is it fall already?

with the weather in tennessee the last few days, would think it was fall already. mostly overcast, chill breeze, temps in the mid-70s. it's been such a nice break from the high heat and humidity we were having.

today, you get a two-fer. i'll be posting about work that i did saturday and today. after running a bunch of errands with the family on friday, i decided to relax friday night. it was a nice break. onto the work!

saturday, finally finished up the last brake drum and bent the new line to replace the one that i couldn't separate. it's amazing how quickly you can do something the second time. the first brake drum i did took me 40 minutes to get all the springs and clips into place. the second one i did on saturday took me 5-10 minutes. it might have been the difference between late at night and mid-morning but it was insane. not that i'm complaining! being able to finish it up that quick was great. the only thing left to do on the brakes is bleeding. i figure i'll do that once i get the engine stuff done and i'm actually ready to take it out on the road.

the next thing i worked on is that starter. remember how i'd had to stop because i couldn't get the lower nut off the stud? well, i got into place, sprayed some more liquid wrench, got my trusty wrench and it came right off! hurray! i wiggled the old starter out and had a look. man, does it look old! but i'm keeping it to take it apart and see what's inside. yeah, i'm a nerd but i've never seen the inside. once i got it out, i tried and tried and tried to get the bushing out. nothing seemed to work. i called up my friend paul who came over and had a look. he couldn't get it out and said that he would just leave it. the bushing looked to be in good shape and it'd really be a chore to get it out. so i took his advice. i mounted up the new starter and got everything tightened down. pretty simple.

i was still feeling ambitious and had energy at this point, so i decided to start working on the engine. i managed to disassemble the lower cooling tin in order to get to the heat riser bolts. the left side came out fine, but the right side decided they both wanted to break. so now i get to learn how to use an easy-out. oh well. i started to also take apart the rest of the intake manifold but i realized that i needed a 12mm swivel socket and a big extension to get to the 2 nuts on each side. at this point it was getting late and i was tired. so i packed everything up and started to mow the lawn until the rest of my family came back home. too bad the lawnmower suddenly stopped going into gear as soon as i was done with the front lawn. sheesh! what now!? guess that'll be my next project...

pictures from saturday are below:


new guts of the driver's side drum. hopefully they stop as well as they look.


the new drum in place.


can you tell which one is the new starter?


here's a shot of it all mounted up. notice that you're looking through the inside of the rear fender.


another shot of it mounted. this time from below.

onto today's progress... after church, sears and the grocery store, i finally made it outside. i didn't really have a goal. just to work for a few hours. with new tools in-hand, i set to my task. loosened all four intake manifold nuts with no problem. loosened the one in the middle and was able to slide the right-side manifold off with no problem. i had a new gasket for where the manifold meets the head that i had to trim up, but no big deal. i then started to take the left side off but realized that the fresh air pipe coming off of the fan housing is in the way. the only way to get it out of the way is to completely remove the housing. ugh! so i'm thinking i may not replace the gasket on that side. just replace the boots and call it good. that's really all i got done. not much to show for 2 hours of work. but the boots are all ready to slip on and then i can put the manifold back together. i'm also installing the new spark plugs while the manifold is out of the way. more pictures:


manifold almost ready to come out.


and it's gone...


here's a comparison shot between the new and old intake boots.

happy labor day everyone!