Well many things have occurred over the last several days, with many plans thwarted due to normal shitty circumstances that come with the territory when you mess with old worn out stuff in an environment where you and only you are the sole authority when it comes to maintenance. Because of some of the horseshit that has gone down over these last few days, pardon me if I get a little um, excited in this post.
Things started off pretty smooth, my first plan was to build a kayak rack to store the kayaks on a smaller footprint in the yard versus just having them laying on the ground like they've been for the last several years. Since I have plenty of salvage wood stacked up, I used that to make what I decided to call the yak-rack. This design was literally a shoot-from-the-hip plan that I made up as I went along. All I really needed to do was make a rack that would hold the bigger of the yaks on the bottom and support the smaller of the two decently enough that the wood won't sag or break under the weight of the smaller boat. The whole rack was made with a combination of 2x8's and 2x4's. The 2x8's were used on the bottom and top sides and the vertical support. The 2x4's were used along the length of the rack. The nail gun obviously made for quick assembly of the rack with me being able to get the whole thing done in a couple hours, and that's including knocking the nails out of the boards and cutting the lengths I decided upon for the rack. I did have to muscle the whole thing to the final site and use a couple of bricks to support one side of the thing since the ground was uneven where I wanted to set the rack. With that I was able to set the two boats on it along with one of the oars. The other oar was actually being used for a rudder and backup oar for the catamaran I was working on at an earlier time. I did play around with the little ATV trying to figure out why the thing isn't getting spark, trying ideas from forums and just simple analysis of how the system is put together. I still haven't quite figured it out but I feel I'm getting there. But after playing with the ATV, this is when things started getting hairy. This past Wednesday while riding back after we went to the gym that night my S10 was just humming along when all of a sudden it just shut off. I threw it in neutral while still rolling to try and see if I can restart the engine but to no avail. After pulling over and trying to restart it I ended up calling the other half to turn around and come back so we can contact roadside assistance to send a tow truck to pull this fucker back to the house. Because most of these insurance company tow services take a year and a day I said I'm going to the house, I'll leave the keys under the sun visor, its not like anybody's gonna be able to steal this fucker anyway. With that the 90 min wait began and we took our asses back to the house. Once back at the house had to clear an area for the truck to be able to place the S10 where it won't be in the way as we still need to park the ole lady's truck without issue. After moving the mustang wreck and tow dolly and some other shit back enough to open up an area for the S10 to be staged, we got the call that the tow truck hooked up the S10 and was en route. When the truck showed up it turned out it was a regular tow truck with the boom on the back, not a flatbed...puta madre! This meant that he won't be able to just back the thing up into my staging spot I had set. As a consolation the driver did offer to help me push while the ole lady steered the S10 so we can push it into my staging spot after he unhooked it. That went surprisingly easy at least. At this point I had to do some troubleshooting. I put the scanner on the S10 only to get no codes. At that point it made me believe I was either dealing with a fuel delivery issue or no spark delivery, not from the electronic sense. With no codes that meant that it wasn't a sensor failure issue that was keeping the ECU from firing the fuel injectors or the spark plugs. First thing I did was put my piece of shit harbor freight fuel pressure tester on the thing. The reason I said its a POS is because the gauge with the kit is good for maybe a couple of good tests. Once gasoline comes in contact with the gauge's internals, all the rubber shit inside degrades so the next time you hook this cheap Chinese shit up the damn thing leaks all over the fucking place creating molotov cocktail conditions. Well After tightening the gauge set enough that it wouldn't leak too much I cycled the key to make the fuel pump cycle. The gauge went up to maybe 7 psi then bled down with the leaking of the shitty gauge. These EFI systems are supposed to pressurize around 50 psi or so, way off from the 7psi I read, this is barely enough to run a carbureted engine. As a side test I did pull the air cleaner tube and sprayed starting fluid in the thing and attempted to start the engine. It did start up on that, so that definitely told me that the ignition system was fine and we were dealing with a fuel pressure issue, more accurately a bad fuel pump. I did one more check with the shitty gauge after tightening it again and it held pressure....at a nice 10 psi, not shit. With this I ordered a complete fuel pump assembly from Ebay. Reason I did this was because before the truck died I had noticed the fuel gauge was barely responding to the use of fuel. The thing read a full tank for 3 days, to which at that point I felt I need to put some fuel in this thing because there's no way in hell this thing went 3 days and is still reading a full tank. I was right as this thing took what amounted to 4/5 of a tank of fuel. The next day I did get a new fuel filter just to try for shits and giggles to see if the fuel filter was so clogged that maybe it wasn't passing the necessary pressurized fuel to run the engine. While this went pretty fast, it didn't do shit to solve the problem so yeah, we're still on the fuel pump. On Friday morning I had to remove the fuel from the tank since the universe found it necessary to make this damn fuel pump die the moment I filled the tank, sonofabitch! I did have an idea, I found the relay for the fuel pump and jumpered out the contacts so I can turn on the fuel pump manually. I pulled the fuel filter from the fuel line and attached a length of hose with a metal line on it and ran it from under the truck where I can put the end of the line in a gas can. After cycling on the pump I went about messing with other shit while waiting for the gas to pump into the can as the pressure and fuel flow was so slow that it took a minute to fill up a 5 gallon gas can with the slow tinkle that came from the line. After removing two and a half 5 gallon cans of gas and putting that in a couple of other vehicles I was able to go ahead and remove the straps and other supports for the fuel tank, dropping it to the ground where I was able to remove the sending unit/fuel pump assembly. At this point I've gone as far as I can go on the S10, now its waiting time for the replacement fuel pump. The next bit of fuckery was with the ole lady's truck a 2002 Chevy Tracker. First I ended up discovering that the radiator decided to leak at the seam where the core is crimped to the bottom plastic body. Luckily I kept the old radiator which had turned out to be good after some past troubleshooting and was able to be re-installed in the truck to fix the radiator problem. On Friday while I was driving I got to experience what she was saying was an issue with the brakes where they seemed to not grab all the time. At one point I figured the master cylinder was failing but the way this was getting worse I figured that the rear brakes were giving me grief. Since the front brakes seemed to be grabbing more while the truck took a little longer to stop I figured that the rear brake shoes were worn enough that maybe they were allowing for the rear brakes to not grab enough to stop quickly. We got a set of shoes from Auto Zone with the plan being to change them out Saturday. I went ahead and started pulling things apart, only to find the Japanese engineered bullshit that was this rear brake system, with extra components that I can't possibly see as being necessary. I've never seen these extra components in any old school drum brake set up and usually I've been able to change out brake shoes pretty fast on the old school cars due to the simplicity of the brake systems. But oh no, not this POS! Well after finally re-figuring out the layout of the components (photographing was hard due to the wheel hub plate blocking 90% of the view of the whole assembly), I was able to get the shit put back together with new shoes. I absent mindedly went to the other side to repeat the process. Upon almost putting everything back together I went to squeeze the wheel cylinder pistons in so as to make sure the shoes are brought in enough to allow for the installation of the brake drum and I noticed brake oil skeeting from around the piston seals. Well sonofabitch! That's what was wrong the whole time, the motherfucking wheel cylinders decided to go completely flatline on us, causing the brake pressure to drop shortly after applying the brakes, not allowing the rear brakes to grab good and allow for a quick stop. With this we ended up having to hit the street back to Auto Zone to luckily find a store that had both wheel cylinders in stock. Another $40 down the drain on top of the other money spent. On a side note, one thing that I can say I was impressed with on the rear brake system is how the routed the oil lines to the wheel cylinders. While old school cars have a distribution block that attaches to the rear end to take the one brake line from the front and split it to go to each wheel cylinder individually, this set up takes that one brake line from the front, plugs it into the right wheel cylinder, then another line is routed from the right wheel cylinder over to the left wheel cylinder and that unit has the bleeder valve on it. So instead of bleeding two wheel cylinders, you only have to bleed one. The pumping will force all the air from the right wheel cylinder over the left where it can be bled out. Another issue we had on the Tracker was with the AC. It had stopped on us a couple of times to which we thought maybe the thing bled the refrigerant out. After attempting to put more in while checking the pressure to see if it was even needed we still couldn't get the system to cycle on. Then, after just touching the fuse block to check to see if one of the fuses burned out, the damned system came on. This meant that the other fuse in the original fuse block was having continuity issues, just like the other fuse in the block that kept burning up on us, causing me to take an aftermarket fuse holder and splicing it into the circuit to bypass the old fuse holder. When we got the wheel cylinders we ended up getting another fuse holder so I can install that after working on the brakes. The last bit of fuckery on the Tracker was an issue we've been having on and off with shitty starting issues and a bad idle upon restarting. At one point on Friday we thought we might need to be towed back as I couldn't get the truck to start up and when it did the damn thing wouldn't stay running. I kinda figured the damned thing was hot from running all day in the high 90's temps so I let the thing cool a minute. Then like nothing was wrong the stupid thing started right back up like all was good. Going by another Auto Zone to get the ECU scanned was inconclusive as the same codes popped up again. One code for the temp sensor did pop up but I'm theorizing that this only happened when the radiator bled all the water out by the time the ole lady came home and wasn't reading right. At this point I started thinking that one of the sensors may be intermittently flaking out, cam or crank sensor, maybe the temp sensor is causing an issue with the ECU controlling the engine. Not really sure, can't tell until the problem comes back and stays. In the meantime the only thing I really can do is just start getting components and change all this shit out. Luckily the parts are pretty cheap on Ebay so it wasn't too cost prohibitive to get a temp sensor and cam sensor. We already had a crank sensor from the first time this truck started acting stupid like this and I had guessed that maybe the crank sensor was failing. I will try this shit when it comes in and hopefully fix the problem with the engine management on the Tracker. Saturday night after hanging out with the fam I did come back outside and complete the assembly of the left rear brake assembly which turned out to not be too bad after I had it fresh in my mind how all that shit went back together. The wheel cylinder went in pretty fast as well. After getting the left side put back together I went to the right side and pulled the wheel and drum loose. Luckily all I had to do was take the bolts and brake lines off the wheel cylinder and pry the shoes apart with my hand enough to remove the old wheel cylinder. Everything went in reverse with the new wheel cylinder and shortly after I had the right brake assembly put back together with no issues. Filling the master cylinder with fresh oil and getting the ole lady outside to pump the brakes I was able to get the rear brakes bled quickly and confirm that the brakes were grabbing solidly like they're supposed to. I turned my attention to the AC fuse block. This went pretty fast as well since all I was looking at was cutting the wires from the old fuse block and soldering them to the leads on the fuse holder. Some electrical tape, a wire nut and heat shrink tubing made sure all bare joints were covered up safely so there won't be any issues with shorting. I zip tied the pair of fuse holders to the bracket that normally held the old fuse holder along with the relays that control shit on the truck. The AC came on without incident. At this point I have to see where the crank sensor is located so I can see if I can change that out pretty fast and test the truck out to see if we have any more issues. The very last bit of fuckery was with the lawn tractor. While I was working on the rear brakes on the Tracker, the ole lady fetched the zero turn lawn tractor to cut the grass across the grounds. Well while she was attempting to cut along the main driveway the mower shut down on her. She tried to restart the thing, getting it to fire a couple of times but the thing wouldn't idle let alone throttle up to be able to drive it. Trying starting fluid didn't help either. After looking at it I determined that the fucking lawn tractor has the same issue the S10 has, dead fuel pump. The fuel filter was barely full despite the tank being 3/4 full. At this rate rather than keep fucking with the thing, since I was working on the Tracker, the ole lady attempted to try and drive the tractor back up to the garage to get it back where it belonged. She tried to do this by constantly spraying starting fluid in the open air intake while trying to engage the tillers. She had an issue doing this so I said fuck it, I sat on the back of the mower over the engine and sprayed starting fluid in pulses while she worked the tillers, allowing us to get the tractor back up to the garage and parked out of the way. A maintenance kit that included a replacement fuel pump, air filter and fuel filter, spark plug and fuel shutoff valve was ordered from Ebay so now we will wait for that shit to show up so I can work on getting that fixed. As you can see, things come in threes- first the S10 fucked up, then the Tracker fucked up, then the lawn tractor fucked up. As I said, a fruit basket of fuckery was delivered to me and I now have the pleasure of eating the fruits of that fuckery as I go down the list fixing all the stuff that needs fixing on these pieces of shit, I mean equipment. Time marches on......
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