Wednesday 25 October 2006 at 11:27 pm
I'm beginning to realize about vintage car ownership: it's never "almost done".
The old starter is out, and the new one is ready to go in:
<?php csdnimage("starters00.jpg"); ?>
To do the job right, I need to replace the starter bushing which is this little bronze cylinder (it looks about like a copper thimble but a hole at each end), which is embedded in the transmision. To extract the old one, I need a special tool, which I have on order.
So with the engine of my car sitting in an alarming number of pieces in my garage,
<?php csdnimage("bench01.jpg"); ?>
I discover that yet something else needs to be fixed. The heater boxes, or heat exchangers. They're part of the exhaust system; they're a tube within a tube. The exhaust from the front cylinders passes through the inner tube, and air is blown through the outer tube to the heat ducts which heat the inside of the car if you turn the heat on.
Since if the seal between the inner and outer tubes become compromised, you can get exhaust directly into the cabin, which is bad. So it's pretty important that the heater boxes are not too old or rusted out. I discovered that the outer tube had partly rusted off the inner tube on the right heater box in my beetle. Here's that heater box removed:
<?php csdnimage("heaterbox01.jpg"); ?>
To increase the area of heat transfer, the inner tubes have fins:
<?php csdnimage("heaterbox00.jpg"); ?>
So I'll be waiting for the new boxes to arrive before the great re-assembly of the beetle. Stay tuned here for more news.
Saturday 21 October 2006 at 12:28 pm
I am undergoing option paralysis. It's when you have many many things to do, and in fact lots of time to do stuff, but there are so many things to do that you can't focus on one. Often the effect of this is that nothing gets done. I am very suseptible to it; thus, I work very well under deadline pressure (there is only one thing to be doing) but often not so well when there isn't specific pressure to get one thing done.
I guess today will be a chance to practice dealing with it. I have a pretty empty weekend, and lots to do. I have a pretty good chance to get ahead of things, if I can only bring myself to use it.
On the docket for the weekend:
- replace the starter in the beetle (now that I've taken enough of the car apart that I can get to it)
- get caught up with laundry
- do a dual cross-country flight Sunday (weather permitting)
- get caught up on laundry
- get seriously organizing the basement under way
- vacuum
Watching second season 2 of
Battlestar Galactica will have to wait, because I can't buy it locally; which gives me more time for the weekend. So far, it really is as incredibly good as everyone has told me it was; it really is all that and a bag of chips.
Off to do stuff...
Wednesday 11 October 2006 at 09:18 am
I'm in the process of digging into the engine compartment on the
beetle. I have three things that I want to work on:
- the starter needs to be replaced
- the front-most piece of engine tin is missing
- the rubber seal around the back of the engine has hardened and rotted away
So I'm digging into the engine to get at all that stuff. Getting the engine tin installed means removing the fan shroud. Getting
to the fan shroud means removing most of what's on top of the engine. At this point, I'm too far along to back gracefully:
<?php csdnImage("beetleOCT00.jpg"); ?>
<?php csdnImage("beetleOCT01.jpg"); ?>
So when I have time, onward we go.
Wednesday 11 October 2006 at 09:14 am
Well, I finally soloed. At the end of lesson 14, I took 704YE around the pattern three times by myself. The first of those landings was sort of ugly, the other two were fine. The next two lessons I spent three hours just going around and around the pattern for solo practice. They were pretty uneventful as well.
The next time I have tim to go fly (work is very busy this week) we will be doing the dual cross-country, where we fly to a couple of other airports.
