Seating Tires

I have never had this problem before, but I got these sexy Corvette wheels, and the 235 tires that came on them rubbed bad on the slightest corner.  I really enjoyed this video, and trying to seat the tire, I am glad it worked out.

The Astro Van Diesel

This is the diesel I got for the Astro van, basically free, with the 700R4 transmission.  Which ironically turned out to be a great transmission, the only one of three that has a good fourth gear, but I rebuilt it anyway.  Who knew a 30 year old automatic could still be sweet inside.

I have unsiezed  this diesel engine like this three times now.  It obviously has some internal problems.  So its on the list to get a tear down and rebuild, right after the Ranger is back together.  It takes about an hour or more to get this motor turning over 360 deg.  Then it won't quite fire, but makes little smoke puffs.

The starter in the 6.2 diesel has some serious torque, sucks the battery voltage down and makes a tremendous amount of heat.  It still takes an hour of cranking an eighth of an inch at a time.

Torque Converter Myth

I got my new built transmission in my van.  Haven't done all the tests yet, but it worked sweet around the block.  Everything is as expected, shift points are perhaps a tad higher.  It slams into gear, to get rid of the "slush box" automatic feel, and make me more aware of what gear I'm in.

I was actually looking forward to cutting my original torque converter open, to see how burnt up it is.  It is my theory that most of the heat on the highway was coming from the torque converter.  My testing proved it did not lock up as it should have.  When I told the transmission shop I was going to open the old converter, they were taken aback, "oooh, you have a metal lathe?" they said.  I was like "no I'm just going to open it w a grinder".  And they told me its so thick, like 1/4" thats a lot of work, and waste of time.  I actually listened to them and didn't open it up, for a few days.  Then I remembered I own a plasma cutter.

I was totally disappointed in the results.  It seemed to me like there was nothing in the torque converter to wear out.  Maybe it is a steel clutch of sorts that doesn't have the strength to lock up under the load I put on it, I may never know, but I have put the question out there.

http://youtu.be/qY3PThQszTE

700R4 upgrades

I've learned a lot over the winter rebuilding my Chevy automatic transmissions.  Thanks a bunch to Michelle for letting me take over the basement all winter and putting up with the musk of burnt tranny fluid.  I feel much better about my automatic Astro van now, knowing I can fix the transmission, should I burn it out.  Before it was like "when's this trans going to go?" and I would always be on the look out for a new van, or have a back up truck ready to go.  Now I will have a back up automatic transmission built and ready to install.

I didn't really film the rebuilding, cause honestly I didn't know what I was doing, and it took about 6 months, hour here, hour there.  Next one I will film, with short cuts, to show what you most likely get with a $800 rebuild.

I did a few mods to the automatic transmission to make it hold up better towing the 4500lb electrical trailer.  Those mods are going to cost me more work on the install, because I will have to mess about pulling the governor, and modifying the governor, to get the shift rpms back to where they were before the higher pressures and bigger valves.  I have 2 videos covering the mods I did here.

Making A Lincoln Locker

I don't always get my point across clearly in video.  My van doesn't usually get stuck on its own, its usually towing something, or in really deep snow.  But no more...

I have only driven this thing around the block with the new Lincoln Locker, and it has a WAY different feel to it.  I am going to say, the rear end probably breaks free easier now, though I'm saying that because drifters weld the rear ends.  My whole block is ice and snow, so breaking the rear end free is a regular occurrance, with out trying to. But it seemed, for the 2 corners I did to get it parked back out front, that the recovory and handling from spinning the tires and going side ways, was way more predictable and smother.  I'd say it handled a whole lot better.  That is the best news ever because these things I do to solve a problem, or improve my situation, often turn out to have negative effects, and I was worried about poor handling.  I am not worried about squealing the tires around every corner, even at 5 km an hour.  Nor am I worried about having to replace my tires maybe every year.  I have a tire machine, and 15" tires are $15 at the wrecker.  So I just added proximatly a $3 monthly bill to my company, to keep the van in back tires.

Now I know I am going to get some flack for this, from normal every day people that don't like to bend the rules, but...
Let me just say, a locker rear end is well over $1000, I paid $1000 for my whole van, where is the value in a rear end worth as much as the whole van?
I have seen a whole lot of failed locker rear end videos on youtube.  I have seen a few welded lincoln locker rear end videos too.  The rear end is under tremendous stress turning tight corners on dry pavement with a locked rear end.  Even more so with my heavy electrical van, and big truck tires going on next.
The set up of a rear end looks like a huge pain in the ass, and several hours work in its self.  But with out set up, I am probably saving more than 6 hours work, just pulling the axles and replacing the diff with a posi rear end.  I would probably never do it that way, but add another 4 hours on that, I'd buy the complete used S10 locker rear end, with disks and calipers, update the whole thing, and I still might do that.  I'm "looking" for one. But I will not be changing that in the middle of winter, in 6" of snow when its -20c outside.  This worked, we'll see what the internals look like in a month.  In the mean time I do have that spare truck rear end in case this rear end goes bad.

Click on the link to see the video if it didn't show up for you.

This was a week ago or so now, the Blog is a little behind but..
My Youtube channel is a little less behind if you want to subscribe to that, you need to make a simple free youtube account, you can find my channel here   http://www.youtube.com/user/pacificcloud

Got to spend a couple days in Andrew recently, cleaning up the yard.  A short 45 second vid, so much fun.  We hardly got any snow this year, but its starting to come down now, this week.  We "traded in" the crappy sled that was hard to start, and got another better unit.  In this vid is old reliable 250 Everest, I love this sled.

Hot Tub Relocation Gone Wrong

I finally, after a year of being moved and not having electricity at the cabin, got the hot tub moved to the city.  Because its just a little 110 unit, and we really want it for winter use, we had to put it in the house somewhere.  It was either build a deck off the second floor bedroom, build a bigger entrance way and put it out there, or get it into the basement.  Getting it into the basement seemed like the least amount of work, at least no city permits involved.  It did turn out to be a lot more work than anticipated.  The video is condensed two days of work

As usual, the blog is falling way behind the youtube videos.  If you want to see more of the latest videos, the most recent selection can be viewed on my channel here.  http://www.youtube.com/pacificcloud

Driving Ground Rods

Some people have never seen a ground rod driven with a jack hammer.  Until today!  I made a video to show off my favorite tool, the jack hammer.  This has driven over a dozen ground rods now, at times that it is impossible to drive them with a sledge hammer.  It is also good because I am by myself most of the time, and a sledge can be almost impossible on your own, you need someone to hold the ground rod steady.  Here's the vid of it.

Drilling A Hole In Bees Nest

This is a recent job, putting a new service on this house, with the attic bees nest.


I also had to stick my hand in to put a nut on the other side of the mast clamp, also get a wrench on it to tighten it up. I was happy that I never got stung. I hear that Epcore came and gassed the attic when they hooked up the power that I installed. Sad really the bees are good to have around, and the owners were happy to let the bees live in their attic.  Here is the link in case you want to see other recent Youtube vids of mine, and as usual the embeded video

http://www.youtube.com/user/pacificcloud?feature=mhee

China LED Pot Lights

I stand behind my recommendations to buy put lights, direct from China and Hong Kong, online, but there is costs associated with doing so.

Buyer Beware!  I have purchased a lot of lighting products direct from China, through Ebay and other sources.  I usually get good products for very good prices, but in many cases there is no quality control.  In this case both pot lights work and look great, they just wont look good together, as seen in the video

My first bit of advice is MAKE SURE YOU GET THE CORRECT VOLTAGE for your area.  twice now I have mistakenly ordered 240v lights, which do me no good in Canada.  240v tends to be a lot less expensive, because they don't need as many rectifiers in the light bulb to run the LEDs.

I have returned light fixtures, which turned out to be not worth wile at all.  I paid 40% of  the original cost, in shipping to return the items, then somehow the refund turned into a 70% refund, and even that, finally agreed upon partial refund, has not been credited to my account yet.  If it ever gets credited I will get $0.03 on the dollar refund after I paid return shipping and all.

Frozen Pipe Repair

As almost everyone knows, I managed to dodge the only real week of winter in Edmonton, at -35 Celsius.  I was hiding out in Victoria for their worst week of winter with -5 deg weather and lots of snow.  The trip was planned perfectly, as I was on the plane home, the weather was warming up in Edmonton.  Michelle heard a funny noise in the Edmonton house, and eventually found a water pipe burst, that blew water through the basement drywall.  Home at midnight I didn't deal with it till morning, but here's how that went down in the video.  In the future I expect I should get rid of all this copper pipe, replace it with pex, and run it through the basement ceiling, not on top of the concrete foundation wall, or even in an outside wall at all.  That was what I was going to do originally, but then my phone started ringing, and I had to go to work.

Intake Manifold Back Firing

My 1989 Chevy Astro van with the rebuild engine, developed this intake manifold back firing in the last few weeks.  Its not like exhaust pipe back firing, where it makes a loud bang, but rather it just makes a popping sound, muffled by the air cleaner.  The problem is it burns everything in the intake manifold, and you lose power for that second.  2 intake manifold back fires in a row and you can stall out in the middle of a U turn or what ever.  Hit the gas to pass someone, it pops a couple of times and your right back behind them.

This was ridiculously easy to fix, when I figured out what the problem was.  The cause can be a sticking, bent, or burnt intake valve, valve timing out, or ignition timing out.  Or I read bad fuel that is still burning through the exhaust stroke and into the next intake stroke as the intake valve opens.  Basically an intake valve is open when  the spark plug is sparking, or burning.

I thought the timing belt had stretched, but I've read they don't stretch like the old chains did.  So I thought I was going to have to pull the heads and do the valves.  One last ditch effort was to address the spark plug wires.  I went to the wrecker and purchased 4 spark plug wires for $4 of f a newer astro van.  Mostly I wanted the extra wire dividers, and extra loom that came on them , but I did replace the one wire that was arcing before.  I spaced all the spark plug wires evenly 1/4" apart, eliminated wire crosses,  put loom on them where anything touched them, and clipped them all up securely.  This fixed the problem of cross sparking, as seen in the video.  Hopefully this helps someone.

Propane Fork Lift Trouble Shooting

The propane fork lift wouldn't start at the bottle depot behind my house.  They come to my house now when they have problems, which is funny I think.  I was pretty happy I fixed it in bout 10 minutes.  I have a propane truck out on the buggy farm, the propane system is always the reason for the thing not started.  Trouble shooting propane vehicles basically goes:
-Propane in the tank?
-Propane regulator iced over?
-Power getting to the propane solenoid?
-Vacuum getting to the propane vacuum switch?

Kicked In Door Repair

My house was a definite fixer upper when I got it.  Really it still is, but its a little more functional.  The back door is something I didn't get to till now.  I actually purchased a new back door, as close as I could get to the same size, but I'd have to cut it down.  Then your still looking at a weak ass door that anyone could kick in if they wanted.  So I fortified the original splintered door with the welder and good old steel plate.  Nobody is going to be kicking in my door again.  Click the link below to see the video.

Quick Wheel Alignment

This all happened just before the VW Jetta experienced some, hopefully electrical, catastrophic failure.  High mileage, and lots more mileage to go.

Astro Van Gets New Springs

The Astro Van has taken some serious abuse this year, hauling around a ton of copper, and towing the big trailer full of more copper and tools.  Until today I have put air bag suspension on everything I drive.  I got a few air leaks in a couple of air bags, and decided to go with a more permanent trailer hauling solution for the Chevy Astro Van.  I stopped in at the local Alberta Spring and Trailer, got myself a set of steal leaf springs, to replace the cracking fiberglass springs, and 4 extra 1/4" thick steel leafs.  I also picked up some coil over shock helper springs.  The over all result is very heavy rear suspension which can haul anything now.  The next area to address would be the tires.  Now I can get so much weight in the van the tires look low because they can't hold enough psi.

Wireless Volt meter

For Christmas I got this wifi wireless volt meter.  Its great for remote metering, monitoring, graphing, all this fun stuff.  This is a quick video to show how it measures voltage, and transmits the reading through wifi to my iphone app.  Of course it doesn't just measure voltage, but it measures ohms, amps, all that fun stuff.

Tire Machine Improvements

Nobody really thinks to mount their own tires, what a hassle.  When you do as much driving as me, have as many trucks, trailers, and ATVs as me, having your own tire machine is brilliant.  But also living out in the sticks as we did for 5 years, its not practical at all to take a tire for the 2 hour return trip to town for mounting.  The going rate for tire installation is about $20, at the reasonable shops, for one tire.  Most charge more than that, then they add $4 tire recycling fee,  plus valve stem, and wheel weight costs.

There was a point there, when my trailer suspension was bottomed out, I would go through a tire a week, on pot holes and curbs.  The suspension has been beefed up so it doesn't bottom out any more.  But back then, last summer, it was no big deal.  I have my own tire machine, auto wrecker sells me 15" tires for $15 each, I fix it.  Total cost $15 and a trip to the wrecker.

I just love this tire machine, it was well under $100 to buy, and I will easily mount 1000 tires with it in my life time, saving me a lot of driving around, and at minimum $20,000 in tire mounting fees.  The design is pretty good, but I recommend two improvements.  One improvement I had to do 5 years ago, the other I did today in this video.

Trailer Security

As contractors I know keep getting their trailers stolen around me, I search for new ways to step up trailer security.  This is one fairly inexpensive way I found to add another level of security.  This motion light only works at night, in the dark.  Because the trailer is parked in front of my house, I found my excessively bright LED house security light, lights up the same area enough to shut down Mr Beams.  But this trailer is parked at dark job sites enough to warrent the small cost of installing the battery security light.  A quick video of the install

LED Tail Lights

Had a burnt tail light in my van which inspired some new LED lights.  Sexy, bright and stylish.