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Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 9:17 am
by Amskeptic
Our poor country . . . so held back by the short-sighted people hanging on to their power and privilege. Our Nation's project, to lead the world into the 21st Century with our unique talents and gifts, appears rudderless and unable to reach any sort of consensus. I have been driving our Nation's ever-deteriorating roads to slowly dying towns where only corporate box stores provide "sustenance" but there is no community in that. I found Historic Route 66 damn close to undriveable at any speeds above 30 mph, so buckled and dried out is the pavement. All of these international tourists, what do they think of Historic Route 66 as it bashes them to these successive dead towns where the tourist appeals are desperately hopeful but definitely a bit thin in the appeal department? Are they touring the late great United States?

I toured Historic Route 66 to a splendidly isolated overlook of New Mexico's eastern brushlands :

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. . . and was able to spend three hours parked on Historic Route 66 on:
a) an end-to-end removal and lubrication of the accelerator cable,
b) installation of my spare Mexican Hella turn signal lenses (the genuine Germans have taken to cracking from road debris hits)
c) a primer/clearcoat of the intake air doors

I understand why people like the clear turn indicator look:
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Drove to the hills where the winds got fierce. Sand and dust and a transaxle oil change?
(we're trying the Royal Purple fully-synthetic 75-140 "safe for bronze, brass copper" gear oil to see if there is any improvement in the failing second gear synchronizer action)
Discovered that my pump would only screw on the Sta-lube gallon bottles, and here I am with small quart bottles. Use a hose and squeeze the bottles under the car with all of this stupid blowing dust and sand?
Nope.
Fit a plastic bag over the America's Best Value ice bucket, poked a hole in it and filled it purple:

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Then stuck the pump into the hole in the bag into the bucket. Worked like a charm:

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Had a paper towel around the fill plug to keep out the windstorm. Got oily-dusty-ish anyway. Drained the engine oil and painted the strainer plate while another plastic bag was stuffed in the huge dust-n-sand entrance hole under the engine. A couple in a Jeep came dusting up.
"What are you doing, is everything OK, that's a nice van, need a ride into town, is it windy or what?"
"I am painting my strainer plate."
"Is it broken?"
"Nah, just a few chips really."
They set up their flapping banner AKA "tent", and drove off while I tried to put in three quarts of oil without the wind throwing it all around.

Drove along the edge of the collapsed caldera of an ancient volcano outside of Los Alamos:

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The lighting was exquisite:

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The transmission feels the same, but I rationalize that the synthetic gear lube will help the ring and pinion gears even if the 2nd gear synchronizer is still weak. My little little Volkswagen:

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An even littler Volkswagen:

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Driver is from Santa Cruz, California on a tour of the country.
"That looks like a '62"
"It is, how did you guess?"
"Long story."
"I have internet all the way out here!"
He proudly attempts to show me his laptop all fired up and internetted. But it is only 54* or something, and I am yearning to get back into the warm BobD.
"How is the bug running?"
"I haven't had any problems over the past four years."
1962 Volkswagens were like that:

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The other compelling reason I wanted to scram was the rapid build-up of dark clouds:

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Out west, you can gauge which way to flee, there is generally so little moisture in the air that you can see where the systems are, unlike the humidity soup of a down south summer day. Gorgeous lighting in New Mexico.

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This shot was taken at the transfer station . . . dumpsters taking in the view with the BobD:

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Must run, will post the rear brake backing plate repaint job later!
Colin

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 11:44 am
by Xelmon
Ah, the middle of nowhere.

There is a real charm to those places... Of course, it depends on the person whether or not it is their calling or if they can afford to live out there.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 9:39 am
by Amskeptic
Xelmon wrote:Ah, the middle of nowhere.

There is a real charm to those places... Of course, it depends on the person whether or not it is their calling or if they can afford to live out there.
Ask the Native American denizens of Pueblo Jemez if they are the middle of nowhere . . . they may answer, "we are the *center* of everywhere."

Yesterday, in the middle of nowhere AKA "the American Gypsum Company's abandoned parking lot", I set to disassembling the BobD's stone peckled rear backing plates for a refreshing new coat of paint, to match the front disk shields just done in Pensacola over the Memorial day weekend.

Backing plates have some work to do. They hold the wheel cylinders in place, and therefore must absorb some serious braking force. They serve as backstops for the brake shoes, and they are pulled by the emergency brake cable sheath, every bit of pull applied against the emergency brake lever is countered by the backing plate where the sheath enters the backing plate.

This was my chance to see what a Factory Torqued Late Bay Bus Rear Axle Nut feels like to loosen.
It was also the first time I have straightened a factory cotter pin (since my first year with the Road Warrior in the summer of 1979) to drive it out, and I must tell you, that German steel cotter pin is a tough little piece. I reused the two of them and shall for as long as they want to stay intact.
I stood two feet away from the center of the axle on the Recently-Suffered Jivermo/Vis Cheater Pipe/Breaker Bar 3/4" Mega 46mm Socket. I weigh 159 lbs this week. That was a total torque of 318 lbs on the nut in the loosening direction. No go. Walked out to three feet away. That is now 477 lbs. Did a little jump and the sucker glided loose. Fresh beautifully shiny steel between the nut and the hub, too.

Brake shoes came off with no drama. Wheel cylinder came loose with no drama. Removed the ebrake cable with no drama. Loosened the 17mm anchor bolts with no drama. These bolts looked like they had a protective coating in the threads, do you think Volkswagen was aware of potential road splash rust problems down the road? I do. Now, I was expecting that the anchor dowel would give me hell being the first time it has been disturbed in 36 years of rain and rust. Nope! A couple of taps under the car in the "removal direction" with my Big Drift and the backing plate was off within 20 minutes of parking the car at the American Gypsum Company Abandoned Parking Lot:

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Here is where rust can hide:

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Scraping and sanding and washing the backing plate took a good two hours. Plenty of rust hiding under the paint and the undercoating. Here it is after a couple of coats of Permatex Rust-Catalyzing Primer:

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"Hello there, what're you doing?" It is a couple of guys in an American Gypsum Company pick-up truck.
"My brakes failed."
"Well, you can't park here. If your van fell off the jack, we would be liable."
"Oh no you wouldn't."
"We would be if you are on our property."
"No, you wouldn't, I would tell your lawyer that I was TRESPASSING thus releasing you from any awareness much less culpability, and any MORON who got squished by his own car by his own leaky jack NEEDS TO DIE ANYWAYS, and how would you be liable FOR THAT?"
"Ha ha, that's true that, but we were told to tell you that you need to move."
"I can't move just yet. How does it feel to be to told to tell?"
"Oh, well, we're just doing our job. That is a great-looking car, how did the brakes fail?"
"The backing plates were getting rusty and today's the day."
"How soon will it take to get rolling?"
"I will be done at 2:30 PM."
"You know that we could call a tow truck, right? To get you off our property, right?"
"Yes, I get that, but you know I would have obeyed a 'no trespassing' sign, right?"
"This guy's funny," says guy one to guy two.
"What a beautiful interior," says guy two, "did you restore this?"
With a stay of tow until 2:30 PM, I painted the backing plate and the wheel bearing housing with Rustoleum Gloss Black:

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Applied Lanval Commemorative Vanagon Cylinder Head Sealant to the wheel bearing housing:

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Wiped the paint off the dowel and the brake adjuster holes and greased both. Installed still-sticky backing plate like some crumbling parchment from the Second Century and drew it onto the hub with the two 17mm bolts along with some interspersed taps to the dowel in the "installation direction":

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Installed the wheel cylinder and attached the brake line, mindful of brake fluid's penchant for stripping off 35 minute old paint. These are the wheel cylinders I "rebuilt" in 2010 in Mesa California when I had no spare brake fluid. They are still holding up some 35,000 miles and four years later . . . a toast to Hack!

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Stuck the wheel back on, hand tightened the rear axle nut just enough to be able to adjust the brakes. Let car down and stood on the cheater pipe exactly 28" from the center of the axle (353 ft/lbs of torque), then jumped lightly to advance the nut castellation to the next cotter pin hole. Only spread the cotter pin a bit to hold it in, It has several more decades to do, you see, no sense in mashing the ends down on the nut.

Drove out the American Gypsum Company's abandoned parking lot and went two miles to the Bernalillo Walk-In Medical Clinic parking lot, where I did all of the above all over again on the right side:

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So, wow and stuff, all the backing plates and dust shields look so spiffy under the car.
Colin :geek: :blackeye: :cyclopsani: :drunken:

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2014 11:10 am
by Jivermo
Wow! Great story. You know, if this had been in 1956, and you were working on a car in that parking lot, the guys would have asked you if you needed a hand. This freakin' litigious society, with its trickle down effect to those cowpokes and their tow threats (although they don't sound like bad guys, just following orders, much like the Waffen SS) makes my blood boil. I've been right there on that caldera, and when you come out of that forest and you see that great expanse, it just takes your breath away. That lighting looks incredible. I walked out a ways there, and it is a magical place. I got why it is called the Land of Enchantment. You're very close to Bandelier National Monument, which is well worth a side trip and walk.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 6:08 am
by Bleyseng
Time to refresh the red paint on the Koni's as they are looking a bit rusty and chipped. :cheers:

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 7:58 pm
by Amskeptic
Bleyseng wrote:Time to refresh the red paint on the Koni's as they are looking a bit rusty and chipped. :cheers:
OMG, I'm so embarrassed.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 8:02 pm
by Amskeptic
72Hardtop wrote:Funny thing about the gear oil & pump situation. I was in a very similar situation about 1 month ago. Took the easy route. Rather than drum up some alternate means of dumping the new oil in another container I did the following:
1. Insert the pump into the new bottle of gear that it would not screw into.
I would have have most expeditiously done that, but the pump body no way would fit in those quart containers with the cut-to-size nozzle tops.
Colin

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 8:08 pm
by Amskeptic
Jivermo wrote:Wow! Great story. You know, if this had been in 1956, and you were working on a car in that parking lot, the guys would have asked you if you needed a hand.
Not if I was Black or Mexican or too Jewish or a little Chinese or maybe Middle Eastern . . . the other side of 1956!
These guys were modern tools of their corporate employers, yes, but they were decent personable people.
Jivermo wrote: This freakin' litigious society, with its trickle down effect to those cowpokes and their tow threats (although they don't sound like bad guys, just following orders, much like the Waffen SS) makes my blood boil. I've been right there on that caldera, and when you come out of that forest and you see that great expanse, it just takes your breath away. That lighting looks incredible. I walked out a ways there, and it is a magical place. I got why it is called the Land of Enchantment. You're very close to Bandelier National Monument, which is well worth a side trip and walk.
They were good guys, we were just sassing each other, our own southwestern "Between Two Ferns". Absolutely no hard feelings, they let me finish my job in peace.

I went through the Valle Grande again today, and it looked like a parched field. The lighting really was unique my first time through. Ran out of time to do the Bandelier. Why are so many trees looking so dead up there? Conifers! I get that there was a fire, but these trees did not have the burn marks that I see over the hill on the Los Alamos side. They were just dead looking, for as far as you could see, like early April deciduous trees standing on a lush carpet where the grass has greened up a bit.

So yeah, this is my last night of my Texas-Style Walkabout, ten-days since those Arkansas calls. Tomorrow, I do a three-day Los Alamos marathon, then off to Bluff Utah! My Big Rock Campsite!

I have done a lot of repainting. My brain cells have pretty much given up on the Once Upon A Life narrative of Colin, now they just sporatically fire at sunshine and "great ideas".
Yesterday's "great idea" in the sunshine was "let's refresh the heater valves and those heat-exchanger-to-heater valve 'up pipes'".
Right here:

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On this hillside:

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I was in heaven, the wind through the firs:

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One frame over from the last shot:

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I had the heater valves off, the pipes off, and bloody stumps for fingers after hours of sanding and scraping. Remember that nice high-noon lighting in the first photograph? Not now! This is 7:00PM evening sun in the rear window:

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Looking like exotic bird sculptures, the parts got a full 14-hour cure dancing in the intermittent wind. I could hear roosters (!) echoing up the valley. So much more amusing than the usual bored angry dog barks that I get back east:

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Took a serious fast hike down the path and back up the path, then some cross-country through the well-thinned forest. Then I cracked open page 153 of "Peace Like A River":

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Froze my too-tanned hide off overnight, too. At 2:30AM, I awoke to a bear nuzzling the BobD's roof. "Damn that is a big bear." As I sorted out my dream/wake senses, it became apparent that it was just the fir tree's low branch scuffing the roof. Well, you can't scuff the BobD's original paint, I am sorry. Pruned the tree by moonlight and dived back into my coccoon, to dream again, not a big bear nuzzle dream, but an insane conundrum dream.
My subconscious makes me laugh ruefully too many times in the morning, when I critique the preceding night's dreams for their apparent stacked-up senselessness. So, yeah, I was driving the BobD, see, and the hill was too steep, and I had to slip the clutch to get the revs up, and the oil light came on, and I couldn't let up because I knew the car would skid backwards sideways if I did, but it did anyway when the engine seized, and the rear tire slipped into a mud hole and I was in a house that was a ruin of exposed latting and crumbled plaster.

When I woke up, my very first thought was a very happy "my engine's not seized!"
Colin

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Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2014 10:31 pm
by whc03grady
Amskeptic wrote:Why are so many trees looking so dead up there? Conifers! I get that there was a fire, but these trees did not have the burn marks that I see over the hill on the Los Alamos side. They were just dead looking, for as far as you could see, like early April deciduous trees standing on a lush carpet where the grass has greened up a bit.
Huhn...pine beetle maybe? Were the needles still on?

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 7:29 am
by Amskeptic
whc03grady wrote:
Amskeptic wrote:Why are so many trees looking so dead up there? Conifers! I get that there was a fire, but these trees did not have the burn marks that I see over the hill on the Los Alamos side. They were just dead looking, for as far as you could see, like early April deciduous trees standing on a lush carpet where the grass has greened up a bit.
Huhn...pine beetle maybe? Were the needles still on?
Nope. These were greyish. I have seen the blighted firs with the orange needles painting entire mountainsides, these looked like dead-asleep deciduous trees from a distance. Heck, I hope they weren't dead-dead deciduous trees. All around the caldera . . .
ColinInLosAlamos

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 7:47 am
by sped372
Is there a reason for not just using the squirty-tops on the quart jugs? My little el-cheapo pump gave up the ghost midway through the job last time and I just used the quart bottles directly. You couldn't completely empty any single bottle, but by marrying them together after half drains I was able to complete the job. Just a thought in case someone gets themselves into a bind.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 10:09 am
by Jivermo
Rising temperatures are killing forests globally, and research by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists finds it is highly likely that the Southwest, including New Mexico, will lose the vast majority of its forests by 2050. That means no golden aspens in the fall or pine trees in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Entirety: http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/h ... a48c8.html

P.S.: Marco Rubio says he does not believe human activity is causing climate change. I don't believe in Marco.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 1:33 pm
by 72Hardtop
Amskeptic wrote:
72Hardtop wrote:Funny thing about the gear oil & pump situation. I was in a very similar situation about 1 month ago. Took the easy route. Rather than drum up some alternate means of dumping the new oil in another container I did the following:
1. Insert the pump into the new bottle of gear that it would not screw into.
I would have have most expeditiously done that, but the pump body no way would fit in those quart containers with the cut-to-size nozzle tops.
Colin

You mean the yellow top on the Royal Purple bottle? Does it not remove? Was that 75W-140 you used? Bottle shows 75W-90...type O? I used at fill up Amsoil 80w-90 full synthetic. I had been using since having the trans rebuilt Pennzoil 80w-90 dino and changing ~ every 25,000 miles. Now that I have the Amsoil in I'm electing to leave it with no more changes with an just an occasional check every so often. I was surprised by how clean the gear oil was while draining and hardly any odor.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2014 10:04 pm
by jtauxe
My, my, some lovely pictures. Man, I love living here. So, for those who do not know, the Valles Calera is about 20 minutes from Los Alamos. My favorite "longish get 'er warmed up" drive is a 43-km (27-mi) loop that goes by Bandelier National Monument. By the way, for those who have been there, but not in the last year, you would be surprised at the changes. Check out what a flash flood did to Frijoles Canyon last September. This is looking from the little gift shop across the parking lot towards what used to be the picnic area to the west.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZUv06PFmo4

I have just now caught up on this thread, after Colin arrived at my house this morning, looking for that fine specimen of a '76 Westy, Koo-ooch'it Was-t'itch. That's the bus' name given in an impromptu naming ceremony by an artist on the Zia pueblo who liked her. It is the name of a small yellow bird that inhabits the arroyos of Zia Pueblo. So, we simply call the bus YellowBird. After spending the day on YellowBird, which needed no work to make it a fine runner, but is now an even finer runner, Colin will help me tomorrow on my current fleet: a 1979 survivor Transporter named Snickers, and a gem in the rough 1975 single cab pickup. The Mexican one with the ME export code.

Anyway, Colin was beaming and now I see why. He had just come down off the real high that is the northern New Mexico landscape. When I first moved here, I was admiring a great view when two hikers stepped up out of the canyon and we talked a bit. They said, "Yep. It's the Land of Entrapment," meaning that once got there you want to stay. Worked for me. But it does not work for everybody. Those who like big cities feel lost and listless.

Re: Itinerant Air-Cooled Lolling In New Mexico 2

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 7:44 am
by Amskeptic
jtauxe wrote:Those who like big cities feel lost and listless.
"There's nothing to DO here." :sunny:

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