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...
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