what did you wrench on today??

[steve murdoch]

Glen if you don't mind, got a ballpark figure on what the indy shop charged.
There is a Pilot in my extended family and the Honda shop estimate was $1500.[included replacement of belts and tensioner.]

[Pb9717]

Got the peripherals off the lump for the top end rebuild....intake and exhaust, cabling etc..

[dorkburger]

Glen if you don't mind, got a ballpark figure on what the indy shop charged.
There is a Pilot in my extended family and the Honda shop estimate was $1500.[included replacement of belts and tensioner.]

Steve, the shop charged $905 for the timing belt job. Obviously the motor mounts and the other work being an add. Not a whole lot lower then the dealer, but a reputable shop, and recommended by friends.
The owner was a pleasure to deal with, and a car guy. There is always something old and cool there.

FYI, the standard routine for this job is to also replace the water pump as it needs to come off anyway, and the timing belt kit comes with replacement belt tensioners. I sprung for a new serpentine belt as well. Even with the extra work, I had it back the same day.

[chuck hahn]

Broke down carbs for a 99 GL1500 Valkrie this am for soaking and a rebuild. Also, I had to disassemble the side stand switch on the newly acquired 83 650G as it was sticking and the warning light wouldnt go out. Alls good with the switch now.

[Buffalo Bill]

??????????

You're making me feel bad, doing so much car maintenance.

[dorkburger]

Aaah, I see. Truth be told a lot of it has been a while coming.
Plus, if the car dies somewhere between here and Florida from something I didn't do its..... not good.

[hannibal]

I honed my cylinders today. Very happy with the cross hatch pattern! Parts are scheduled to arrive tomorrow so reassembly can begin. Still gotta find a cam chain guide in decent shape and order my exhaust and oil filter cover studs plus a few random bolts.

In other news, the bike and I just had our 2nd anniversary!

[edgeofvamp]

So, Just wanted to throw this in the mix. Since the last couple months have been downright nuts.
Wife got offered a management position with a salary that couldn't be turned down. With one caveat, we had 3 weeks to pack a 3 bedroom house, move and have her show up ready for her first day.
So after a mad dash scramble to get the house packed, vehicles loaded, motorcycles loaded, 3rd car loaded on a trailer, storage closed up and bills paid for. We hit the road and got the first trip completed in the 3 weeks. She started work on time and I was stuck unloading cars, motorcycles and trailers by myself. YAY......
So, I made the 8 hour drive back with an empty 6x12 trailer to pick up the last of our stuff that wouldn't fit in the box of my Dakota, back of a Suburban, back of an Audi wagon or a 6x12 trailer. Got loaded and crashed the night with a friend. The next morning, I should have stayed in bed, because that is where everything went horribly wrong. About half way through the 8 hour drive, my truck stalls out going up slight grade at 80mph-16 miles north of Casper, WY. So I quickly dart off the road and as far over to the edge of the shoulder as possible. Take a moment to collect myself and start figuring out what went wrong. So before i try to start the truck, I listen and don't hear the fuel pump. Crap I am 16 miles outside of town, now what. So I grab what I need and start hoofing it back towards Casper and finally flag someone down after about 5 miles of being on foot. They kindly drop me off at the nearest auto parts store and I get told by that store that the store across town has my pump and being a Saturday they don't have anyone to deliver parts between stores. So I make the 4 mile walk across town and finally get the fuel pump I needed. Now how do I get back to my truck, so i try bribing the counter people to give me a ride(they decline even $50). My luck turned when I walked outside to find a semi driver willing to make the 30 mile round trip out of his way to drop me off at my truck in return for removing the remnants of his deer guard from the front of his rig, so he could move his oversize load banner from in front of his dangerously overheating rigs grille and let it cool down. Yay, so I am back to my truck and traded good karma favors. Then I proceed to drop the 40 gallon fuel tank(still 28 gallons inside) from the ass of the truck, change the fuel pump and get everything shoved back up there and go to prime and try to start the truck. Now I can hear the fuel pump working, but when I went to start the truck I hear a pop like a fuse blowing hard and the starter won't grab(starter is getting old and doesn't engage each time-so didn't thin much of it at the time), so I start digging through fuses. My ecm1 fuse is blown and I know most of what is on the ecm1 fuse, so I start disconnecting things 1 by 1 in hopes to be able to limp it the remaining 300 miles to Billings, MT. No such luck, I blow through 8 more fuses and a handful of things disconnected. As I am disconnecting the O2 sensors I see something odd sticking out of my bellhousing inspection port cover. So I remove the inspection cover and get hit in the chest by a big chunk of my flexplate(flywheel for manual vehicles). Great, so even after all the walking, frustration, repairs on the side of the interstate and electrical problems. Even if I could get the fuse popping issue fixed, I wouldn't be able to get the truck to move under its own power and now don't want to try and crank the motor in fear of doing even further damage. At this point, I throw in the towel. I give up and climb into the truck to get out of the high winds that had been battering me all day. I realize; now that its dark out, I should do the responsible motorist thing and inform the highway patrol that my truck and u-haul trailer are on the side of the road and broke down. The dispatch lady was very empathetic of my situation and informs me that the weather is going to get bad and I mean bad 60+ mile an hour wind, rain and possible winds with a nice toasty 15-20 degrees. She also told me that an officer would be along soon to check and make sure my vehicle is far enough off the road to be safe to leave for the night and inevitably see how I am doing. So about 20 minutes go by and out of nowhere i am being blinded by bright lights in my side mirrors beating my eyeballs that had adjusted to the dark. The officer was a little on edge wen he approached, but was very kind. He asked how I was doing and informed me that I was safely over far enough that the truck could stay the night no problem, but that he could not in good conscious leave me out in my truck in the current weather conditions and didn't want me to be in the vehicle if it was struck by another motorist. At this point my wife had already set up a hotel room for me and I am too exhausted to debate it with him. So, I pack up my travel bag and start getting out of the truck when sadly my worn out state came back to bite me in the ass. My daily CCW came into view when I was climbing out of my truck and I heard him draw his weapon. I froze hoping he wouldn't shoot and waited what seemed like 5 minutes before he asked me about the firearm. So i filled him in and allowed him to remove it from its holster. After a sigh of relief, I got my truck locked up and double checked the trailer lock. He mandated a pat down, for clear but now obvious reasons and he gave me ride back into town right to my hotel. Which was so freaking awesome of him to do and I thanked him and my wife even thanked him profusely over speaker phone.
Now the next 2 days, I spend on the phone with every transport company I could think of and every single one leaves me hanging and I reach a boiling point. At this point i realize my only option is to flat tow the truck and I would need a truck. So after a little reasearch, I find that a 10ft U-haul truck will stand up to the weighty task it is about to be forced to undertake. So i walk through the rain; rent a U-haul truck, transfer all the contents of the trailer to the truck, drag the trailer back into town and drop it off. Drive all over town in the U-haul gathering a 2 tow bars(sadly the best i could find was 5,000lb rated ones-second was a backup), chains, bolts, magnetic emergency lights/blinkers and a padlock for the U-haul truck. I had to get chains and bolts, since I couldn't find suitable mounts to be able to attach the tow bar to the truck, so i made a very jerry rigged mounting solution. I was NOT going to be detered any longer, I was getting everything and my truck home come hell or high water. I didn't care if I had to do it at 2 miles an hour. So I rush out to the truck and remove the grille, all forward lights and flashing plate, just to get to the top bolts holding the bumper on the truck removed. Remove the bumper and reassemble the grille and lights. Then I fashion the mounting points out of the chains and bolts and get the tow bar hooked on. Get the tow bar hooked on the back of the U-haul(not fun to do by yourself) and get the lights mounted to the roof of the truck. Lock the steering wheel as close to straight as possible(took 3 miles and 8 tries to get it right) and lock it back up with all my tools safely back inside. At this point the sun has just set and I am seeing very little traffic on the road, once the truck is moving and I am starting to make progress I call and inform the highway patrol that I got the truck moved. Luckily, since it was slated to be towed to the impound the next morning(proof by the green stickers on the windows I scraped off a couple hours earlier). Over the next 100 miles i cautiously built my speed until I was semi-comfortably doing 80mph with the truck behind me and finally got it pulled all the way home. Unloaded the truck and got the U-haul unloaded, dropped off the u-haul at 4am and finally crawled into bed sore, burnt out and relieved. To be woken up an hour later by an ecstatic wife and a very happy kitty.
Thank you for reading this and sorry if its not in the right spot, but it did have wrenching involved and thought it would apply. Some photos, will follow this post to show a little of what was said.

[edgeofvamp]

So please take a look at my nightmare move photo album to see the pictures from the above story.
Sorry, I forgot how to post larger photo's and hope that you can see the pics in the album.
EDIT----Looks like this thumbnail worked, so it will give you a teaser to my photo album from the move.

[dorkburger]

Ugh, sometime life just likes to fight us....

[steve murdoch]

That is a crazy story, vamp.
That new job of hers better work out. haha.

[edgeofvamp]

Thanks for the responses guys, i hope it works out for her too.
In the meantime, they are paying for our housing and the salary amount is great.
Until i get reestablished here, I will be working for O'rielly auto parts-yay discounts on all my auto parts.
I am just sad, because now I have to get a new work space and I was starting to strip the wiring on my 1100.
When all the work and paint is done, I am going to be using a motogadget m-unit blue for the power/fuse block.
I know its a bit pricey, but I don't need to wire up a key switch, as it is just a remote locked push button system.
Which also is a solid state fuse block, built in alarm, led or halogen turn signal relay and helps cut down on all wiring needed on the bike. Let me know what you guys think of it, because it seems like a pretty cool piece of kit.

[dorkburger]

More "fun" on the family car. Brakes and sway bar links today. The brakes were pulsing when applied at highway speed so I figured the rotors were bad or in need of machining. Looking online I found a full set of EBC pads and rotors from Summit for $236. same set elsewhere for $209, but with a longer wait.
Seemed good to me. I've been away from car wrenching for a long time and thought the order was wrong when I found the rear rotor was of a larger diameter then the front, but it was correct. Rear - bigger solid rotor, front - smaller vented rotor.
I knew the sway bar links would suck so I had been intermittently hitting them with spray to for a couple of weeks to ease removal. 10 minutes in, and drastic measures were taken - the sawzall came out. The hardened metal killed a few blades, but got the job done. The other side saw use of the grinder and cutter wheel..even faster. I hadn't anticipated the screws holding the rotors to the hubs, so a bit of a goose chase to get an impact driver ensued. The old guy at Home Depot never heard of one. Turns out my Father in Law had one. The mini goose chase was on the bike in warm, humid, rainy weather, and an enjoyable distraction. I only ended up doing the front today - it kicked my arse.

The missed goal.


Not impressed by these.

[gustovh]

The last trip that I took on Suzie Q was something like 580 miles. Just as I was pulling her up onto the porch and putting her in neutral, she died. No power anywhere. Was tired, so unloaded my gear and left it for another time.

Now it is not uncommon for the plug under the gas tank to come loose, so was going to give that a look after finding no blown fuses. Pulled the tank and neck cover and find the plug is still connected. Hmmmmm, well lets check the battery. So I grab the old volt meter and look down at the battery, "well there's the problem" the bolt holding the negative ground to the battery is gone. Replaced it and boom started right up. now to pull the carbs and replace the fuel rail o rings.

V

[Tim C]

As the 750 had not been cleaned for a while I started on that today. Once the chain had been de-rusted and greased. I removed the silencers and cleaned them up.
Then it was time to remove the old knackered shocks and fit some new Hagons.
Still a lot to do but we'll worth the effort.

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