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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed Previous Posts
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Monday, September 19, 2005
What a Weekend/Monday!Wow. We sure accomplished a great deal this weekend! The chores were numerous that they migrated into Monday... we took today off. Let's see... Saturday I replaced my Jeep windshield frame. It wasn't a pleasant job. My old windshield frame was totally rusted out. Dave Aultman from work painted it for me about a year ago. I finally got around to putting it on. Why now? The only reason that I have put it off is that it was parked in the garage. Poor Danielle... she parked out in the driveway with our butlers. She's quite the trooper. Now that it's fixed (almost, I still need to secure the hardtop header), the Jeep can sit outside with the butlers' vehicles, since I won't have to worry about water entering the cockpit. It was a total sieve. When it rained, buckets of water went behind the dash and onto my feet. Not so good with electrical systems being behind the dash. Sunday was a big day too. Not sure I mentioned it before, but Danielle's Cougar was ready for the glue factory. Transmission was all out of wack. You couldn't put the car in gear without it rolling backward about ten feet. Put her car in reverse, and it would take a few seconds for it to catch the gear. Those were the side-effects. What I thought was the "cause", also became a side-effect of the real problem. Her transmission leaked fluid by the bucketful. There are at least three quarts of ATF in my driveway, half of which probably leeched into the groundwater through the soil. It was a living nightmare. Whenever she drove her car, it would leak. I was convinced her car was ready to be crushed and sold as scrap. I used logic and reason to solve this problem. Whenever I would fill her transmission with ATF, it would drive fine. As soon as it heated up on a hot summer day, it would leak like a sieve. I took it into a transmission shop, and they tried to look at it. The manager came out and said they tried filling it under pressure, and fluid exploded out of the dipstick. They told me to bring it back a few days later so they could drop the trans (for $800). No way. The dealership was only going to give us $1500 for it, so it didn't even make sense to consider a rebuild. So last night, I got my hands dirty, and energized my brain... pressure filling caused ATF to come out of the dipstick... intermittent leaking... leaking only on hot days. I HAD to look into this. I plugged in my Actron engine diagnostic tool and it registered a fault code of TCC solenoid - System/Performance. TCC solenoid is the torque converter circuit solenoid. Those things are inside the trans, usually accessible by removed the trans tray. Danielle's car doesn't have a trans tray... her trans is split down the middle... it's a hemispherical two-piece trans. If that solenoid was bad, it would cost a minimum of $800 to drop the trans, plus the labor to replace. I was starting to consider donating the car to charity... let them iron out the burden. So I started sucking ATF out of the dipstick. The reading on the dipstick showed that fluid was dangerously too high. WTF? Did I add too much? I have a pump with a tube, that I forced down the dipstick. I started pumping that shit out. It came out way to easily. Then it dawned on me... pressure... vent tubes... Eureka! I thought! I was hopeful... I got my air compressor hose out and started pressurizing the tube jammed down into the dipstick tube. ATF fluid quickly started rising up the tube. If I didn't jam my thumb over the other end, I would have been covered with ATF. What an ordeal that would have been! So I wondered... do I have a clogged vent tube? So I pressurized again, and jammed my thumb over the tube... and I listened... I could hear a pinprick of air escaping from somewhere... but where!? I let the trans equalize slowly and repeated... It was weird! The air pressure sounded like it was trying to escape out of the battery! WTF!? How on earth could that be? I then examined the battery and noticed that the battery breather tube was connected to another tube. OK... so I unplugged it... The revelation fell on me like a ton of bricks! As soon as I unplugged the black tube from the battery, the vent tube floodgates opened. The transmission was breathing again! Here's what I think happened... I replaced that battery at the start of winter last year. The battery had its vent tube with a connector on the end. The last time Danielle got an oil change, the derelicts from the oil shop probably thought that they need to connect the trans vent tube to the battery vent tube. The two tubes are coincidentally close, and since the battery had a connector on the end that accepted the same size tube, the oil technician probably thought he should connect them. All I can think of is that it was fine during the winter since the trans was always cold, but as soon as it got hot out, it started becoming an issue. So, to make a long story even longer, the trans vent tube was trying to vent INTO the battery. Since the trans pressure had nowhere to go, the only other escape was through the dipstick tube! That's why her transmission was leaking! So the cause was improper vent tube (or clogged vent tube) and the effect was a leaking transmission... the effect of that was low fluid... the effect of that was a TCC fault code, as well as a driving experience from hell. So I fixed her Cougar Sunday night, cleared out the fault code from her engine computer, and topped off her trans fluid. I then drove it hard for the rest of the night to see if the fault would trip again. It didn't! Car drove like a champ! It was like brand new again! Monday comes around, and we're off to the races again. I spent the morning doing a deep cleaning on the inside of her car. It looked like new when I was done! I touched up a few dings here and there, and totally fixed her cracked fascia. Car was ready for a car show. Our kitchen contractors arrived around 10 am, along with our cabinets. They got started right away. Danielle took her car to the OB, and I spent the next hour or two covering up everything in the family room (it's adjacent to the kitchen). I then sealed off that wing of the house (basement, kitchen and family room) from the main living wing (living room, bathroom, and bedrooms). Now "we live in a duplex" as coined by Danielle. Contractors have a key for their duplex, and we have a key for ours. They could easily come through the plastic into our duplex, but it's fun to pretend that they cannot. If we need to go to the kitchen, we go out the front door and into the side door. It's silly, but it's fun to pretend that we have a duplex. As soon as Danielle got back, we left the contractors to their work, and we went onward to our Monday chores... We did some banking, and then ended up at our next scheduled stop: the Chrysler dealership. After a little shop talk, and manipulative bargaining, I conned the salesguy to offer us a price on a Pacifica we couldn't refuse. I used tactics such as "GM Envoys are so much roomier, we can't decide...", "2005 model year... that's old news, salesboy... we want a 2006... unless you can subtract a year's worth of residual value, blah blah blah, and make me want a Pacifica over an Envoy...". He knew I was an impulse buyer, that spent 75% of the car buying experience on research, and 24% on the negotiation, and 1% on the actual transaction. When he sees me, he sees "drumstick" like hungry cartoon people see when looking at Bugs Bunny. He didn't want to lose the sale. And remember about the trans fix on the Cougar? Well, it paid off, with dividends! On Saturday, I would have taken $50 for the Cougar. We ended up with a trade-in price that was more than fair. It was right in line with the trade-in value listed on Kelly Blue Book. Amazing! It was sure sad to see the Cougar go, especially after I fixed it and put it back into tip-top shape. The trade-in was key... Long story longer, we bought a Pacifica today! Danielle is now a proud owner of a Pacifica All-Wheel-Drive. Other than a Kenworth semi truck, it's probably one of the roomiest vehicles I've sat in. I love it. I can't wait to try and fail at doing doughnuts in the snow. Finally, I installed both of our Graco baby seat receivers in our vehicles. I'll tell ya what... you gotta love the new automotive seating "standard" of the LATCH system -- designed to attach baby seats. It took me all but 15 seconds to attach. It was a welcome delight. I love "standards". Our baby will be safe and sound due to automotive and baby-industry ingenuity. Off to dinner to unwind... Dani is STARVING! posted by Dino at 8:06 PM (permanent link)
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