With the old engine on the ground I wanted to pull off all of the parts that can be used on the working engine that I'll be putting into the new Tracker body. Parts like the AC compressor, alternator, power steering pump, coils, fuel injectors, water pump, etc all came off. Even the oil pan and valve cover are saved as these parts can be used in case something happens that causes one of these parts gets cracked or otherwise damaged. I still needed to get the crankshaft to turn some in order to reach the bolts holding the torque converter on the flywheel. I was able to reach a couple of the bolts from the bottom of the engine without hassle. After pulling off the covers to the engine (valve cover, oil pan, timing cover), I had to pull the camshafts from the cylinder head in order to remove the head in order to access the tops of the pistons since I was planning on beating the crankshaft to get it to move some. This was fun. I ended up beating the shit out of the crank, getting it to move a little here and there. I ended up disconnecting the connecting rods then trying to tap the pistons to what would be the top of the engine block. This ended up being fruitless for a couple of cylinders as they were seized in the cylinder walls. I ended up knocking a hole in one of the pistons. With the rods disconnected I was able to move the crank more in order to reach some more torque converter bolts. I was able to get down to a couple of bolts remaining despite the crank only moving a few degrees in any direction. Luckily I was able to use a wrench to reach the remaining bolts and tap the wrench with a small sledgehammer to loosen the bolts and eventually get them free so I can remove the torque converter. With that taken care of I no longer needed to work on the seized engine block. That thing is officially scrap. With that I carted the old engine over to a staging area behind the F250 for the next load of scrap to go out. I used the dolly with some help to move the good engine over to a staging spot in front of the new Tracker. I moved the crane over the engine and hooked it up with the balancer to get the unit off the ground and level. This of course is so I can pull off the things I need to prep the engine for installation. I need to pull the flywheel in order to reach the crank sensor (Whoever thought this was a smart place to put a sensor needs to be hung by his nuts). I also want to pull the oil pan so I can check the oil pickup to make sure its not clogged with shit, like the dead engine was. I figured the clogged oil pickup caused the engine to eventually run dry enough that everything seized up on the thing. I DO NOT want this to happen with the good engine, seeing that finding parts for this truck is hard as hell! I attempted to source a replacement crank sensor from Auto Zone and they didn't even list one, so that lead me to Ebay. Of course since I'm trying to source an electrical component online, I definitely can't skimp on this. Also with the shitty location of the sensor, I only get one shot at this. If I put a bullshit sensor in this engine then reassemble it only to find the sensor is some shit, then we're looking at pulling the transmission and flywheel, from under the fucking truck, to replace the damn thing, versus replacing it when the engine is dangling outside under a crane, able to be worked on from all angles. So yeah, I'm gonna source an OEM sensor for this shit. I found an AC Delco unit on ebay, cost a little better than $90 so I'm gonna have to roll with that. I will also need to replace the front seal on the transmission since I did a lot of yanking trying to free the torque converter from the transmission while it was bolted to the dead engine. I figure that if anything was compromised it would be that front seal. Just like with the crank sensor, the last thing I wanna find out after reassembling everything is that the seal is going to leak all over the place while the engine is running. So yeah, this shit needs replacing too. Once I get those parts installed, it'll all be downhill from there.....
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Old Tracker Last Rites And Beginning Work On New Tracker, Starting With Old Engine Removal3/29/2020 After removing the engine and everything that was still usable on the old Tracker I was able to quickly get the F250 hooked up to the car trailer and stage it by the body so I could get it hooked up with a come along in order to winch it onto the trailer. Because of the slight downgrade that the trailer was on, once the first set of wheels made it up the ramps, every winch was pretty effortless as gravity did some work to bring the Tracker body onto the trailer the rest of the way. With the body all the way on the trailer I was able to hook up the ratchet straps onto the front set of wheels to hold the body in place but needed to still swap one more tire out. The rims that I wanted had old tires and the new Tracker's heavy plain rims had good tires on them. I had to have them swapped around so the good rims had the good tires and vice versa. I still had one more tire left when I put the body on the trailer. The next day I was able to swap that tire out. Mind you the first tire I put on the old Tracker body still had a good tire on it. My original plan was to stop by the tire shop on the way to the junkyard to have the tires swapped out while the body is on the trailer then go ahead and drop the body off with a set of old rims and tires. Crazy thing is the fact that the Tracker body sans powertrain and many other parts is super super light, much lighter than other vehicles. In transit to the junkyard we travelled over some uneven overall rippled road that had the truck and trailer bouncing around a little. When this happened the damn Tracker body had actually shifted enough that one of the front wheels (which were facing the back of the trailer) was hanging over the inner edge of the trailer platform. The thing was about ready to slide off on the inside edge of the ramp at this rate. Because of this we were unable to remove the last tire that we wanted to swap around. So off to the junkyard we went, figuring we'd remove the tire after getting the body off the trailer. The situation at the junkyard was a bunch of horseshit. First of all these cocksuckers wouldn't even help us remove the body despite the situation at hand, their excuse, liability reasons. When we dropped off the Grand Prix at a different junkyard they came with the magnet and picked the body up right off the trailer, no questions asked. They had a sign at the gate saying they're not responsible for shit if they unload your shit for you, simple, reasonable. These assholes wanted to be difficult. Anyway, I did figure out a plan to unload the body w/o it falling off the inside edge of the trailer platform. I would place one of the ramps on the inner frame between the platforms, to serve as an extension in case the wheel did slide all the way off. OK, as I was finalizing that plan, a yard forklift came behind my rig, waiting to go inside. The bitch at the counter comes out talking about moving my truck to let him in, nevermind this means having to back the damn rig back onto the scale since I would have to be facing in towards the yard to go in and drop the body off. So I got pissed off as they couldn't even try to finish things up with us so we don't have to deal with that extra hassle and let the motherfucker on the forklift wait a minute. At the same time as I was getting back into the truck to move it, still being pissed at the level of incompetence that the yard is showing with these troglodytes they have under their employ, the ole lady comes out with the title in hand saying "let's get outta here and go to the other junkyard, these guys are bullshittin". Asking why, just out of curiosity and not because I was mad, she said these assholes were trying to deduct all these different costs due to the missing parts (engine, tranny, interior parts, BATTERY?, seats, etc.) By the time it was all said and done we would've gotten probably $50 for the body. So yeah good call, fuck Pull A Part, for future reference, if you ever plan on scrapping a car that you may have stripped a few parts from, don't bother with these assholes, they're trying to bend you over from the starting line. So off to the Can Man (ironic name for a junkyard eh?) to scrap the body. After getting there, again, there was no hassle, they weigh you in, you pull over to a staging spot so they can have you out of the way while they bring in a forklift of magnet crane (in this case a forklift), they hoist the body off the trailer and you weigh back out and go turn in the title and the ticket and collect your money. The whole process took no time, they gave me a minute to undo the straps and after lifting the body off the trailer gave me a minute to pull the tire off I wanted and off they went with the body. Now ironically I ended up getting $71, more than what PAP was gonna give us for body. Score another for The Can Man. With the old Tracker out of the picture attention turned to the new Tracker. This involved pulling the truck onto the main driveway and then giving it a little push down the sloped driveway where I was able to steer into the side park and further in where I can stage the truck for the old engine removal. This went rather easy, all things considered. With the Tracker staged in a spot where I had room to move the body back further when the engine is pulled free. I broke down the engine crane and moved it in front of the Tracker to have it ready to hook up. Now the real work begins. Just like with the old Tracker I had to remove a bunch of shit, radiator, fan, air intake hose, etc. I had to unplug a bunch of plugs and hoses as well. At least I did take time to tab the plugs so as to make it a little easier to identify where respective plugs go so I'm not hunting around test fitting plugs for their proper homes and possibly running the risk that there are duplicate plugs in the mix. It really didn't take long to get things removed and unplugged and get the crane set up over the engine to hoist it out. The hardest part was getting the engine separated from the transmission. The problem is that the engine is seized up and unable to turn, which means the torque converter is unable to be separated from the flywheel, which means that the TC has to come out with the engine. I found that I still had to remove the access cover under the engine, along with a couple of extra brackets then still wrestle the engine while it was swinging under the crane, finally using a crowbar to get the torque converter to slide free of the transmission. I'm sure I fucked up the front seal on the tranny in the process so I'll be replacing that. I was going to do that anyway but after pulling the engine I'm definitely going to have to do that. With the engine on the ground, the next order of business will be to pull all the usable parts from the dead engine as well as try to break down the engine so I can be able to rotate it some to access the torque converter bolts in order to remove the unit. When done I'll have a bunch of usable parts for the new engine (alternator, power steering pump, AC compressor, coils, fuel injectors, valve cover, coolant tube, etc) and a block that'll most likely end up going to scrap. With the front of the Tracker cut out I was able to easily pull the engine and transmission from the truck by just jacking the unit up then pushing the truck body back until everything was clear of the body. With that I was able to lower everything to the ground and separate the transmission from the engine. I really won't need the engine as it was already starting to go bad, plus I was going to retain the new Tracker's transmission since it'll probably be easier to pull the engine separately from the truck. With the powertrain out I continued to pull other components from the truck. I pulled the taillights, front seats, radio, sun visors, computer, the horn button and USB charger port, the master cylinder and brake booster, radiator overflow bottle, fuse holders and relays, wiper motor, power steering hose and horns. There was obviously other shit that was pulled prior to pulling the engine. These components will make good spares for the new Tracker in case any of those parts go bad or worn on it. These trucks are more rare and replacement parts are definitely harder to find compared to some other small SUV's. I would rather have a lot of spare parts available that I may never use than to be going nuts trying to find other junked trucks to pull parts from. Another thing that I did that'll net me some more salvage money later on was cut all the wires that I was able to access easily. This was limited to the engine compartment and a couple of stretches of wire bundles in the door frame and under the seat. Just like before I was able to burn up the wire to get rid of the insulation so I'm just left with the copper, which the scrapyard prefers over the regular wire since the weight isn't taken up by plastic insulation. After all of this stripping and molestation of the already crippled truck, the last thing that I've been doing was swapping out the mag wheels and installing the plain and heavy steel wheels from the new Tracker. The mag wheels are way lighter and are just more stylish than the steel wheels so I had to keep them. The only thing is the tires on the steel wheels are WAY better than the worn out tires that are on the crushed Tracker. I was able to immediately swap out the spare tires since the old Tracker's spare tire was good just like the new Tracker's. With the other wheels I had to swap tires around for each pair so the old Tracker can get the steel wheel with a shitty tire while the new Tracker has the nicer mag wheels with newer tires. Another thing that I did was pull the rear brake parts out. I had replaced the wheel cylinders and brake shoes for both rear wheels a good while back and didn't want to let this stuff go to the junkyard since these parts were still plenty usable. Since I had to pull the other hardware loose in order to remove those desired components I just figured I'd throw all of the parts into a bucket and if necessary I can hang on to this shit if I need to work on the rear brakes on the new Tracker. I also swapped out the trailer hitch. I got this hitch from a junkyard Tracker a while back and was NOT going to let this go to the yard so it came off and was installed on the new Tracker. The hitch obviously adds to the utility of the truck as a whole. In my quest to try and save money, I've been looking at how I can save when it comes to vehicles. The biggest expense is not necessarily fuel but insurance. Even when a car is sitting in storage, in order for the vehicle to be covered with comprehensive it still needs liability, in this state. This is bullshit, since it makes no sense to pay $75 or more to make sure I can protect a car from getting crushed by a tree while it sits unused on the side of the driveway.
Because of this, my only real option is to acquire vehicles that #1 are antique so they qualify for antique plates, which once bought, no longer require yearly tags, and #2, because of their antique/collectible status can be insured by specialty insurance companies like Hagerty. One good thing about this insurance company is the idea that classic or collectible cars that don't see much use can be covered for decent amounts of coverage for not a lot of money. Now while most coverage that I've done through these guys for existing classics is a paid in full/yearly, when you break it down, the monthly amount is rather small. The amount to cover a regular bucket of a used car over 3 or 4 months can cover some low end classic for the whole year. Also when you have existing coverage any new coverage is discounted, a win/win. Anyway, this brings me to the trucks we have here. We have a 94 F250 truck that because of its weight class didn't make it eligible for antique plates despite its meeting the age requirement. Last time I tried to get Hagerty insurance for the truck and was rejected. I later on found out it was because of the classification of the uses for the truck. I put down that it would be used for hauling/towing, not knowing that I should've just put down pleasure use. After talking to a guy from the company, they concurred that limited towing (hauling a car to/from a show, hauling car parts back to the shop) fits into the pleasure use category. Hauling/towing is more for what would be classified commercial use. So with that cleared up I was able to get antique insurance for the truck. Before this though, I had decided that my best bet would be to downgrade from the F250 to an F150 truck. What I did look at was to help simplify things and be a little more legitimate, I would look for a short bed single cab F150, something that fits into the category of a collectible desirable truck and not just some old work truck. I searched far and wide through facebook marketplace for trucks that fell into this category, finding everything from the plain old work trucks with long beds, ones with 6 cylinder engines and manual transmissions (which I wouldn't have minded), all the way to true blue collectibles such as flaresides. After getting insurance for the F250 I slacked a little in my search but then ran across an 88 F150 that was a short bed, 6 cyl/5 spd. While I was searching for trucks from 92 to 96, the guy had this 88 listed for $450. It needed a clutch (prob needed some other shit too). I was ready to give it a chance though since it was so cheap. At the same time I also looked at a 96 F150 that had a dead and disassembled engine for $600. I wanted a secondary option in case the first one fell through. I had rented a truck to go pick up the 88 since it was over 100 miles away. We hitched the trailer to the F250 to haul the rig to the rental place so we can switch to the rental truck when I texted the guy to confirm we were still on. He texts me back saying that due to the rain the pasture where the truck was sitting was too wet so he'd have to meet some other time. Of course I was annoyed since it would've made sense to pull the fucker to a better spot knowing that someone was coming to get the damn thing. Well with that we ended up cancelling the rental truck but still went ahead and texted the other guy about the 96 truck. The 96 was only 45 min away and so allowed us to just drive over there to look at it and if purchased, we could come back the next day with the F250 and the trailer to pick it up. Well the guy texted back, said that since the truck belonged to his old man, he'd be available sometime in the early afternoon. Fast forward to the early afternoon, we go check out the truck. After putting my eyes on the truck I was pleasantly surprised. Yes the engine was shot, it was disassembled, and cylinders were rusty due to being exposed to moisture. Everything else was still there. Besides the powertrain issues, this truck checked all the boxes and then some. Besides being a short bed single cab truck, it had extra features like side running bars, dual exhaust, aftermarket headlights and taillights, chrome grille, tailgate with silver accent panel, power windows, two tone paint, carpeted interior, aftermarket rims and a class 3 hitch. Obviously I had to get this truck. Even with the missing engine, this truck was more than I was asking for. To get this truck I was more than ready to go find a replacement engine. With that I was able to get the truck for $500, $100 less than asking, perfect. We came back with the F250 the next day and hauled the F150 onto the trailer and took our time hauling the truck back to base. I backed the truck into a suitable spot between the house and garden and rolled the truck off the trailer. I did find out that I would have to fix the driver's door as the interior lever is not hooked up and the window regulator needs to be repaired/replaced. I almost thought I was locked in the truck when the lever wouldn't open the door. Luckily the window was able to be pushed down so I could open the door from the outside. With that I finally got my truck. I did find out that the hookups are all there, vacuum hoses, EFI lines, etc are all there. If I choose I could find a replacement EFI engine and just drop it in and hook everything back up as its supposed to be, but my real plan was to make an old school setup for this body. I wanted to install a carbureted top and older distributor to the replacement engine and later on I would replace the E4OD tranny with an AOD since the AOD is not computer controlled. I did find out that I could run the E4OD with a minimum of hookups such as a TPS (throttle position sensor) speed sensor, the EEC-IV distributor which has some extra stuff to satisfy the computer so it will control the transmission properly. OR, I can just buy a standalone controller that hooks up to the transmission and eliminates any of that other shit. I did find one of these controllers on Walmart.com of all places, for $250, which really isn't that bad, all things considered. I'll have to see where the winds take me as far as what I choose to do. Until then, I'll at least work on the other shit that needs attention on the body to get it ready for whatever I choose to do later on. With all of the tasks to do around the homestead it might seem overwhelming. Especially when I want to get to certain tasks done more sooner than later, it might seem daunting when certain jobs need to be done to comfortably complete another job. In this case we're referring to the stripping of the crushed Chevy Tracker, especially the engine, in order to swap it out into the new Tracker body (which also requires the removal of the bad engine it contains). Because the Dodge is still in the garage and there's a few things I still need to do to the car to ready it to be able to sit outside in any weather, I can't bring either of the Trackers up to the garage to pull the engines out. Since I really want to get the Tracker problem resolved more sooner than later, even if I'm still working on the Dodge, I decided to just jump the gun. I reverted back to how I used to do things before the garage was set up. I staged the engine crane in a level solid spot and rolled the Tracker over the crane to stage it for the engine removal. I removed the hood from the Tracker then spent a minute pulling things loose from the engine. Other stuff around the engine was disconnected as well. The AC hoses, condenser, radiator, air cleaner and a host of other items around the engine were removed. I also removed the headlight housings, grille, bumper and battery, just to clear some room around the engine itself. With everything cleared from around the engine, I continued to disconnect everything associated with the engine. The exhaust pipe, tranny lines, shifter linkage, engine mounts, tranny mounts, driveshaft, all wiring, hoses, etc, were disconnected. After a couple of hours I had everything disconnected from the engine and plenty of room cleared that I was able to get the engine crane balancer hooked up and secured to the factory engine hoist loops on the engine. I lifted the engine partway from the cradle of the engine compartment so I can balance the whole engine/tranny combo prior to removal. Now since the Tracker has had some patchwork done to the front internal structure that holds the radiator and other hardware, I had decided that it would be way easier to just cut the substructure from the front, opening the front of the vehicle up to allow me to just pull the engine straight out from the front. I had to cut the damaged metal and straighten everything out prior to re-welding the substructure to be able reattach things like the headlight housings, radiator, condenser, AC hoses, etc. Besides, since this body is destined for the junkyard anyway, it really doesn't matter if I hack up the body more to facilitate fast and easy removal of the engine and transmission. Now from what I've observed, removing the engine and transmission in unison will be very problematic if I have to pull the combo from the top of the engine compartment due to the relatively short length of said engine compartment. More than likely I'm going to have to try to remove just the engine from the transmission of the new Tracker and just replace the engine instead of trying to pull everything out. Hopefully the transmission in the new Tracker is good so I don't have to worry about trying to remove it later on from underneath the truck. Another thing that went on was the splitting of a bunch of stacked logs that I had staged along the driveway. This job was taken on by the wife since I was working on the Tracker at the same time. Using the log splitter, she was able to split a shitload of wood in the same two hours that it took me to disassemble the Tracker. I did have to stop my work on occasion to cart a wheelbarrow load of logs to her worksite so she can continue to split logs but other than that, work moved pretty smoothly. With the amount of wood that was stacked by the log splitter, we should be able to finish filling the firewood shed and will probably fill a good portion of the pallet that's staged in front of the firewood shed. Even with all of this wood that's been "processed", we've still got a lot of wood to still cut down into small pieces to split later plus the next door neighbor has three trees that need to be cut up (they're already on the ground) and hauled to our staging spots along the driveway so they can be split later on. Again there will be a enough wood to keep us supplied for at least two winters, probably three. I'll need to lay down a couple more pallets most likely to accommodate all of this extra wood. We'll soon see. I took a little break from cutting the wood around here to do a couple little things on the Dodge to at least reassure myself that I wasn't putting the project on the back burner. In this case I had to finish securing the rear window moldings that I left unsecured when the storm came through, change the oil in the engine to at least make sure I have some fresh shit in it and patch the small hole in the timing cover that was allowing crankcase vapors to escape, which would've added to the smoke screen that was generated when the engine was running. To take care of the moldings I got some more epoxy that has the mixing needle that premixes the glue as you squeeze it through the needle. I also had some JB weld epoxy that I wanted to use too. I mixed the JB weld first and worked it into the bottom moldings then pressed the molding back down to let the glue cure. I then used the new epoxy for the other spots on the lower half of the window. I had to work it into the gaps under the molding so when it quickly cured, I could press the molding down more to fully secure it. I worked plenty of epoxy into every spot possible to ensure that the molding was going to be secured. The JB weld was a pretty fast curing epoxy, while the other stuff had a minute set time, pretty much ensuring that the moldings were hard down by the time the last bit of glue was laid down. With the moldings glued down and the glue set, the next thing I did was use a razor blade to scrape the excess glue from around the moldings as well as scrape the molding free of glue that was still stuck on the surfaces. With that done the next thing I moved on to was applying a patch of JB weld dry epoxy to the timing cover. The small hole that was present right under the lip where the timing marks existed needed to be patched to keep crankcase vapors contained so there wasn't an excess of smoke coming from the engine. The JB weld that I used was a stick of dry epoxy, used for patching things like fuel tanks or other metal surfaces where liquid cannot be applied. I mixed up a small bit of the dry shit and mashed it under the spot on the timing cover, working it more and more to ensure that the epoxy worked its way into the hole. With that done I let the stuff cure while I moved on to the next task.... Since this engine has a bad head gasket, I figured that some water had to make its way into the oil, how much, I don't know. After checking the dipstick the oil was starting to lighten up, not to the point where it was totally turned into milkshake but enough that I wanted to change it out. I wanted to also start off fresh with some heavier weight oil to hopefully give the ailing engine a bit of a fighting chance at longevity. Hopefully the head gasket in a can has done enough to seal the bad spots in the head gasket that no more water will make its way into the oil. I got some 20w oil and a fresh filter to put in. While I could've reused the old filter I wanted to start of fresh as the old filter might've picked up some metal shavings or other shit that was in the engine and was freed up when I ran the engine for the first time in who knows how long. At least now I can start off anew and hopefully be able to keep the engine running a little while longer. I will probably add some engine treatment to the thing as well to help keep things stable later on. Another thing that I had to do was put some oil in the power steering pump to make sure that the system was going to work. I ended up having to tighten up the hose that I installed as this was a custom made setup with two junctions to link the original ends which were from two different configurations. The hose pissed out a quart of oil by the time I was able to tighten up everything to ensure that the shit was going to stay sealed. A small price to pay to ensure that shit will be good With the new oil in and the timing cover patch cured, I started up the engine and let it warm up then gave the car another test drive just to test out if the upper control arm alignment helped. It seemed the steering was a little better but was still not perfect. I figure that I still have to change out the tires and adjust the torsion bars to get them evened out too. Plus I really need to get the car on a smoother surface in order to really be able to determine that the alignment is ok. The work will continue...
Since we had acquired the 12" lithium battery powered chainsaw we had the edge in our fight against all of the fallen trees that we've had to cut up since the storm came through. Of course we used our neighbor's gas saw for the larger stuff (trunks), but the battery saw did more than its fair share of cutting branches down and even small sections of branches up to 8" in diameter. The thing is, there's a lot of stuff still on the ground that needs to be cut up, including very wide trunks that are a foot+ in diameter. These trunks will need to be split in order to allow them to dry out faster and to render them usable in the wood stove. To do all of this we picked up two new tools and brought out an old standby to work along side these new acquisitions.
The first tool is another lithium battery powered chainsaw. This saw is an 18" bar, 80v battery powered saw that is supposed to be equivalent to a 50cc saw in power. This saw will allow us to cut into the big stuff without having to fight the quirks of the gas saws or having to move things close enough to a plug in power source to use the plug up electric saw. This saw (and many in its class) are equal in price to a name brand gas chainsaw of similar size so you would have to be ready to shell out some money if you want this new tech. This isn't one of those bullshit refurbished Poulan saws you see for $125 here and there.
The next tool that we picked up that is definitely an asset is a plug in electric log splitter. While not the large powerful gas unit like our neighbor's log splitter, it is still plenty capable of getting the job done with the logs we have around here. This unit is on wheels making it easily portable and being a 110v unit, able to be used anywhere standard power or genny power is available. Compared to the larger gas units, this machine is plenty affordable and quiet in use. It definitely beats smashing wedges into logs with a sledgehammer all day. The amount of wood that can be split in one hour with this splitter would take hours using a wedge and sledge.
Using the wheelbarrow we was able to split a large amount of logs in just a few hours total time, enough that I was able to stack our firewood shed 3/4 full and barely make a dent in the total of trunks and already cut logs that are on the ground. I had to remove the already seasoned firewood that still remained in the firewood shed and stack it on a pallet just outside the firewood shed in order to make room to stack the new wood. I'll definitely be needing to lay a couple more pallets down outside the shed to stack all of the wood before I'm done, there is a LOT of wood, some that we haven't even cut into manageable logs yet. Again, from the way it looks, by the time we are done cutting all of the wood up, including the larger portions of the branches that are a couple inches wide, we will have enough firewood to last us a couple of seasons. The last piece of equipment in our arsenal against the fallen....trees...is our chipper shredder. This tool has been in our possession for several years, gifted to us by a departed neighbor (RIP) and restored to full operation with a fresh carb. This will be the tool that we use to grind up the branches that are remaining after we cut the usable firewood pieces. The ground up branches will help bind the muddy ground in various spots around the yard, at least prior to putting gravel down. It'll be a more productive use for this material versus just burning it all up and getting nothing from any of it. With these tools, we will be able to quickly process all of this yard waste into usable resources for our future use around the homestead as well as be ready for when the next fallen tree stands in our way, or is just unsightly enough that it needs to be removed, or, if we just need to replenish our stockpiles of firewood.
One of the many fatalities of the hail/wind storm was the side view mirrors on the Monte Carlo. Since the hail was literally flying sideways, it was obvious that anything facing the direction of the onslaught would take a beating. The driver's side mirror looked like someone took a slingshot to the thing, leaving a large hole in the middle of it while the passenger mirror was just gone.
Only problem with these mirrors is the idea that they are of a different shape compared to what I've managed to find online. Now while I could get whole mirrors online, the problem is that the driver's mirror is a remote control mirror, hooked up with a cable to a toggle lever in the door panel. I don't want to replace this feature with some generic mirror and I haven't even found a remote controlled mirror that will apply to this car. This means that the only option is finding a replacement glass for the existing mirrors. Again, this is something that wasn't happening as all of the replacement glasses did not match the mirrors on this car. As I would have to do before, I had to make a template of the mirror base in order to make the replacement reflective surface. This was pretty simple as all I had to do was take a piece of paper and press it against the mirror base to make an impression on the paper. I then traced the impression over with a permanent marker and cut it out. Afterwards I trimmed a little bit of paper as needed to make the template fit within the mirror base with a minimum of empty space. With the template made I was able to trace out the same template on the mirror plastic. With that I cut out the oval-ish shaped piece and used a couple of the double sided sticky strips to attach the replacement mirror surface to the mirror base. Doing the passenger side first I cut enough sticky pieces to secure the mirror to the base, peeling the protective film from the surface to reveal the nice reflective surface. I repeated the same thing with the driver's side, this time taking care to clean the broken mirror surface prior to putting the sticky strips in place to they will hold as best as they can. Repeating the same procedures as with the passenger side, I was able to make a perfect replacement reflective surface for the driver's side. The only real problem I seen with these mirrors is the idea that because they're flexible plastic, when pressed against the surfaces with the sticky strips, they make for a slightly rippled surface that refracts the light hitting it, making for a rippled image in the mirror. Now while this doesn't stop one from viewing the mirror to see what's behind them, some may object to the idea that the image in the mirror is slightly distorted. They may look at it as "tacky" or cheap since it is a cheap fix. The idea I had to help this was to remove the sticky strips and use some glue to fix the mirrors to the bases so as to make for a super flat surface that will hopefully not refract the light like they are now. Again, as the mirrors currently are, they're not stopping me from being able to see images but I always like to improve things when I know I can. While these mirrors are definitely getting the job done as far as allowing me to see shit behind me, even after I do try to glue down the mirrors, I will still be looking at what it costs to make replacement mirror glass for the templates I made and if its not too ridiculous I'll get the real deal made so I can replace the plastic mirrors with glass. Until then, the cheapo plastic mirrors will be holding it down.
After having cleared the trees from the road and cutting up the trees that fell on the cars I was tasked with cutting up a couple of fallen trees that by one of our neighbors properties. One tree was already on the ground and the other was sitting in a smaller tree, somewhat off the ground. For this task I used the battery electric chainsaw we have and our neighbor's Stihl saw.
The first thing I did was use the battery saw to cut the branches from the trunk. These branches were around 2" in diameter at the trunk, which was nothing for the battery saw to handle. Even after cutting each branch free from the trunk I further cut the branches into smaller sections in order to be able to load them into the truck as well as be able to handle them when it comes time to run the branches into the chipper shredder. The battery saw chopped all of the branches free from the trunk. With that done I was able to start cutting up the trunk from the top as it was only a few inches diameter near what would've been the top of the tree. I chopped through this pretty easily. I kept working my way down the trunk until I got to where the trunk was around 8" diameter. I then moved over to the other tree. I cut up the branches from the 2nd tree, doing the same thing where I cut the branches into smaller sections. I managed to remove the branches from the trunk and started cutting into the narrow top of the trunk, taking a few feet from the tree before the batteries finally went dead. On the next day I continued on by using the Stihl to cut the first tree trunk all the way to the root ball. I moved on to the 2nd tree and cut more of the trunk up to where it rested in the still standing tree. With that I concluded the 2nd day. On the third day we came back, this time to load up the cut up branches into the truck along with sections of the cut up first tree. I cut the tree up into small enough sections so all I have to do is split the sections in the log splitter and stack, no further cutting. After getting a large amount of branches loaded into the truck with trunk sections we moved on to the rest of the 2nd tree, starting with me having to cut the tree to get it free of the standing tree. Once that tree was on the ground I cut the trunk into small sections, like the first tree, so they can be split and stacked. Once I got the 2nd tree chopped up into sections I moved on to the standing tree. This tree was a tree that really didn't do much and had brittle branches, more than likely it was already dead. Our neighbor wanted to get rid of that tree too. Since this was a small tree, it didn't take much to drop it. Each of the sections were around 8" in diameter and were no match for the Stihl. After dropping the trunks I further cut up the large awkward stump as low as I could. I cut up the tree into smaller sections, not quite the foot long sections like the first two trees, but short enough that we can get the sections into the truck without struggling. I can use one of the electric saws later on to cut the these sections into shorter pieces. It was getting late and I really didn't have time to just keep cutting the trunk into smaller sections. In the next installment we will be loading up the remaining trunk pieces and branches and bringing everything back to the house and staging everything in the areas where I've been stacking the rest of the cut up tree shit. All that's left now is cutting up our next door (or next lot) neighbor's trees. He'll probably manage to get some cut up beforehand but I'm gonna also cut more so I can get those trunk sections back to the house and staged with the rest of the wood. Only then will I begin the next phase which will be grinding up the branches.
With the damage to the vehicles on the lot the first thing I had to do to take my mind away from the idea that well, we had some cars get seriously fucked up. One of the things was obviously clearing the fallen trees from the vehicles in order to better survey the damage and determine my next course of action. Among those plans is what I planned on doing with the Tracker, given the fact that the roof is folded in on itself. One of the things that I immediately thought about was the ad that I saved on facebook marketplace for a Chevy Tracker. This ad was saved several months ago and was for a truck that was nice and solid except for the apparently seized up engine. I felt that I needed to keep the ad saved despite the idea I wasn't trying to find another vehicle to rebuild ours, which had damage that was repaired, in a somewhat haphazard manner. The most I was trying to do was keep the truck running until it either died or something better came along and I sold the old truck off. Well maybe having a tree try to cut the truck in half the long way was God's way of saying, "hey, you don't need to keep trying to work on this POS, I'm gonna make sure you ain't gonna keep trying to hang on to this tore up truck.....CHOP!" Then when I checked and saw that the ad was still active after several months, I had to inquire about it. The truck was for sale for $600. The old lady that owned it still had it, and was willing to go down to $500. Either way, this was that silver lining that we was looking for. I cleared the scrap metal from the F250 and got my towing rig set up so we can go fetch this truck. When we got to the woman's house, we found that she was down a grade in a valley/ravine, which meant that we would have some problems retrieving the truck. The F250 has relatively shitty tires and is only 2WD. First thing I did was detach the trailer and leave it parked on the side of the driveway by the road. We went on down to check it out. While enjoying pleasant conversation with the lady who owned the truck, I checked it out and was more than pleasantly surprised at what we had before us. This truck's body was for all intents in excellent shape barring one small dent in the front few inches of the right front fender. All other panels were A-1, no rust, even the paint was decent still. The interior was just as good. All interior panels and seats were clean and solid except for the need of a vacuuming out. Hell, the truck didn't even stink inside like a lot of used cars tend to, especially when they've been sitting for a while. I was even pleasantly surprised to find that the truck had manual windows which were solid and worked fine. The truck had an aftermarket radio and a brand new spare tire complete with the factory cover. The rear left tire was flat so I swapped out the spare and found it needed air too. The engine even had other stuff that we needed to replace on ours after the past couple of accidents. There are also plenty of usable parts on and around the engine that I can salvage. My main intent is swapping out the dead engine with the crushed Tracker's good engine then stripping all of the usable parts from the crushed truck. Well obviously we went ahead and bought the truck, lightened our monetary load and got a title in its place. I hitched a tow chain to the truck and we commenced to drag the truck up the driveway. When we got to the incline, we made it about 3/4 of the way up before the F250's tires started spinning in the gravel. We backed up and made multiple attempts to try and get a running start up the driveway to no avail. At this point I had to get some more air in that low spare tire. I took the tire compressor pump from the F250 and attempted to use it in the Tracker (we brought the crushed truck's battery and installed it to verify everything else worked in the truck) but found that the fuse was dead and the plug was partially melted. After attempting to make a fuse out of a metallic ketchup packet (which almost worked by the way), I ended up cutting the shitty plug from the compressor and remembering how the cover behind the shifter where the 12v receptacle is at can be removed very easily, I pulled the cover loose and removed the two wires from the socket and just wedged the wires from the pump into them to get power to the unit so I can fill up the tire. Once the tire was pumped up pretty good we made another attempt at the incline. I gave the F250 a good push and with the Tracker being on all four filled up tires, I pushed like The Little Engine That Could and finally crested and got to where I was on level solid ground. With the Tracker on level ground as well I devised a plan where I would stage the little truck in the road, hook back up to the trailer then pull the trailer down the road a little bit, then give the Tracker a little push towards the trailer and line it up where I can get a rolling start and hopefully roll up most of the way. Luckily the neighbors for the old lady spotted us and offered to help push. Because of that we was able to get the car 3/4 of the way up on the trailer. I was able to use the little come-a-long to winch the thing the rest of the way onto the trailer. With that I was able to secure the Tracker to the trailer and load up so we can ride out. With the long relatively slow ride back home, we made a couple of stops we had to do before returning home. We did have to stage the truck at the beginning of the gravel road leading up to the house since it was kinda late and we didn't want to be doing any more fighting until morning. We left the rig parked right next to the gravel road on what appears to be solid ground. We will be unloading the Tracker and staging it along the driveway behind the El Camino aiming up at the garage so I can get an easy pull straight up there later when I'm ready. I will have to back the trailer back into its parking spot, hopefully not getting stuck on the soft ground in the process. At least though, we are on the road to recovery. Along with the shit load of firewood, we will have one car taken care of. |
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May 2023
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