Wow, a day.
Something just went off in my brain saying that today is my college girlfriend’s birthday? Is that right?
Gosh… Can’t believe I forgot that one. Heck, I remember my high school girlfriend’s birthday still.
Weird.
Aaaanyway…
Joints hurt pretty good right now–ankles, knees, hips. Back was screaming at me earlier.
I’m exhausted. I went to bed after midnight, and then I woke up around 5:00 something with my brain just going. I figured that since My brain was awake and going that I might as well get up and be doing.
I’m super behind on household chores. My room looks like a tornado ripped through it, so does the driveway, so it is pretty much everywhere else. I guess that’s what happens when as soon as you wake up, you walk out the door and go to work, and then you don’t get home until way late at night.
So since I was up, I decided to take some time to try and clean up a little bit. I spend a little time cleaning my room. I spend a little time cleaning up the driveway.
Both still need massive help to get back to decent.
I gathered up the trash and took it up to the dumpster. I gathered up painting supplies for my nephew who’s working on my van and took them up to the barn where the van is parked in order to be out of the rain.
I gathered up a bunch of cardboard and number two plastic to take to the recycling center.
By the time I did all that, I think it was like 8:30 or so. After dropping the stuff off at the recycling center, I headed over to the Rogers AutoZone where I ordered some wheel bearings and races and a wheel seal, popped the wheel off the driver’s front, and proceeded to replace the wheel bearing.
I didn’t verify which wheel bearing was the one that had the issues, just thought it was the driver’s front, and when I jacked it up, there was play in the bearings, so I just assumed that it was the right one. Halfway through the job, I sort of realized that maybe the other one might have been bad as well or might have been the worst one. The bearing on the driver side definitely wasn’t good, but nor was it super bad looking.
Anyway, old school bearings are one of my least favorite jobs that exist in the world of car repair. 🙃 Grease, grease, grease, grease, grease everywhere–everywhere.
It seems to get on everything and stay on everything. 🙃
Anyway, so I spent the next probably 3 hours at the AutoZone pulling everything apart, looking everything over, and fighting to get it all back together.
In the end, I finally realized that I chose correctly when I drove away and no longer heard the bearing grinding.
🥳
Wahoo!
From there I headed to my first and only job of the day. I had more than that one scheduled, but everything else either canceled or got pushed to another day. The one job I did have was a very long job. It was a 2005 Chevrolet suburban that had a long crank. It wouldn’t start on the first crank, wouldn’t start on the second crank, but would always start on the third crank.
So I got to testing, plugging in my fuel pressure tester, and then testing the pressure. It was supposed to have around 50 psi with key on engine off, and it had a grand total of 10.
The fuel system is designed to hold pressure, so when you turn the car off, the system is supposed to stay pressurized. Well, the fuel pressure was bleeding to zero immediately after shutting the car back off.
Unable to get up to pressure, and unable to hold pressure, even though the engine would start and run, was pointing to the fuel pump as the issue.
And boy did it kick my butt doing the actual repair! 🙃
Fuel pump jobs always take a heck of a lot longer than it seems like they should. And can someone please explain to me why they use connectors that are super hard to disconnect on the top of the fuel tank where you have generally only one hand to get stuff undone? Oftentimes you have to do it by feel as well.
Good gravy.
So I fought with probably 10 different connections. Some of them coming off easily, some of them being relatively nightmarish.
Once I had everything disconnected and was ready to drop the tank, I pulled out one of the bolts that holds the tank straps in, and it came out just fine. Then I went to the other bolt, and it just spun and spun and spun.
Lovely.
Eventually, I realized that the nut that’s supposed to be welded to the frame, was not welded to the frame, so it was just spinning.
Joy.
The nut was buried inside the frame itself with very little access. I fought and fought and fought to try and find a way to hold it still so that I could pull the bolt out of it, but after probably 30 minutes of trying, I ended up having to pull off the rear wheel, wedge a 15 mm wrench in there, smacking it in place, and then finally, I was able to get the bolt to come out.
What else…
Someone had put PTFE or something like that on one of the charcoal canister connections, likely trying to stop an evap leak. The suburban had a code for a large evap leak, so I’m guessing that’s what they were doing. But I’ll tell you what, having all that crap inside the quick connect connection certainly wasn’t going to help seal it the second time around, if it even helped it all the first time around. So I spent a while cleaning that out. I ended up having to use a mini pic tool, brake cleaner, and shop towels, and a heck of a lot of time getting that crap off there. I even very carefully removed the o-ring from inside the quick connect fitting and cleaned it off because it, too, was covered in crap.
Speaking of crap, I didn’t notice until it was already too late, but apparently the garage I was working in must double as the dogs waiting area. There were what looked like little throw up circles all over the place, and poop left overs as well. I didn’t realize until I had slid my back across poo leftovers.
Goody.
Once the tank was out, that meant was time to clean the tank. My old siphon had bit the dust, so I didn’t have one at all. I ended up driving over to the AutoZone in centerton in order to buy a hand fluid transfer pump. Stinks to have to do it by hand, but it’s better than trying to siphon it out.
Oddly, the tank was full of these weird little black pellets that were about twice the size of mouse poops. There were tons and tons and tons of them on the inside of the tank. It took a long time to pump all of them out, but I eventually got all the crap out of the bottom of the tank.
It probably took me an hour and a half just to do that.
One of the things that made the job harder was that I had removed the gas cans from the van and had forgotten to put them in my third stringer. So I showed up on the job thinking I had at least one 5 gallon can, but I had zero. That meant that I siphoned out 3 gallons of gas and dumped them into my work van’s gas tank, and then I siphoned out one gallon at a time sucking up debris and crap, and then pouring back the clean fuel, leaving the debris in the bottom of the jug.
I sacrificed two distilled water gallon jugs, just pouring the water out onto the ground because they didn’t have anything else to do with the water.
Once the tank was finally cleaned, I got the pump installed, and began putting it up. Such a crappy design on that thing.
It’s not bad if you do it every day and remember exactly how to do it. Not bad at all. But it having been quite a long time since the last time that I replaced a fuel pump on one of those, I didn’t remember exactly what all needed to be done and exactly the order it needed to be done in. And general motors, for whatever reason, has evap lines going every which way seemingly on those. Anyway, the upshot is that as I was raising the tank, I accidentally kinked the main fuel line.
😶
I dropped the tank back down, inspected the line, didn’t see any damage, gratefully, set the line back in place, and carefully raised everything up.
I struggled to try and get the straps on until I realize that yet another evap line was in the way blocking the tank from going all the way up.
Really poor design. It’s amazing to me how many just ridiculously complicated and/or poor designs there are in the automotive world. It’s sort of mind-boggling. As a mechanic, I just sit there and think to myself, what on earth were they thinking doing it this way?
All in all, I eventually got it done, up, tightened down, started, and good to go.
The lady was super grateful, and I let her know that if anything ever happened to the fuel line, which I doubt she’ll ever have any issues at all, that I was good for it.
After that, with the rest of the jobs either canceling or postponing, which I wasn’t sad about because it was already 6:00, and I was really tired from a short night sleep, etc, I drove home, ate dinner, and then grabbed my Ford van and drove it all the way back to centerton where I currently sit in my van waiting for my nephew to pick me up and give me a ride home. I’m leaving my van at the transmission shop out here. It’s one I’ve used before, and it has a great reputation, so I’m crossing my fingers. I’ve already wasted a bunch of money apparently, and I don’t want to waste any more.
They said they are a month out, but at this point, I’d rather have it done right and wait a month then get messed over again by some person who says they know what they’re doing but don’t.
Anyway, here I sit. I’m grateful that I was able to make some progress on non-work related things, even if they were just household chores.
I’m grateful that I was able to get the wheel bearings replaced on the driver’s front and that it actually fix the problem.
The windshield wipers went out on the way home with the rain beating down. 😶
So I guess there’s another repair to do. 🙃
Though it’s not accurate, it almost feels like I’m spending more time fixing my own work fans right now than I am fixing other people’s cars. But I’ve had lots of luck with cars lately, I think. Or maybe it’s just that since I’m a mechanic I don’t think much about the little things that I’ve had to deal with here and there.
Oh, did I mention yesterday that I really really like having this 1998 Dodge 2500 van as my work van? It’s my favorite work van so far out of all of my vans. I guess I’ve only had three vans, but it’s my favorite of the three. 🙃
The reason it’s my favorite has everything to do with the shelving. It has shelves on both sides of the cargo area, and what I thought was going to be negatives in terms of how the shelves were set up, has actually turned out to be some pretty amazing positives. Super cool, honestly. They weren’t designed at all for what I’m using them for, but they are e working perfectly with me using them how I want to use them.
On the driver side, the upper two rows of shelves were all cubbies. I thought they were basically going to be useless, but I realized that I could fit two gallon jugs of coolant, if they were laying on their side, in each cubby.
So I did that, and it’s been fabulous!
The passenger side is perfect for my tool bags. Now I have all of my tool bags on shelves except for the four that I used most frequently. Those are now in a much less crowded area. It’s like a revelation! There’s so much more space! 🙃 So far, this is fabulous.
I just need to figure out how to keep this van from breaking every 4 seconds. 🙃
The joints… ugh. 😬
Love you. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 