I think I may trade my truck in on one of those new shiny Dodges..





























APRIL FOOLS Yea, like you didn't see that comin'

 

From last months...I mean it would upset the space/time continuum if I were to post in that thread.Alright!I hear you get a choice on the breed of puppy that comes with that new truck.

Your on a roll there Joe, two days in a row you've made an appearance in the chapter forum. The local management would be impressed!

 

Evening fellas. Long time no BS... around 6 months I think.

 

Looks like another round of storms for today, but on a good note, the rain will wash some of this pollen away We got lucky a few days ago, the storm that demolished part of Camden was only 15 miles from my place in Mount Holly. I am ready for the rainy weather to stop. I need the river to drop to normal levels for a week or so, I have a hot tub that is calling my name that needs to make the trip through the river bottoms

 

I don't know if you guys around central AR noticed, but they are putting in a Harbor Freight tools in Jacksonville!

Yea I know, a lot of it is cheap-o, but there are plenty of times a one-time use cheap-o tool will fit the bill.

 

I had not noticed that. That's awesome, I love harbor freight.

 

yup, right next to Big Lots in the old Kmart building.

 

I noticed it the other day. It's fun to go look through the store and find all sorts of things that you never knew you needed...

 

It's amazing how much stuff I don't know I need is in there.

 

Haha. Agreed. I have to go buy myself a cordless impact, unless one of you fine gentlemen has one that I can borrow for a day or two? I'm doing a crankshaft replacement on a Honda Civic, and the damned harmonic balancer won't come off of the engine in the junkyard.

 

Never used a cordless impact. Always wondered if they were worth having.

 

I ended up buying a Craftsman... it was on sale for $55 off (regular 140, paid 85). Can't hardly beat that. It's 200 lb/ft of torque. Not quite the 1100 lb/ft I can get from a pneumatic, but it's close enough for what I need it to do. Lol.

 

Well, looks like we're going to have a wet Palm Sunday. Hopefully the weather guessers are wrong on the sever storm part of the forecast.The last time the boss and I went to a Wiston Cup race...they were using DeWalt cordless impact drivers for the fan experience booth. Wither or not they were getting them on tight enough for 200+ mph passes on the high banks of Talladega, I have not clue...but they sure sounded different on the lug nuts.

And I'm affarid to ask what you did to the crank in the Civic. It has been my past experience Honda builds some rather bullet proof cars. Might be gutless, but the stupid things go for ever.

 

I'm not the one that broke it... and it's not broken like you'd think. The crank itself is fine, but the keyway for the harmonic balancer is gone. A friend's wife (it's her car) was driving it and said she lost her power steering and heard a funny sound from the engine, but she was close enough to home that she just drove it home and parked it and told him something was wrong. So he came to me, asking if I could fix it. One of the accessory belts apparently broke off, and wrapped itself around the HB somehow and that allowed the HB to shear off the key and break off half of the keyway passage from the crankshaft.

It's a good thing I tore it apart though; 4 of the 5 main crank bearings were scorched and the crank position sensor wires got chewed up, and the timing gear had also started to work it's way into the keyway on the crank and was definitely throwing the timing off by a few degrees. They're going to get a nice running car back when I'm done with it. I painted everything today (they didn't ask me to or even mention it, but I figured what the hell...) and it will be re-installed and running tomorrow.

 

In the late '90s, I had a harmonic balancer on an Escort come loose. Couldn't figure out why the stupid thing acted like it had lost all of it's "power"...it was out of time. Trying to figure out why all the sudden was when a buddy and I discovered the HB was loose. The key was beyond shot, the balancer and crank both had issues. Being a newlywed couple and trying to make ends meet...this buddy and I decided we'd get a "salvaged" balancer, braze the crank and hand file a new keyway into the crank. Is that the right way, nope...but I think we had all of about $25-$30 into this repair. We traded the car about 6-months later and the last time I saw it...a couple of years after that...it was still running.