up something else soon.
Back to lessons learned the Hard Way.
I have had quite a few cars over the last 40 years and had quite a few issues in their repair. So I'm going to share, lucky you.
One of my biggest losses was the 1974 Datsun Wagon we bought new, it was a great little car and started my love of small station wagons. It was the best engineered car I have ever owned, everything was convenient, well placed and worked as designed. I would still have it if it wasn't for a little problem with aluminum engine heads that I have since learned about. Actually I learned about it about a month after I traded it in for a Gremlin, which I also really enjoyed for entirely different reasons.
It started with the car overheating due to a broken water hose to the radiator. It blew all the water out and Chris drove it home anyway. I probably told her to, I don't remember. In fact I remember so little about it it might have been me that drove it home.. You could do that with cast iron engines, just get it home and fix it later. Well, that isn't the way with aluminum engines. If it gets hot, shut it off a half hour ago. Well, you're too late, already. Anyway it was the beginning of the end for the car, I replaced the head gasket three times, and three times it filled the radiator with oil. But before we go any further let me explain, there was only one shop in the Akron area with anybody that would work on the car. Of course the dealer would fix it, but they wanted dealer rates, you know, about half the value of the car to check out the problem and twice that to fix it. So I found one mechanic, who would talk to me about it and helped me get a shop manual, one of two in Ohio, and even gave me an outline of a tool I needed to remove the head and not lose the timing chain, (which would necessitate the entire removal of the front of the car if I dropped it, which I did). And I became a darn good mechanic on Datsun engines because of all the experience of replacing head gaskets, I made special tools (metric) and had a complete metric wrench set long before it was a common practice.
In fact this was the first car I ever replaced disc brakes on, I eventually learned to compress the pistons when replacing the pads, of course that was after I drove the calipers with the new pads onto the discs with a hammer, and we pushed the car down the snow filled alley, with the the front wheels locked in place. I then forced the front wheels to turn, by driving it around the block on the heavily salted roads of Akron until they freed up. I know I wasted two thousand miles of braking and torched the rotors. But by the next time, I knew how to do it right. And had the large clamps necessary to accomplish it. I learned a lot on that car, usually after I did it wrong the first time. Back to the head gaskets.
I eventually found out the heads warped when they overheated on these little engines, the top of the block and the head itself should have been milled flat. well they weren't. I repeatedly replaced the head the gasket the bolts always torqued to perfection, and it still leaked oil into the radiator.
One thing that makes this timely for me, is the Ford Escape we just purchased used, has.... oil in the radiator. Or al least did when we bought it. It has been flushed completely, twice, and the plastic reservoir has been replaced, though I don't know what difference it would really make, if the oil was indeed removed from the cooling system, as they claimed. I still haven't received what I consider a good explaination of how it (the oil) got there anyway!
Meanwhile back at Nada Farm.... A couple times I owned trucks with a snow plow, and 4 wheel drive. One was a late 50's GMC 3/4 or 1 ton panel truck, it really didn't matter, so I never worried about specifics because there weren't any parts available for it anyway. I'd take the broken part to the oldest parts dealer around and they'd try to match it to something that would work. Fine for me, I was just playing around with it anyway, I used it to plow a few family driveways but it was so long and awkward it wasn't much good for it. In fact it was so unweildy that I had a flat one night, right front I think, and didn't even realize it, until it stopped moving altogether. It was full time 4 wheel drive and well, it was so rusty it just wasn't much good for anything, every time I got it on the road, something else broke, until finally I just sold it. But I learned about the availability of old parts at parts houses. The older the parts place, the more likely they will have what you need. Just cruise into any Autozone and ask for a dimmer switch for a 57 GMC One ton panel truck. They will look at you with the same blank stare you'd get requesting a grimstat for a 2025 bleebmobile. They won't have either part, or any idea what to do about it! But, if you go to Grampa Ronnies parts basement, been there for 200 years, he'll have a selection to choose from. Maybe not the bleebmobile part, though. Anyway, I found the oldest parts place in town and started frequenting it on a regular basis, things were going great, and then they got overrun by a chain, they went NAPA.. All the old parts were disposed of and a modern system of inventory was installed that had only the hottest moving parts involved. Nothing of use to me anymore. i was heartbroken, sold the truck, and moved on to International Scouts.
I knew a guy that worked on them (SCOUTS) and had access to parts, it was great until they became a popular fixer upper and the parts started to be worth more than the cars, had to quit them too. Though I had a weird experience one snowy morning when trying to drive to my drinking buddies house out in Rittman, after a snow storm basically shut the Akron area down. We were zooming along at a pretty good clip, probably around 45 MPH and guessing where the road might be. Because it was basically a big drift between a couple large farmers fields. Due to a hearty influx of alcohol, ( I said drinkin buddy) we were unconcerned, and we had a trusty Scout to tame the wild sections of road, if we could find them. It seemed pretty gradually, though it was surely not very noticable, until we realized we weren't going anywhere, the engine was running, the speedometer registering, but we weren't moving. It turned out that the snow had started to build up under the car, it had some large flat floor boards, not unlike a Volkswagen, and it had simply been lifted off the road on the built up snow, the car was pretty light for it's size not to mention ( as I had it ) it was rusted pretty badly which meant it was lighter still, as things had fallen off, but I didn't need them, I didn't worry about them very much. Fortunately I had a shovel and we were able to dig our way back to where the tires touched and drove to his house by a different route but I remember it ruined a good beer buzz having to do all that shoveling out in the cold, but we were laughing about it most of the time. I remember some humor being part of most of the times that I could remember while drinking, though there were many times I couldn't remember while drinking. I guess the point is don't drink and think.... or something like that.
I also had a dump truck I learned quite a bit with. I had a friend tell me about it and I found it packed in a brush pile, filled with vinyl siding scraps, inhabited mainly by wasps (I've entirely forgotten about any spiders that may have been in residence!), and with the engine seized up. I told the owner I would take it if I could get the engine to rotate. A day of work with a pipe wrench, which I broke, and liquid wrench, in each of the 6 cylinders, and a Check for $400.00 and I owned a totally rusted through dump truck. I learned a ton, literally. I learned about fish plating, I learned about, the power of pop rivets and the incredible importance of brakes and tires. Brakes because there were not many parts available and I had to modify most of the wheel cylinders and build up the backing plates and replace all the brake lines and rebuild the master cylinder. And then I tried to buy tires. They were 17.5 inch tires on split rims. I learned way more than I wanted to know about them, split rims that is. Everybody I talked to wanted to tell me about the guy who had his arm torn off by a split rim! I really didn't want to hear about it but I wasn't putting money into new rims when the ones on it worked just fine. Which worked out well on the Leisure Lodge, which I'll get to later. I finally found throught the help of the guy who put me onto it (thanks Tom) where I could get a couple good condition tires for it and finally after about a month in my dad's garage, got it on the road again. I had no place to get it in out of the weather and I needed a concrete surface to roll around on, because I had recently had back surgery (of sorts) and wasn't supposed to lift or stand or sit or do anything but lay around for a couple months. So I bought a new creeper and rolled around under the dump truck, (sitting on jack stands) while I reconstructed the important systems from underneath. The engine was another matter as I'm sure it had broken rings and scared cylinders, but it also had a straight 6 cast iron chevy engine, and though it produced a little smoke as it ran it never failed to start and haul the load it was assigned. Which once was totally ridiculous! I loaned the truck to a fella who was a roofer, I told him I'd charge him per load hauled and leave the truck for him to fill, assuming he had common sense. YOU know what happens when you assume? When I went to check on the truck, it was full to overflowwing. And the bed had 4 feet of wooden sides built up on it, for brush and trash operations, but it was filled with slate shingles from a monster old house. The rear springs were broken, no crushed, and the truck was very close to the ground. I wasn't sure it would dump, so I didn't try it there, I'm pretty sure the windshield had a new crack in it as well. I was not happy. I very carefully limped the truck to the dump, and fortunately it did, dump, which cost $50.00 at that time, I collected my $100.00 made an appointment at Stuver Spring and paid $250.00 to have the damage repaired, and never talked to that idiot again. The little engine was amazing, and it had a 100 amp alternator, so it seldom had electrical issues. OF course the alternator was held in place with a large hose clamp because it had a broken flange, and more than one person advised me to "get a new one and toss that piece of junk" I have never been one to fix an issue, that isn't, particularly at an amount in the hundreds of dollars, for asthetics? Nope not the way I'm wired.
The Leisure Lodge, is an on going saga, in it's own right. In fact, I still have it. And even more insanely I recently put at least the fourth maybe the fifth starter on it. The second, no third, most maintained thing on it. The exhaust manifolds were cracked on it and I didn't have the equipment to repair them, of course I do now but that's another page. So I bought a set of headers, from Summit Racing, and bolted them on. I also bought a couple huge mufflers and took the motor home to a fellow up on Tallmadge avenue and he built an exhaust system that works great. He even threw in a couple crome tips, because it turned out the one pipe was a couple inches shy of sticking out the rear far enough, but they were free, and really too classy for the unit to begin with. The main problem, I discovered later, was the headers really heat up the starter. Which the original cast iron manifolds, evidently didn't. Small issue you might think, but it means that if you shut the engine down while fueling the rig, you are going to block a pump and have time for a sandwich before it will start again. And after a few months, you are going to whack it (the starter motor) with a hammer, when you want it to start. And after that, the solenoid will get so brittle the top will pop off. Then, you go to Autozone for another lifetime starter. Yep, Five times.... The next item for annoyance is the roof, it leaks, I think this is the main issue with every motor home, after all the water lines are replaced a couple times, ( you know, after you are sure you had them drained completely!) . Well the roofs leak, the windows leak, water leaks from all the broken and damaged lines and faucets, and they don't make a valve that will withstand the road rattle and still work for more than two years. Houses are supposed to stay in one place, ask Dorthy {OZ reference}, not go bumping down the road. But anyway, the roofs burn off due to sun wind and vibration. Now this particular unit is 40 years old this spring, so nobody (even I) can complain about durability. But boy, it is a nightmare to fix, The boise Cascade Leisure Lodge was an experiment to see how much wood could be used for a vehicle of the motor home variety. And they were determined, my friend. The roof, I recently found, was made up of 4 layers of plywood, just the plys, about 1/32 of an inch glued together then a half inch of styrofoam (insulation) then another 4 plys, with a rim of 3 inch wide,1/2 inch thick, wood around the periphery and around the holes where the air conditioner and the roof vent are punched through. The entire roof is a single glued together construct, (roughly 8x 20 feet) which was then covered with a thin metal coating, not as thick as the aluminum siding trim on your house. And it mostly worked, for 20 years or so anyway. Unfortunately, they didn't have wolmanized wood back then, and the glue they used, wasn't water proof, of course who would expect a leak? The sides are honey combed as well, with a basic grid made up of 2"x 2" wood stapled together and filled with styrofoam for insulation and strength, coated with steel (light gage) siding, with aluminum angles for all the corners and edges, as an overlapping outer seam sealer, not for strength. The third issue is the brakes, somewhere there is a leak, I have never found it, but the master cylinder is usually half full at best. So for the last 10 years, I have been regularly adding brake fluid before driving it. Not a big issue, except, the brake master cyclinder is tipped forward, and best filled with the back of the unit down hill. A weirdness of the design from Chevy, as it is part of the chassis design, not an issue from the wood company. And heck it always stops, even when it was pulling the 16 foot trailer full of go kart junk every week. So it is a constant joy to me, and a curse. Anyway I hope to remove all vestiges of wood from it in the next year or so, and use the "rough and tough" old chassis for a farm truck. It has a good transmission and a pretty low gearing, good for big loads. And unlike every Ford truck I've had to deal with, the fourty year old oil pan hasn't rusted through. (see Farmpage 64 for the update)
AH the Ford truck, rusted oil pan, holes rusted through the frame, suspension brackets rusted off , wiring issues, where do I start? Well it was FREE, which makes most of the rest an annoyance. I have used it quite a bit, and been happy with the results. Sure there are issues that shouldn't be, because it isn't that old, but it was FREE! Did I mention that? I pounded the rear springs off the shackels and replaced the mounting flanges, mostly because the springs were not doing anything anyway at that point, just waiting to punch through the bed at the slightest provocation, or the first load that was moved in it. I was actually trying to find an electrical problem when I discovered the spring mount issues. That I could fix! So I did, and while I was working on it, I accidently discovered the source of the electrical issues. There was a hot wire, from a CB radio that had been mounted in the truck previously, just hanging under the dash. I've seen this a dozen times, from radios, and amplifiers, and tape decks, and anything people put in and then remove. But this wire was close to the brake pedal, and when you pushed on the brake pedal the wire sparked, and blew a fuse. Now oddly enough, the fuse that blew, was for the tail lights, among other things. So naturally, the previous owner had gone nearly mad trying to find the bad wire in the longest run of wire in the vehicle, the tail light circuit. I would have done the same thing, In fact, if I hadn't stopped to replace the spring mounts, I would have done the same thing, and been just as insane soon, I'm sure. Of course I made up for it by ignoring the screeching grinding in the front of the truck until the Universal Joints ripped everything out, and needed a major repair. Which, if I had a brain, would not have been necessary. But, as we can clearly tell from the stories on these pages, it (me growing a brain) is not likely to occur soon, if ever. So I just stumble along, fixing things I could have avoided, if I had been thinking clearly, and learning small things at each turn and twist of the road, heck i must enjoy it, I keep doing it. The major expose' of the front end repair is covered on the Farm pages, with pictures. Farmpage44.htm So I won't repeat it here, but it was a learning experience, and I bought a nice tool to make it easier , in fact doable, so it was a necessity (just in case my wife would read this, yes I needed the new tool!)
The next big issue is going to be the exhaust it is loud, the muffler fell off last year, it wasn't too bad but now it has a leak somewhere up near the heads I think and I am getting wary of driving it to town until evening when the police force is smaller in number and it is cooler so they have their windows up. So many things don't work, it is getting to be a challenge! But did I mention the asking price? I can fix a lot of things when the overall price still isn't near $1000.00 The transmission is the next concern, it slips, It didn't work at all when I got it but, a new filter, new fluid, and an oil additive later, it runs and shifts pretty well, but I worry about trying to pull a trailer or any real loads, at highway speeds. Here on the Nada-farm, I keep it in low 4 wheel, to avoid putting too much load on the clutches, and it saves the neck over the bumps and jumps of driving where the last vehicle to navigate the field was a plow.
Man, are we happy out here!
