A little (more) garage time today.

[f6john]

It was the Corvettes turn today. Just an oil and filter change this afternoon. Oil life monitor said it had 22% life remaining but it had timed out as far as I was concerned. If money were no object, I would have a shop like Rams and a lift I could stand up under like he does! But my quick jack lift keeps me in the game for now. The car is going to stay on the lift for a while as I have more winter projects to tackle. Next up will be to pull the intake manifold to install a new oil pressure sensor and anything else I spy that needs attention after 25 years.

The bike will get some necessary maintenance to prepare for Spring and InZane. If I get too frustrated with one I can switch over to the other.

[Jess from VA]

Like every winter ( ), I'm constantly looking for indoor things to do. 

Scrubbing down my old kitchen is not something I enjoy, but it needed it.   

[f6john]

Like every winter ( ), I'm constantly looking for indoor things to do. 

Scrubbing down my old kitchen is not something I enjoy, but it needed it.   

Being footloose and fancy free, don’t you ever just bug out and go somewhere and spend some of that musty money before the moths get to it?

[Jess from VA]

Like every winter ( ), I'm constantly looking for indoor things to do.  

Scrubbing down my old kitchen is not something I enjoy, but it needed it.  

Being footloose and fancy free, don’t you ever just bug out and go somewhere and spend some of that musty money before the moths get to it?

I occasionally go down to the Walmart, Home Depot, Harbor Freight or Costco (I really don't like that place) and wander around and look things over.  But I already have nearly everything I need, and the way I end up having the musty money is not blowing it on things I don't really need.  The Protestant Ethic of diligence, discipline, and frugality runs strong in me.   

Lately I've taken to giving it to my old mother and only niece who need it more than I do.

Even the wandering around gets old because it's so crowded with humanoids where I live; going on weekends is a madhouse, even at opening.  

I am contemplating spending for two giant oaks to be trimmed in my back yard.  That work has gotten very expensive though, so it will depend on the quote.  

[f6john]

Like every winter ( ), I'm constantly looking for indoor things to do.  

Scrubbing down my old kitchen is not something I enjoy, but it needed it.  

Being footloose and fancy free, don’t you ever just bug out and go somewhere and spend some of that musty money before the moths get to it?

I occasionally go down to the Walmart, Home Depot, Harbor Freight or Costco (I really don't like that place) and wander around and look things over.  But I already have nearly everything I need, and the way I end up having the musty money is not blowing it on things I don't really need.  The Protestant Ethic of diligence, discipline, and frugality runs strong in me.   

Lately I've taken to giving it to my old mother and only niece who need it more than I do.

Even the wandering around gets old because it's so crowded with humanoids where I live; going on weekends is a madhouse, even at opening.  

I am contemplating spending for two giant oaks to be trimmed in my back yard.  That work has gotten very expensive though, so it will depend on the quote.  

I was actually thinking along the lines of sandy beaches and ocean breezes, so you could dispose of some serious cash But to each his own, I was probably daydreaming about myself!

[Jess from VA]

I was actually thinking along the lines of sandy beaches and ocean breezes, so you could dispose of some serious cash    But to each his own, I was probably daydreaming about myself!

In my working years, I was down to Miami, Marco Island, Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, and other beach resorts, and have the skin cancer surgery scars on my head, face, neck, back and arms to prove it.  The sun is not my friend and I avoid it like the plague it is to me.

I also had an incident where they put a 400lb guy next to me in coach (airline) (not a single vacant seat elsewhere either) and they were so adamant about me not spending the whole flight in the bathroom, they threatened to land the plane and put me off.  So I'll never fly commercial again.  

I'd rather just go riding... when it's not too dang cold.  

Football on the TV it is.  

Supposed to be 60 tomorrow so I'll roll out as soon as it warms up.  

[f6john]

It was 71 here today but the bike stayed inside. My own fault, but too many other things pulling me in different directions. Also with the warm temps the wind was blowing like crazy which I don’t find appealing on the Wing. Lows in the teens in the next 24 hours!

[Jess from VA]

Your warm weather and wind will be here tomorrow.  My biggest problem with wind is my eyes water up. 

I have no family around me like you do.  Mine is in MI and NV

[Jess from VA]

Well, I wanted to ride.  It said rain at 8am, and that didn't happen.

So I waited for it to warm up some more and left at 10A.... then it rained.

Not bad, just a constant sprinkle for a half hour, and I kept going.  Just enough to make me have to go back out and wash the bike.  Four hours on 29 Dec isn't bad.  Except for the 20-40mph wind.   

It may be weeks before we get decent riding temps again.

[f6john]

The wind was the real reason I didn’t mind missing out on the dry 70 degree temperatures yesterday. I have logged practically zero miles on an Interstate but I do know that the Goldwing is like a sail in 40mph gusts. Doable but not enjoyable!

[Jess from VA]

John, I would have stayed home too if it wasn't the only fairly decent day forecast for a long time.

My bike needed a good scrub.  It's always a knuckle-buster, and worse when you don't use the lift. 

[f6john]

Started on a maintenance issue I wasn’t looking forward to. Oil pressure sensor quit working over a year ago. I knew it would gnaw at me till it was fixed and this winter it rose to the top of the list.

This is the reason for putting it off so long. That brass fitting with the two wires coming out the top is the pressure sensor. It’s a good four inches back and under the  cowl and can’t be seen or reached when the intake manifold is on.



Little shot from a pulled back position but it had to come all the way off.



I’ve got a lot of cleaning to do and more parts to order before it goes back together. I’m ordering fittings and pressure hose to move the sensor so it will be more accessible if it ever goes bad again, which they usually do!

[Rams]

My garage/shop time has been somewhat limited recently.  I did get my air compressor relocated, hooked up and tools picked up from that process but spent the last few mornings sweeping up dead stink bugs and the using my leaf blower out of that building.   Although the number of additional bugs has decreased significantly, they are still out there on the floor every morning.   Haven’t checked this morning but my bet is there are more there.

After the second day (post bugs), I was able to reinstall a set of axles on a trailer I have had up in the air on the two post lift and removed that trailer from my shop.   Oh BTW, the bed of that trailer was also covered with bugs.
Fogging my shop looks to be something I need to do semiannually.
Not sure why those bugs like it in there.  No food or water in that building.

Looking for the next weather forecast so I can get one on my fat girls out for some exercise and wind therapy.

Rams

[Jess from VA]

Speaking of fogging, after blowing the place clean, something you might try is is to take a 2-gal pump sprayer filled with a gal of bleach and gal of water and just go around and do the baseboards and any other likely entry points.  If the roof eaves are open, up in there.  Then go around the outside and do the same.  It's more of a disinfectant than an insecticide and not really toxic, but bugs don't like it.  Pour some straight bleach down any water drains.  Obviously, you don't hit tools and equipment, and wear old shoes and pants.

I've done this many times and use it to clean my concrete walks, driveway, basement walkout, exterior sheds.  As long as bleach stays wet, it keeps working, so I use it outside on gently rainy/sprinkely days; a hard rain just washes it away.    

[cookiedough]

speaking of bugs,  my full basement in the 12x12 ft corner where my bigger basement windows exist the floor, etc. are covered with stink bugs , etc. that are luckily dead.  Been about 4-5 years since unfinished basement since I vacuumed them up.  Went to look for something in that corner of the basement and WOW,  got some vacuuming up to do this winter for sure.  totally dislike doing it since I use the shop vac and the air wooshing out the top of the shop vac smells pretty bad gets into the air and breath it in.

[Rams]

Figured out a way to cleanup a rusty fuel tank today(very rusty inside).
This is a boat fuel tank that was given to me.

First, dump any old gas.  And beat the heck out of the gas tank with a hammer, not hard enough to dent it’s sides but knock any rust you can off the interior surface as possible and do your best to dump it out of the tank.   Had a lot of debris come out of that tank.

Next I dropped around twenty nuts, bolts and washers into the tank and put two gallons of vinegar in the tank.  Now I was ready to try something I had never done before.  

I put the boat gas tank into the barrel of our concrete mixer, loosely wrapped in a very large nylon rope and turned the mixer on.   Other than the 2 inch thick rope working as a cushion, the tank was free to bounce around inside the mixer barrel.    Bounce it did but no damage to the outside of the tank


After about four hours of rotation, I stopped the mixer and dumped out a huge amount of rust and “gunk”, it was not pretty.   So I repeated the process with two new gallons of vinegar for another 4+ hours.   This resulted in another huge pile of the afore mentioned rust and “gunk”.   But, I could now see the metal in much of the tank and the process seemed to be working.

At this point I decided that I could never trust that I had gotten all of the rust and “gunk” out.   But just to see how this would turn out, I repeated the process again.   I now have about $12.00 invested in this experiment.    No, I won’t use this tank I just want to see if I could clean it up.    BTW, since the mixer was doing 99% of the work.  I got other stuff done while that tank got beat up on the inside.  

No, I would not do this to a  Valkyrie fuel tank but the process does work.    I ended up giving the tank to my son’s scrap metal pile.  Was kind of fun.  

Have video but have no idea of how to post it.  

[f6john]

An old guy never gives up, whether it’s a good idea or not! Still working on the Corvette while waiting on some parts to come in. I made a momentous decision to eliminate a system that I have deemed unnecessary in an effort to de clutter the engine bay and make access to other essential systems easier. Many GM vehicles use an air pump to inject air into the exhaust system supposedly to help increase exhaust temperatures and assist in lighting off the O2 sensors and cats. The associated plumbing of this system makes spark plug servicing a pain and as I recently discovered , accessing anything behind the intake manifold including the oil pressure sensor an equally frustrating nightmare.

Well, removing all this plumbing hardware became a hours long nightmare for me yesterday. Hours spent to remove one bolt that goes into the block horizontally that I could only feel with one finger and could not see at all. First of all, even though I have a full set of factory service manuals that shows every system and how to remove said system, reinstall the system, and even the torque values of the fasteners, no where do they tell you the size of the bolt!!! I lost count of how many different sizes of sockets and wrenches I use to just try and determine the size. Once I discovered the size, it was onto how to get a ratchet back in the space available with enough room to actually swing a ratchet through its arc. I can tell you with full confidence that you can’t. Long story short, a small 3/8”:drive breaker bar was able to be weaved between all the other stuff back there and just break the bolt loose. Great! This gave a little bit of wiggle room now that the bracket that I was trying to remove had some movement. Oh, did I mention the bolt I was working on was a 13mm, how often do you run into that!!! But the bolt still needed to come out and the breaker bar was not the tool for that.

More rummaging around in the toolbox and I found I had a cheap Chinese set of stubby combination wrenches and lo and behold it contained a 13mm. Within minutes I had the bolt completely out. But then came the shocker, once I lifted the offending part up and out of the engine bay, I found that the bracket did not have a round hole drilled into it. Instead it had a U shaped slot cut in it. Meaning once I had the bolt broken loose, all I would have needed to do was just lift it straight up and out. Such are so many of my mechanical escapades, I have to learn as I go, same with the Valkyrie and now the Goldwing.

Being financially challenged in retirement is only softened by having the time to tackle projects like this, especially in the winter!

[Jess from VA]

John, I've been through that very thing more times than I care to remember. 

Can't see it, can only feel it, hard to even get a tool on, going through sockets and extensions, and ujoint wobblers, and ratcheting box wrenches, and discovering it's a metric in an SAE vehicle.   

My tools contain an old cheapo set of JC Whitney (remember them?) tiny 1/4 drive stuff that is never used, but on a few occasions were the only tools that would fit in tiny spaces.

Forehead smack "Oh yeah, I forgot about those"   

[Jersey mike]

An old guy never gives up, whether it’s a good idea or not! Still working on the Corvette while waiting on some parts to come in. I made a momentous decision to eliminate a system that I have deemed unnecessary in an effort to de clutter the engine bay and make access to other essential systems easier. Many GM vehicles use an air pump to inject air into the exhaust system supposedly to help increase exhaust temperatures and assist in lighting off the O2 sensors and cats. The associated plumbing of this system makes spark plug servicing a pain and as I recently discovered , accessing anything behind the intake manifold including the oil pressure sensor an equally frustrating nightmare.

Well, removing all this plumbing hardware became a hours long nightmare for me yesterday. Hours spent to remove one bolt that goes into the block horizontally that I could only feel with one finger and could not see at all. First of all, even though I have a full set of factory service manuals that shows every system and how to remove said system, reinstall the system, and even the torque values of the fasteners, no where do they tell you the size of the bolt!!! I lost count of how many different sizes of sockets and wrenches I use to just try and determine the size. Once I discovered the size, it was onto how to get a ratchet back in the space available with enough room to actually swing a ratchet through its arc. I can tell you with full confidence that you can’t. Long story short, a small 3/8”:drive breaker bar was able to be weaved between all the other stuff back there and just break the bolt loose. Great! This gave a little bit of wiggle room now that the bracket that I was trying to remove had some movement. Oh, did I mention the bolt I was working on was a 13mm, how often do you run into that!!! But the bolt still needed to come out and the breaker bar was not the tool for that.

More rummaging around in the toolbox and I found I had a cheap Chinese set of stubby combination wrenches and lo and behold it contained a 13mm. Within minutes I had the bolt completely out. But then came the shocker, once I lifted the offending part up and out of the engine bay, I found that the bracket did not have a round hole drilled into it. Instead it had a U shaped slot cut in it. Meaning once I had the bolt broken loose, all I would have needed to do was just lift it straight up and out. Such are so many of my mechanical escapades, I have to learn as I go, same with the Valkyrie and now the Goldwing.

Being financially challenged in retirement is only softened by having the time to tackle projects like this, especially in the winter!

I hate to ask but do you have a plan if the removal of the air pump system starts to throw a CEL signal or in any way affects performance?  Can you reinstall if it becomes an issue? One thing I’ve learned about these computer systems is that there is an eventual trickle down effect when playing around with different systems. Deleting a component of the computerized exhaust system sounds like something that may jump back and bite ya. Do you have emissions inspection in your state? This may come up during an inspection, whether the car passes or fails. Then again this may be something that Corvette owners are doing without issue performance wise, kind of like what owners of diesel trucks do to eliminate all that smog stuff.

[Rams]

Me, I am still looking for the correct tool and have been for a very long time.   

Rams

[f6john]

I live in the free state of Kentucky! No vehicle inspections!!! I eliminated the same AIR system on my 95 Impala SS over 20 years ago along with the cats when I added headers. I will get a cel with this operation but no degradation in performance or other operation, that is if it will start after I put everything back together. At some point I will have a “tune” performed that will eliminate the cel. I do have a complete ceramic coated set of headers, Xpipe with electric cutouts and high flow cats for the car and I will probably wait on the tune until I work up the courage to tackle that project.

[Jersey mike]

I live in the free state of Kentucky! No vehicle inspections!!! I eliminated the same AIR system on my 95 Impala SS over 20 years ago along with the cats when I added headers. I will get a cel with this operation but no degradation in performance or other operation, that is if it will start after I put everything back together. At some point I will have a “tune” performed that will eliminate the cel. I do have a complete ceramic coated set of headers, Xpipe with electric cutouts and high flow cats for the car and I will probably wait on the tune until I work up the courage to tackle that project.

No vehicle inspection, you lucky dog!

Sounds like you got everything covered, that’s great. Hope it all works out for the best and it’s what you wanted.

[f6john]

I live in the free state of Kentucky! No vehicle inspections!!! I eliminated the same AIR system on my 95 Impala SS over 20 years ago along with the cats when I added headers. I will get a cel with this operation but no degradation in performance or other operation, that is if it will start after I put everything back together. At some point I will have a “tune” performed that will eliminate the cel. I do have a complete ceramic coated set of headers, Xpipe with electric cutouts and high flow cats for the car and I will probably wait on the tune until I work up the courage to tackle that project.

No vehicle inspection, you lucky dog!

Sounds like you got everything covered, that’s great. Hope it all works out for the best and it’s what you wanted.

Thanks. I do have the take offs but I’m willing to put up with some aggravation to get everything working the way I want. The ls engine platform is swapped into all kinds of vehicles, but nobody keeps the AIR system that I have ever seen.

[Jersey mike]

Since the Vette is a performance car, although it’s stock and mainly for street use, doesn’t it have a suitable exhaust system?

Replacing everything…headers on back is quite a change. Again although everything is stock, it’s a Corvette.

I know people have been upgrading and swapping out parts on cars forever I would think by now getting a Corvette there shouldn’t be much more to replace.

I don’t know much about headers and what aftermarket designs will provide but what’s the difference between your stock exhaust system and the new one? Are they larger diameter pipes than stock?

Since you’re going with an X design what did they give you from the factory, straight or an H design?

Are you anticipating more HP with a better sounding exhaust?

I’m not asking to question your decision to swap out, guys have been tuning cars forever and it’s a personal touch. I don’t think you ever mentioned any street racing or track time with the car so I’m just curious about the change and what you anticipate out of it.

[f6john]

There’s not an extreme amount of hp to be gained at least not until the tune comes into play. The C5’s on up have very good stock manifolds as far as flow but they are heavy. The stock C5 corvette has true dual exhaust with an H pipe after the cats. An X pipe is much more effective at evening and balancing exhaust pulses. My car already had an expensive Corsa stainless steel cat-back over the axle exhaust/muffler system on it when I bought it which has the perfect sound to my ears. But that’s subjective as with exhaust and seats on a Valkyrie. The Corsa exhausts retail about $1,200 $1,700 so I likely would not have had them if not already on the car!  The headers and pipes I bought have already been ceramic coated to prevent rust and help keep exhaust heat in the pipe not the engine compartment. The pipe diameter remains essentially stock as gain with a larger pipe would only be recognized with a lot more cubic inches.

I don’t street race except for maybe a few hundred yards from a stoplight The C5 Corvettes came as close to a grand touring car as any Corvette could get but it is very stiff and is not extremely forgiving on rough pavement. Its real strength is its handling and where I find the most enjoyment in driving. I’ve never driven anything that corners as flat as this car and its abilities far exceed mine. My hope is that I might try my hand at auto crossing. I would love to do some amateur road racing if there is a class for over the hill wannabes.

[Rams]

My son and I spent about 4 hours last night attempting to replace the Rack and Pinion on his wife’s Jeep Grand Cherokee.   No joy in this.   Was advised this was a rather difficult exercise, we obviously should have paid more attention.

Have spoken with several who say they know how this should be done and watched a few U Tube videos, still haven’t been able to get the old one out.  

Will get back to it when my son comes back but none of the offered advice has worked and the U Tube videos appear to be full of crap.  

Was 16* F this morning, the shop is not heated.  

Will have to speak with John Smith’s CFO directly instead of relying on him to forward my requests for financing.  

Rams

[f6john]

Was 16* F this morning, the shop is not heated.   

Will have to speak with John Smith’s CFO directly instead of relying on him to forward my requests for financing. 

Rams

I spoke directly with the CFO, she wanted to know how much you needed, but cautioned that you would get a much better interest rate Guido down at the poolroom.

[Jess from VA]

Was 16* F this morning, the shop is not heated.  

I just gave away a couple full tanks of propane and simple screw on burner/heater that I haven't used in many years to a friend.  They're safe for use in a big building (away from flammables).

One of these set close to the work in your big shop might be an economical source of heat.