(written on the 7th from notes taken yesterday.)
I was up relatively early this morning, veging out for a bit before venturing out of my van to call out to my freedom-camping neighbor. She had a cat that had caught its leash on the tow hitch and was looking at me meowing over and over, presumably asking for assistance.
So I called out to the lady in the van before crouching down behind her van, as I didn’t want her concerned about who I was and what I was doing. Then I freed her cat, chatted with her just momentarily, and headed back to my van.
I finally headed out about 9:30, texting back and forth with Alex again trying to help him with his van.
It’s funny, with all of the descriptions he gave me about what was going on, it sounded to me like either a CV axle that was damaged enough that it would sometimes spin within itself, the hub, or transmission bearing before grabbing again (thus causing the erratic RPM issues), or else it was likely going to be a transmission issue.
The nasty grinding noises only happened under load in forward or reverse and didn’t happen at all in Neutral or Park. Neither did they happen with the front wheels off the ground in drive or reverse (load off).
Well, he had a mobile mechanic go out today, and the mobile mechanic diagnosed the issue as being a bad coil pack.
If that’s true, that puts the exclamation mark on how hard it is to diagnose from afar with only recorded sounds and symptom descriptions. 😆
I felt like my tentative diagnoses were on track when one of the tests I had him do revealed a CV axle with a completely split boot.
But the the mobile mechanic said coil pack, and so he ordered a coil pack, and we will find out if that fixes the issue in a couple of days when the pack comes in and he installs it. 🤞
After leaving the park for the day, I headed straight to Mitre 10, needing another piece of sheet metal for that second gaping hole I opened. 😅
The forecast called for high humidity today, but when I looked at nearby Taupo, the humidity for the middle of the day was going to be something like 54%!
So off I went!
I would much rather be spending my time in and around Taupo than in and around Napier. 🙃
As I began driving, I messaged somebody on Facebook marketplace who was selling the portable toilet unit that’s required for the green sticker certification (the blue-sticker certification becomes obsolete in June).
I offered a price that would have been fabulous if accepted, but he didn’t get back to me right away, so I kept driving out of town.
I had actually tried to message him a couple of days ago and hadn’t realized that after pressing the send button Facebook hadn’t actually sent the message but had popped up the little message saying that I was unlikely to get a reply and asking me to confirm that I still wanted to send the message.
That’s a well-intentioned but really poorly thought through “feature,” in my opinion. One doesn’t generally think about a system not executing what you just told it to execute on until it asks you if you’re sure you want to do it (at least in the context of sending text messages).
The seller did indeed reply, but not until an hour and a half, or so, after I sent my original message, which put me something like 95 kms away, no longer worth it because the fuel prices alone would significantly raise the price. 😅
Not to mention I wanted to get to Taupo as soon as possible to be able to take advantage of the low humidity before the next storm rolled through.
Through Taupo that is. Driving the mountain pass between Napier and Taupo meant driving through a rainstorm to get there.
Rain or no rain, it was a beautiful drive. 😊
In one turnout that featured the kinds of gravel piles that are set up for road maintenance, there were a couple of vehicles dumped upside down. One that had clearly been there for a long time, and one that looks like it had just recently been dumped there.
😶
Ummm… why?
Though I’d stopped there months ago, since I was driving by, I decided to stop off again at Waipunga Falls.
I remembered that there had been a whole lot of trash dumped in the bushes there, and I had planned to send the local District Council a message letting them know, but I never did.
So going back today, I wanted to check to see if the trash was still there, so as to perhaps rectify my failure to report it last time.
There didn’t seem to be anywhere near as much trash this time, which means I’m guessing it was cleaned up, and what was there was actually new?
That’s a sad thought…
But for whatever reason, people seem to like to dump their trash at this spot. It’s kind of out in the middle of nowhere, so it’s a bit puzzling as to why people would do that, but… whatever.
At least it’s a beautiful vista, despite the trash.
Not really wanting to do my auto repair work in town, I tried to find some places out in the country just before getting to Taupo, they were loud, being right next to the highway, and I couldn’t find any without backtracking, that were suitable for my needs and desires.
All the more pleased I was then when my opening welcome to civilization in Taupo was another Mitre 10. 🙃
Since most of the loud banging and scraping and whatnot had already been completed, I wasn’t as self-conscious working on my van there in the parking lot.
So I did. 🙃
I spent nearly the next three hours there, working on the second section. I was disappointed when I realized that the rust converter hadn’t converted all the rust. So I spent a good long time scraping rust off, but I got to the point where it just didn’t seem reasonable to keep going given the tools I had. It was kind of one of those moments where you just throw in the towel and say, this is going to be okay for a good long time, I think, I hope, but it’s not worth spending more money and time on beyond what I’m already doing.
After working on it on and off for days, I had it to this point.
Definitely progress.
Thinking that maybe I was done for the day, I headed over to nearby Crown Park and hung out there for a little while, eating and veging out on my phone.
I’ve been fighting off migraines for the last few days. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that. It hasn’t been bad, but definitely not fun either.
Anyway, after hanging out at the park for a little while, I decided to head back to Mitre 10 to spend a little more time working on everything. There was a larger gap than I wanted between the sunroof and the larger repair. Optimally, I would want the seal on the sunroof to press up against the repair, and there was a spot where the pap was probably somewhere around 3/16 of an inch. 😅
Since I had to wait for 24 hours for the construction adhesive to cure, I figured I might as well go to the effort of filling in the gap.
I went inside the store and bought some sandpaper, a thin putty knife, and some waterproof filler (think Bondo).
And then I came back out and got to work, spending the next hour plus filling the gap. I ended up using additional pieces of metal to fill the gap, measuring and cutting several strips.
In the biggest gap, I think I ended up using three? different levels of metal strips beyond the original sheet that I put down. Two short strips to fill in the large gap, and then two more, a long strip and a shorter one to fill in the small gap that remained along the length of the larger repair.
I tried to wipe the adhesive off the exterior facing stainless steel, so none would touch the rubber sunroof seal when the sunroof was closed, and then I used the sunroof itself as a tool, closing it against the repairs, such that it would hold the repair in place and shape it to the shape of the sunroof.
That was the Hope anyway, and I think my efforts were reasonably successful.
🤞
There’s still a little gap where the metal curves around the corner of the sunroof, but I did the best I could for now. Once everything cures, I might try and do more to close that gap.
One piece of good news: I started suspecting that maybe the cause of the water leak inside the van wasn’t because of the bad seals in the sunroof but maybe because of an issue with the sunroof drain hose. Accordingly, I spent a little bit of time disassembling the A pillar cover, the sun visor, the Oh shiz! handle, and a couple of weather strips, before pulling down the passenger front portion of the headliner and finding the sunroof drain hose completely disconnected.
No wonder it’s been leaking in the rain. 🙃
Sunroofs are designed to channel water that gets inside through drain tubes and down onto the ground.
That doesn’t work very well when the drain tube is disconnected from its position on the sunroof. 😆
So now I have a watertight vehicle without tape! Well… at least for the leak that I have been dealing with since the tape had peeled off sufficiently to let water inside. I’m guessing that any water that gets through the gap between my repair and the sunroof will also just drain away without issue, but I’m going to leave the tape on until that repair is completely done.
I kept working until dusk, surprised at how early it seemed to be getting dark. When I looked at my phone to check the time and saw that it was still really early, it dawned on me that we must have hit the “fall back” portion of the year, a reality confirmed upon googling it.
Now, instead of being four hours difference between New Zealand time and Mountain Time (actually 20 hours, but going off of time of day), it’s now six hours (5:00 p.m. here on the 6th of April is the same as 11:00 p.m. in Utah on the 5th of April).
So I need to be more careful about when I message my family and friends back in the States. 🙃
I pulled into Hipapatua Reserve a little after 5:30, first wandering around to see where I might park for the night, and then driving down to the river to enjoy one of my favorite little perches.
And the very tame birdlife that’s always here. 😊
Truly a blank swan event. 😉
The gate is supposed to close about 6:00, so I enjoyed the scenery for a brief 30ish minutes before heading back up to the camping area and finding a spot on the same perch as last time I stayed here. 🙃
Super weird to have it be so dark so quickly!
I veged out for a good bit, ate some food, and then crashed (relatively early compared to other days, thanks mostly to the early darkness).
Though I wasn’t really able to make any painting progress, which was basically the point of driving to Taupo, I still did make some pretty good progress on the repair today. It was a productive day, at least. 🙏
And now I’m at least back in a place I enjoy. 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 