Another little project that I managed to get done in the middle of working on car shit was relocating the dog to the original spot we had her before all of this reconstruction. The thing is there were some changes I had to make to ensure we have little issue with the dog wrapping herself around trees or otherwise getting tangled up. We had to put a fairly long enough chain on her to allow her to be able to move about and go into her dog house but at the same time it ended up being a Catch-22 because it allowed the idiot to wrap herself around the trees that were in the middle of her little domain. If not that the dog would wrap around the dog house or food dish and tear shit up in the process. We moved the dog over by the chicken yard and had the chain wrapped around a tree that was right next to the yard fence. Of course this resulted in the dog tearing up the fence. Something had to be done to keep this dog under control before the next vacation.
The idea I had was based on one I seen before where a cable is strung between two points and a short leash is attached to the cable and the dog's collar. The dog is able to run along the length of the cable but no further than the few feet that the smaller chain grants from the main cable. Of course there's no buildings or clothesline posts that I can attach to so the next best place was to situate the cable between two trees in the original dog yard area. Since I wasn't trying to buy any commercially made hardware I figured I would recycle the cable that was used along the top of the old dog yard fence to hold the anti-climbing PVC pipe that was hooked up to. I had plenty of eye bolts as well, plus those little cable clamps that were used for the same cable. We have chain all over the place as well as carabiners and other clamps, basically everything necessary to replicate this cable/leash setup, for free. I started off with screwing an eye bolt to each of the two selected trees, spanning a gap of about 12 feet. The eye bolts are about 3 feet off of the ground, this way the length of the leash chain can be kept short. I then took a long length of the cable I had rolled up and started at one eye bolt, ran the gap to the other tree, through the other eye bolt and back to the original eye bolt. This way the cable is doubled up to ensure strength. I used one of the cable clamps to attach the two ends together at the one eye bolt to secure the whole cable I used a second cable clamp at the other eye bolt to create a stopper about 4 feet from that eye bolt. This was to ensure that the dog cannot walk all the way over to the tree and get wrapped around it. The stopper clamp won't allow it. I did the same at the first eye bolt too. The span of travel for the dog's leash is about 6 feet in the middle of the overall 12 ft cable. At one end on either side of one tree I set up two dog houses, one for actual laying in and the other contains the bulk feeder, both protected from the weather. The chain came from some old dog chain we had laying around on the ground. Even though this chain is not anti-kink, it will make do until we get our hands on some no-kink chain. For the time being a small kiddie pool and 5 gallon bucket provide water so even if the dog fully dumps the bucket, the pool will contain the water. The only reason for the pool and bucket was because of the idea that the automatic water dish was set up about 15 feet away from the dog site in the middle of the clearing. We can't have this anyway if we're going to be moving vehicles around through this area. The only option here is to extend the water line over to the new dog site. This will involve some trenching. I pulled out the shovel and started digging out a trench from where the faucet was at and slowly worked my way to where the kiddie pool was setting. This took a few minutes as the ground is hard heavy clay soil that was dry. After finishing the trench I had to dig out some long lengths of 1/2" PVC pipe and some couplings. The only couplings I could find were some pipe tees that had a short length of pipe sticking out of the leg portion of the T, which allowed me to put a cap on that small piece and effectively make a regular coupling out of the tee. I set up three of these couplings then found a water valve that I chose to install right before the faucet. I ended up cutting the faucet leaving about 6" of pipe from the elbow. This is where the valve went. The couplings and longer lengths of pipe went from the cut line at the middle of the yard over to the faucet and valve. After getting this put together fast I filled in the trench and attached the water dish and hose to the faucet. I will let the pipe glue cure overnight before turning on the water so as to ensure full strength when the pressure hits the couplings. The dog is able to reach the water dish with no problem, close enough to reach it but not too close as to be able to get wrapped up in it or pull on it.
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Another little thing I had to address was the idea that even though I did some work on the heating system on the Mustang earlier this year (or was it late last year?), I still had piss poor heat, didn't even seem like much air was moving from the vent. Even after closing off the venting system to where the air only moved from the defrost top vent and the one vent blowing out at chest level, the CFM was poor. I figured at first that the blower motor was going bad, in part due to the idea that it seemed like there was excessive power draw from the electrical system when the motor was running even on high. The voltmeter would go down in its reading like it was detecting an excessive power draw. So in this installment I moved the Mustang over to the worksite to pull out the HVAC box and prepare to replace the blower motor.
In order to do this it involved basically pulling the whole dash out and partially removing the "foundation" of the dash support or whatever the hell that section of metal is called. I had to pull the dash panel, gauge cluster, clock panel on passenger side, radio, and disconnect everything in the process to allow for the movement that would be necessary to remove the HVAC box. This didn't take as long as one would think as I've done this a few times before and there isn't as much crap to remove nor the components are as brittle as newer dash panels. No plastic clips and other shit like that to deal with. After pulling the HVAC box out and removing the blower box, I did some testing of the blower to see if anything changed and got the same result, slow speed even on high. Then I started thinking about the speed control resistor/coil cluster, are these things making the motor run slow? I removed the blower and did a makeshift hookup to power the blower from the battery and tested the blower direcly. The motor came on hard. I then hooked the blower back up to the resistor coil cluster and figured out where the power leads from the fan switch needed to go. To make a long story short, I put those power wires in the wrong spots. The blower motor had just medium speed in either setting. Now, in the new configuration I have medium and high, which works for me. The fun part now, putting shit back together. I wouldn't say it was that serious, its just doing everything in reverse. I managed to get everything back together the 2nd day of this episode so now the thing should be ready to go as far as moving air. At that point I can then determine if I have to do something more with the coolant portion of the heating system to see if heat is transferring properly to the heater coil for the fan to pull air over to heat up. This was just one of the many little things I need to do on the old school cars to make them more ready for me this fall/spring (and hopefully summer with the addition of A/C) and to just overall make them more up to par with a more complete modern car. There are many things that are missing in these old cars that I never really addressed as I saw them as relatively unnecessary features, like windshield washer systems, among other things. Other things that I've planned on doing would fall into the class of modifications, like trunk release mechanisms or LED light upgrades. Really it falls into a mindset issue, once I get my mind wrapped around this or that vehicle, I won't have any issues with spending a chunk of money buying the items I need to make the modifications or repairs/restorations on these cars.
After working on building projects and other homestead tasks I've decided that I have to start working on some car stuff in force. Throughout the summer the only car related work I've done was necessary stuff, replacing the fuel pump on the S10, fixing the Tracker, shit like that. I'm on the idea of working on the old school cars among others, getting them ready for fall running, among other things.
The first order of business was to fix the high beam headlights on the Monte Carlo. When I turned the lights on they would run for a random amount of time then some kind of short or who knows what would cause all the lights to dim down to the point of almost going out, until I turn the high beams off. When they're on the switch and the wires get warmer than I'm comfortable with. My solution if I don't see anything obvious, add automotive relays into the circuit to run the headlights directly from the battery through the relays and use the wires that were normally feeding the headlights for feeding the low wattage relays. I did a little troubleshooting to see if I could find any issues and I made some small repairs but didn't really find much that was out of place. It's obvious most of the wiring from the connectors all the way back to the switch are old and not of the best connectivity. I did replace the switch a while back but the plugs for the bulbs were trashed, the plastic was brittle and crumbled in my hand so I had to just use the individual plugs. I did have to solder a pair of wires that were going to the high beam light switch as they were never soldered when this switch was added due to the original high beam selector switch being bad. In the end I still ended up adding the relays just for safety's sake. Plus it kind of adds a bit of redundancy. If anything in the circuit fails, I can always jumper out the contacts on the relay to get power to the headlights. Two different ways to illuminate the lights, perfect. Later on when I add the H4 housings I will also replace the terminals with complete H4 plugs so I can at least have neat complete wiring with the whole plugs, not three wires with female terminals plugged up to the bulbs. I try not to be tacky when I can avoid it.
Another thing that I had to do on the Monte Carlo was to do a little tweaking on the carburetor since when I initially started the thing it ran kind of shitty. I did some initial checking to make sure none of the spark plug wires were damaged or if there were any vacuum leaks from broken hoses. Everything looked kosher so I went ahead and made some adjustments to the carburetor itself. I adjusted the choke to see if maybe it was not closing initially which was causing it to run shitty when it was cold. While the thing obviously revved up when the choke closed after making the adjustment, I had to work the throttle to make the choke open where it should be since the engine was pretty much warmed up at that point. I even had to adjust the throttle a little since the thing was revving more than it should at idle. I have the thing set where the idle is reasonable and the choke is at a point where I think it should be but when it comes to carburetors, especially used/rebuilt carbs, you'll always be making adjustments as the seasons change. I will probably need to replace the fuel filter though, and replacing the fuel pump is always a possibility since the little generic electric fuel pumps that you use when you have a carbureted car that's pieced together tend to be touch and go when it comes to reliability. We will see, now that the temperatures are going down to more reasonable levels where I can ride without A/C.
The next vehicle that I addressed was the 69 Mustang. This car hasn't really been driven since late spring, probably some time in late June since it started getting hot and i wasn't going to be riding and dying in the summer heat. Of course the battery was dead so it needed to be boosted off with the charger before cranking the thing. But as usual, after a little cranking to get the pump to pull fuel up to the carburetor, ole' reliable fired right up without a hitch. Once the fuel started flowing good the engine leveled off and was idling smooth and stayed there for a while. I topped off the radiator and let the thing idle for a while just to observe how the car ran.
One thing that I did notice though was that the hood hinge on the passenger side was binding and of course the hood I have on there is very worn out since I had to fight the thing to get the hood down. The hood bent near the hinge and after spraying oil on the hinge to help loosen it up, I still had to push down on the hood to get the bends out once it was closed. That's just going to be part of the whole restoration or at least beautification process on the body, unless I get annoyed enough to just replace that shit first since I do hate the way it looks with that shitty hood on there. Of course if I could find one I would definitely consider a fiberglass hood and some other hinges if they are an option. Who knows, I'll have to research that shit at some point when I think about it.
The last vehicle I fucked with in this installment was my mom's old 2001 Ford Explorer. This thing has a shit ton of miles on it (319k) and for all intents falls into the bucket status despite the body and interior still being in good shape for a vehicle with those miles. Anyway, I had to put the battery charger on its battery too since it wasn't started in quite a while. After getting the Mustang running I was able to relocate the charger to the Explorer . Of course I had to scrub the battery terminals with a wire brush since there was enough crud on them to keep from making a good connection with the battery charger clamps. After juicing up the battery enough I was able to get the thing to pop off pretty easy. I let the thing run for a good while as well just to loosen it up.
The following day I went back to the Monte Carlo to check out the HVAC system, well more accurately the blower motor. I've had issues where it seemed like the blower would not be pushing air at times but when I would check, a lot of times the thing would be running. This time I turned the heater on and got air moving. Then as predicted the thing went out. I changed out the blower motor with a spare one I had in the storage trailer. I ended up having the same effect. I put the meter on the power lead going to the thing and had power but when I cycled the thing on the power was weak. I even took the motor out and hooked it up to see how it ran and it ran slowly, showing the power was piss poor going to the motor. For shits and giggles I hooked up a couple of wires directly to the battery and the motor and the thing came on hard, same goes for the other blower motor. That lead to the conclusion that the speed control module or resistor or whatever the hell this thing is called was going or has gone bad and wasn't regulating the power coming out to run the blower motor. For the time being I jumpered the thing out, feeding power from the 12v going in to the lead that goes directly to the motor to give it an always on 12v when the heater is turned on. Of course the logical choice would be to just order another damn speed control module but when you're spreading money all over the place sometimes your mind has you not making what would otherwise be logical decisions when it comes to certain things. Reality is I probably will just say fuck it and order the damn thing off ebay first chance I get.
The next thing was the Explorer. I went to it to start it and try to do another test drive in order to give it a clean bill of health in order to put it up for sale to move it since none of us was really too keen on trying to use a vehicle with over 300k miles on it. I had some issues before with the thing either having a problem starting, or when started it would idle shitty and not stay running or when in gear would not really do shit. The problem would be sporadic and would not trip a check engine light. There would be times the engine would run like a sewing machine and other times the thing would run like shit. Again, no CEL. This problem reared its ugly head this time, just as I was trying to pull down the driveway. Luckily I was able to get the thing running enough to pull right over onto the asphalt slab by the chicken yard to park the thing. After the debacle with the ole lady's Tracker and the camshaft positioning sensor giving almost the same symptoms (including no CEL code for a CAMP sensor)it is leading me to believe the CAMP sensor is shitty or failing. So now at this point I have to do a little research, see what these things go for online, especially the OEM shit, and if I don't go to the local pull a part junkyard to get some CAMP sensors to try, end up buying one new to replace in this thing. It will obviously be a gamble because if this does not fix it then I'm back to trying to figure out what's up and obviously spending more money for a vehicle I may not even get $700 for when its all said and done. Worst case is if the CAMP sensor is bad and a new one fixes things, I may just say fuck it and keep the thing for myself and just drive it into the ground and once the thing does decide to frag the engine, maybe part the thing out and use the chassis for one of those body on frame setups I've been planning on possibly doing to the Mustangs to get around the shitty frame issues they tend to have. Time will tell....
Today was really nothing more than some general cleanup of the area going from the car park over to the storage trailer. This area has some gravel that I laid that was had from Lowe's courtesy of their "recovery bags", bags that were ripped open and may have lost some contents but not much. I always get these for half off so it ends up being a bargain. While it'll still cost more to cover the ground I'm trying to cover versus spending several hundred at once for a dump truck load of gravel, its one of those "pay a little over time" kind of deals. Anyway my plan was to clear the area so I can park a car there to work on for semi long term. Rather than bring all my shit over to whatever car I wanna work on, I can just park that car right there near the trailer and be able to just hop over to grab whatever I need to work on the vehicle. Plus with the gravel down it'll make for a better work surface than working on the dirt. I had to crush a few bags of cans I left over on the spot first of all, then move the Chinese ATV over near the new fuel shed. Along with the ATV shell and a bundle of wire I had near it to use for any rewiring I might've had to do, the unit is out of the way and actually in a nicer spot in case I feel compelled to work on it under the trees where its shaded. Among other things I did move a couple of crates of cut scrap wood that'll be used for future firewood. Once all the stuff that was in the way was moved, which included some other crap that was in some high grass along the sides of the gravel spot, I took the push lawn mower and went over said high grass to knock it down. The only other stuff that is in the way (for all intents) is the small boats I've been working on in the past that are right next to the garden fence, along with the boat trailer that contains a canoe that's to be used in a future boat project. Even with the boats where they are, there's still plenty of room that I was able to move the Monte Carlo in place on the gravel spot for some future work I have to do to it. I have to work on the headlights, trying to find out why the high beams flake out and make all the headlights go out at times. I also have to check out the heater blower motor to see about its functionality on the car. After moving the car I also determined I have to do some light tuning up on the engine as well. One thing I did notice after really looking around the area was how after everything I did, clearing the path by the storage trailer, removing the fence in the old dog yard as well as the old fuel shed, I ended up noticing that I created the perfect loop around the area for when I do things that involve moving vehicles and/or trailers around. If I was pulling a car with the F250 for example, I could pull the car into the work zone by the storage trailer, unhook it then drive the truck back around the back side of the garden and back into the main driveway that runs between the house and garden to reconnect with the main drag that runs thru the property. Same thing with a trailer. If I have raw materials that I'm dropping off I can do the same thing, bring the trailer around to the back where the future workshop will be and drop it off and unhook to drive the truck back around. If not any of that, it allows me to park trailers around the back area out of sight of the main driveway, able to be retrieved when needed. With this idea of course it'll mean having to put extra gates in the perimeter fence when I get the fences up. This is no big deal, and the benefits far outweigh any extra hassle or costs to set the fencing up like this. The only thing I really need to be doing now is moving in more gravel so I can get more real estate covered up to make for a more user friendly work environment.
This is pretty much the epilogue to the chapter that is the cleanup of the old fuel shed area. With the future plans for the area, I needed to further clean up the area by removing the remaining fence that divided the old dog yard area from the area where the old fuel shed once stood. This consists of a complete chain link fence gate, three wood posts, some thin wire with pvc pipe that was for keeping the dog from being able to climb over the fence, some metal conduits that hold the top of the chain link fence steady along with some boards along the bottom for the same reason, and finally the chain link fence itself.
The first thing I did was detach the chain link gate. I had to remove some wood screws to detach the gate from the wood posts, which allowed me to just take the unit down and away with no effort. One of the wood posts was rotted at the ground level so I was able to just break the post off. I stored the post with the salvaged 2x4's since it was still a good piece of wood, albeit a little short. The next thing was removing the cable and pvc pipe from the top, which consisted of removing the wire clamps where they were and pulling the wire loose along with the pvc pipe. With that I went ahead and detached the conduits from the top of the fence. The pipes were tossed along with the corrugated metal and the metal for the portable garage since this pipe could be used in the construction of the future workshop. Next was the 4x4 boards that were set along the bottom of the fence to hold the fence steady. I had to use the die grinder to grind the U tacks that I used to tack the fence to the board. With the first board pulled I then jumped over to the fence itself. I pulled the fence loose from the first board, haviing to grind U tacks away, then the second before having to cut free another bottom board. I was able to get the first section of fence free, then went ahead and cut the other fence post with the reciprocating saw to fully clear that side of the fence. The other side (using the missing gate as a reference) of the fence was all attached to a line of trees that ran to where the wood fence ended for the old dog yard. Just like with the fence posts I had to grind U tacks away to pull the chain link free from the trees. In some cases I did have to cut the chain link itself from the trees since the trees actually grew around the U tacks and the chain link itself. After removing a couple more bottom boards and working my way back to the wood fence I finally removed the remaining chain link fence, clearing away all signs of a fence ever being there. At this point the area is now open for easy mowing with the zero turn mower and its now open where once I do put up the perimeter wood fence that will enclose this area behind the garden with the old dog yard area, I will then be able to start building my workshop. With the area open it will allow my to move large things around between the workshop and the storage trailer and fuel shed areas. It will be easy to drive a car or truck all the way around to the back where the workshop is at if I have to unload cargo or pick up cargo. If I build something back there that I'm hauling out it'll be easy to do so with the area being opened up. Things are moving along nicely so far.
Today I managed to finally finish cutting all of the scrap wood that was piled up by the new fuel shed. The pallet that I used to stack the wood is pretty full, with more than enough wood between it and the other stack of wood I made by the shed to tide me over through the winter. I should be more than able to keep a fire going any time I'm outside working on a car or anything that involves me being in one spot for the time I'm outside. I know there will be more wood to add to the pile as I continue with any other building projects that involve the use of the salvage wood.
At least now I did get another little area cleared, which is one of the main themes around the yard, organization. At some point I hope to either use up the salvage wood all together and clear that spot in front of the storage trailer, or at least make some racks to hold the salvage wood, like racks to hold the pallet boards neatly, as well as a rack for shorter pieces of 2x4s and one for very long 2x4's. With the wood pile taken care of, another thing that I took care of was repairing a bad step on our deck. This staircase is made of the pressure treated wood that is sold at Lowes and other similar stores. This stuff despite being treated, does not really last as long as one would expect. Case in point, this step, its been replaced once before a couple of years ago along with some others and has already rotted to the point that it was dangerous and was just waiting for one of us to step on it just right and break a leg as we go through to the bottom. Luckily I managed to salvage some 1x6 pressure treated boards from the stack of salvage wood. These boards were in very good condition, almost new, one even still had the tag on it. I figured rather than go spend money on another step board, I would just take two of these boards and butt them together on the top of the staircase. After removing the bad step I mounted the boards side by side with the ends on one side and the rest overhanging. I secured the boards with the wood screws I had then cut the rest off flush with the other side. To reinforce the boards I cut a 2x4 with the length that would span the width of the two stair support boards. I secured the 2x4 right under the 1x6's with it evenly spaced between the 1x6's underneath. This way I was able to drive wood screws from the top of the 1x6's through to the 2x4. This way I was able to reinforce the step for a while, at least. At some point I will have to rebuild the entire deck as the foundation boards are rotting at spots and the whole structure is getting weak. Of course as with anything that is built then has to be rebuilt, it will be rebuilt better than before.
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May 2023
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