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Startin' the New Year off right...


Ace-Garageguy

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So, this AM shortly after the stroke of midnight, the fan motor bearing on my heater goes out. Of course it's the coldest day of the year so far (16F) with forecast colder the next few.

Been working on it all morning to come up with with a patch until I can buy a motor later in the week (because of course, in this oh-so-much-better throw-away world the dweebs have created, I can't just buy the dammed bearing).

And when I go out to my trusty old truck, she blows the clutch slave cylinder. Fixin' to hike up to O'Reillys to get one now.

Hope this isn't the shape of things to come for 2018.   B)

 

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52 minutes ago, peter31a said:

... Hope 2018 improves for you soon.

Thanks Peter. It'll be all right. Just the universe reminding me not to take things too seriously, and to deal with stuff as it comes up instead of putting it off as long as possible.

Hmmmm...those sound like good New Year's resolutions.   ;)

PS  I got the truck jury-rigged enough so I can go out and get something to finish the jury-rig on the furnace. It's 40F in here right now.  :D

 

Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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59 minutes ago, 10thumbs said:

So,  you knew some issues needed attention.  Then the negligence kicks you badly.

Good you realize your personal New Years resolution.

I tend to think that all of us put things to be done off now and then. And yes sometimes that causes problems that come back to kick us in the butt.

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1 hour ago, 10thumbs said:

So,  you knew some issues needed attention.  Then the negligence kicks you badly.

Good you realize your personal New Years resolution.

Wasn't any way to foresee the furnace fan motor bearing going bad, and the slave cylinder in the truck was just barely weeping until it took the massive dump in the frigid temps. I've been able to nurse weeping slaves for years, literally. 

Of course, that was in the days when the bodies were made of METAL, and you could just buy the damm seals, hone the bodies, and drive another 200,000 miles.

But some fool engineer who had a bean-counter's gun to his head thought it would be a good idea to design THIS slave body out of some kind of plastic, and it simply split. (I'm sure the replacement piece of substandard Chinese crapp I get to replace it will be doing good to last 2 years...the first one lasted 28)

I wouldn't really call either scenario the result of "negligence" exactly.

And neither of these are "kick in the butt" problems, just petty annoyances on New Year's Day...but Happy New Year to everyone anyway.

PS   It's really GREAT to be self-reliant. My indoor temp is back up to 52F and rising nicely. Didn't have to pay holiday rates to some HVAC guy, or call the hook to tow my truck, rent a car, and wait for some hacker to fix it, probably wrong. :D

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Hi Bill

I sympathise as it happens my 530i Touring clutch slave expired on 30th December - I just got back from an interesting 20 mile clutchless drive down to my BMW specialist as I don't have time or resources to do it myself. Glad I learned to change gear the hard way at an early age in my old RME Riley, these old skills come in handy.

Might write a strong letter to the Motorenwerke as the car has only done 250000 miles...:D

Hope you get yours sorted soon.

Cheers,

-Don.

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2 hours ago, DonW said:

...Might write a strong letter to the Motorenwerke as the car has only done 250000 miles...:D

Shocking. ;)

Yeah, driving without being able to disengage the clutch is a disappearing skill, a little tricky starting on hills. Kinda rough on the poor old synchros too. B)

Edited by Ace-Garageguy
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Well I always double-declutch changing down in normal driving and heel and toe when I'm in a hurry - but the stakes are higher without the pedal on the left!

I did only graunch the gears once, I think you get into the swim after a while.

How's it going with your fan and slave?

Cheers,

-Don.

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1 hour ago, DonW said:

Well I always double-declutch changing down in normal driving and heel and toe when I'm in a hurry - but the stakes are higher without the pedal on the left!

I did only graunch the gears once, I think you get into the swim after a while.

How's it going with your fan and slave?

:D Boy, not many people have any idea what heel & toe or double-clutching (as we call it over here) is anymore. Pretty cool old school. :D

Since you asked...the slave cylinder split, looks like along the mold seam roughly. When the pedal is depressed, she leaks enough fluid with every stroke to drain the master in about two miles. I did a rig to get her in to the shop, about 6 miles, by making an extension for the reservoir out of a piece of 2" ID radiator hose. The new slave is on order, but isn't a big seller, and wasn't locally stocked. Ought to be in tomorrow.

Far as the heat goes, I unearthed a squirrel-cage fan (from storage) that moves enough air to warm the house. I had to disable the part of the circuit that shuts down the burner when the OEM fan shuts down, and do a little non-code wiring, but for the time being, she works well enough. The unit is in the un-heated crawl-space under the house, and a patch is all I'm going to do until it warms up.

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On 1/2/2018 at 12:36 PM, DonW said:

Well I always double-declutch changing down in normal driving and heel and toe when I'm in a hurry - but the stakes are higher without the pedal on the left!

I did only graunch the gears once, I think you get into the swim after a while.

How's it going with your fan and slave?

Cheers,

-Don.

I had to do something similar when the spot welds of the clutch pedal on my mom's Fiat 124 Spyder broke, fortunately the syncros are good in that trans and I had to start it in gear only once while crossing two cities to get it home.

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3 hours ago, disabled modeler said:

Xs 2 .....Sometimes id rather have no luck at all than some I have had...LOL...  hang in there Bill your not the only one in that boat so far this year.

:D Yes sir, and I know that many people have a lot more difficult things to deal with than the little ones I've been whining about here. :D

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On ‎1‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 2:50 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

:D Boy, not many people have any idea what heel & toe or double-clutching (as we call it over here) is anymore. Pretty cool old school. :D

Since you asked...the slave cylinder split, looks like along the mold seam roughly. When the pedal is depressed, she leaks enough fluid with every stroke to drain the master in about two miles. I did a rig to get her in to the shop, about 6 miles, by making an extension for the reservoir out of a piece of 2" ID radiator hose. The new slave is on order, but isn't a big seller, and wasn't locally stocked. Ought to be in tomorrow.

Far as the heat goes, I unearthed a squirrel-cage fan (from storage) that moves enough air to warm the house. I had to disable the part of the circuit that shuts down the burner when the OEM fan shuts down, and do a little non-code wiring, but for the time being, she works well enough. The unit is in the un-heated crawl-space under the house, and a patch is all I'm going to do until it warms up.

You gotta git your self some of that Flex Steel stuff like you see on TV. HaHa  Good luck finding a quality clutch slave cylinder. It may be more expensive but you might consider looking at something from Summit Racing Parts or others for a real metal unit that will not give up in a year or two.  

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2 hours ago, espo said:

You gotta git your self some of that Flex Steel stuff like you see on TV. HaHa  Good luck finding a quality clutch slave cylinder. It may be more expensive but you might consider looking at something from Summit Racing Parts or others for a real metal unit that will not give up in a year or two.  

I'll be happy to have her going down the road for two years. :D

If I can't find a metal replacement, I may just put a sleeve in the existing one, and wrap it with epoxy and fiberglass. The only failure mode after that would be seals, and most likely whatever I find will be some Chinese garbage that dissolves in hydraulic fluid.

Sorry to keep harping on the abysmally poor quality of replacement parts these days, but just recently I got both carburetor gaskets and accelerator pump diaphragms that dissolve in gasoline after a year or so. Pretty special. And when the client asks "WHY did my car quit again so soon?" and I tell them the ONLY parts I can get now for their application are non-OEM-spec crapp, they think I'm lying to cover my own incompetence.

There WAS a commercial warehouse here for US-made bearings and seals, and all I had to do was buy them by the dimensions and material, etc. But they're gone now, unable to compete price-wise with offshore made garbage, sold on the web. And now, in this more-better internet world, the listings on many of the websites fail to include relevant data, were obviously put up by dwerbs who've never actually designed or engineered or made or fixed anything, and the "tech" line people are usually an effing joke...salaried phone jockeys who can't tell you anything that's not on the web-page.

And to anyone who even THINKS about saying something about "grumpy old men complaining about the modern world", I would suggest that YOU spend several years in MY shoes, trying to build and fix physical-reality stuff in a world that's increasingly run by morons who think EVERYTHING can be done from their dammed smartphones.

 

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17 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

:D Yes sir, and I know that many people have a lot more difficult things to deal with than the little ones I've been whining about here. :D

So true Bill...there is always someone much worse off than us all out there...I feel bad for them knowing what most of us have had to go through ourselves and being worse off.  At least we all have each other to try and help get through things some.

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18 hours ago, SfanGoch said:

People who spend their waking hours exercising their thumbs on a 2.5 x 4.5" screen think the concept of actually repairing something is one of those bogeyman tales one tells kids in order to get them to behave.

Tuesday I was at the Allergist getting my weekly Distemper shot. This means I'm to wait for a half hour to see if I will have a reaction to the shot. While waiting with the others present for the same reason the daughter of one of the other patients started whining about her phone being slow. The daughter was maybe 12 to 15 years old and was badly in need of entertainment and since the year old magazines were of no interest since it would require reading she was trying to watch videos on her phone. Her mother tried to assure her that when they could recharge the phones batteries she could again be entertained. The daughter continued to whine the entire time. I was able to get the Nurse to allow me to leave about 15 minutes early since I had never had a reaction to the shot before. The Nurse knew why I wanted out of there, she really has the patients of a saint .   

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