Jeeze.. Someone needs to go back to bridge building class...

 

I agree, I retract my previous guess. No way that truck did enough damage to bring down the bridge. May have clipped it a bit but not enough to bring down an otherwise sturdy bridge.

 

There is one side-on shot of the load that shows it to have suffered no noticeable impact damage, and it is still true and plumb, not out-of-square in the least. This, despite there being no sides on the "box" at all.

Yet, it took down an Interstate Highway bridge!

How could that happen?

Pop

 

Alrighty I got some sealant drying on the sending unit. Unfortunately, I get to replace that AND the gauge now. The sender is toast and the gauge is toast. I at least hope this sealer will keep most of the gas from leaking and lower the amount of fumes. Then I have to give a VW shop a call and see how much they charge for the units. This sending unit doesn't even seem to lock in either, the rubber seal is intact but it doesn't lock down too well. I'll get it figured out though.

 

well dylan, good luck getting your gas tank worked out

i've been letting my mind wander on a couple of random ideas, which might prove to be bad ideas, but we'll see.
ever since i got my portable 12v generator set up, i've been playing with it to see how well it handles different large loads placed on the inverter, and i found something i couldn't do with the combo. i can't run my baby wire feed welder off the combo, specifically off the inverter, because it trips a circuit in the inverter made to protect against short-circuits.
so of course, that got me thinking what other options i had, just in case i ever need the welder where i truly can't get outside power. i found myself with 2 options - either have a rotary phase converter or something similar to isolate the load from the inverter, or look into the "weldernator" idea of making a welder out of an alternator. the first option isn't one i want to get into, so that leaves me to look into a weldernator.
so of course, i googled it, and found plenty of useful info on a couple jeep forums and whatever. for convenience, i think i'll start by playing around with the portable system i have, bypassing or screwing with its regulator go see what kind of trouble i can get myself into. it looks like bypassing it is easy enough, but that leaves it capable of hitting like 100 volts or so, according to what i read. that got me thinking about its regulator and how to screw with it. i know wire "A" is the voltage sensing point, and wire "I" is hot with key on, so ignition. i'm thinking i could start by taking a battery of lower voltage to the sensing wire, say a household 9v, and 12v to the ignition wire, and the output wire to maybe a junk 18v drill battery, then fire it up with a voltmeter on it and see what it does. i see plenty of testing in the future, i'm interested to see how much trouble i can get in with this rig

so yeah, all this thinking and scheming is how i spend my afternoon on a holiday weekend, i can't wait to start testing my bad ideas to see if i can get some kind of regulated higher voltage out of it, or if it'll keep increasing out of control. and if it all fries, the junkyard can give me another alternator for cheap and i can play again

 

Wow it's been really quiet around here...

Today the bug broke down. Me and my brother went to Bowen Scarff Ford in Kent to turn in some applications and on the way home we took Auburn way to avoid traffic. Turns out Auburn way wasn't a lot better. I think the bug overheated a bit cause it suddenly died. We let it cool and we could get it running but only make it a few hundred yards before it would die again. Eventually we just pulled it home behind our van and got it home. So far it is getting spark to the distributor cap but not the spark plug wires. And it's getting enough fuel to flood it easily. We are thinking either the points are trashed or maybe the cap and rotor or something...

 

well dylan, if i'm reading that right, the points are working cause they're telling the coil to fire, and the problem must be in the high voltage side of the distrubutor - cap+rotor, or possibly a bad coil wire (high voltage). could be as simple as some moisture in the cap

as a follow-up to my last post on this thread, i did a little experimenting with what my system could put out, and found myself getting 75v out of that little alternator on my portable rig, by simply putting the regulator wires to a partially discharged battery, reading 11.5v. i think thats pretty badazz, that its so simple to cheat. it would have put out more if i could have spun it faster. i'll test it under a load one of these days and see what i can make it do

 

A smaller pulley could make it spin faster right?

The points are working, they open and close properly and have a spark. The distributor cap is pretty dirty inside the plug wire sockets but I don't think that is the issue since it ran fine before this. There happens to be 3 wires going to this coil, one goes to the distributor housing, one is a black one that goes across the engine bay and disappears under the car and the last one ties into the wire harness. The black wire has a spade connecter on it so I could try cleaning that. The issue is, I don't know what it's for. It was raining off and on so just finding out that the coil is working was good enough till tomorrow. It wouldn't start weather it was compression or turn key so something isn't right. Maybe a wire melted and is shorting somewhere...

 

for my toys, yeah, a smaller alternator pulley or a bigger engine pulley would be the answer.

for your ride, you said you have spark in the wire from the coil to the dizzy, which means the whole low-voltage side is working right, right?
when you get tired of having to screw with points, there is a way to wire up a points dizzy to control a ford TFI module and coil, thus having a much stronger spark with no wear on your points. let me know if you want to get into it

 

Well I haven't been doing anything interesting. School is keeping me pretty busy. Really the only thing I've had time to do is chuck some parts off my 79 into the sandblaster and get them all cleaned up.

Hopefully this afternoon/weekend I'll have some time to clean out the garage a bit and maybe roll the bug in. All depends on how much homework I get done :/


-Jameson

 

Thanks Josh, I'll let you know if I need to get into that mess. I think the plan now is to get a cap, rotor and plug wires since mine are all old. It needs to be done anyways. If that doesnt fix it then I'll take a looke at the coil wires and see what they are doing.

 

mess, what mess - pushing wires around a car is called recreation

 

To me, anything that isn't easy enough for a squirrel to figure out is a mess :/

Unfortunately, it appears I won't have to make a feeble attempt at understanding what you plan to describe. I don't really know what the issue was yet but we seem to have cured it. I do have a simple question for you, how often does a damn rotor fail? Cause after replacing the cap and rotor even with the old wires it fired up. Albeit a bit slowly, but it did fire. We still went ahead and replaced all the plug wires and coil wire. It will start up and run alright now but after getting it hot and revving the engine real high then letting the throttle drop quickly it will die. Kind of like if I were up on the freeway in 4th gear and I popped it into neutral and he throttle snapped closed? It would die, but if I dropped it into 3rd depending on my speed, and compression started it it would fire right back up with no problem. We have zeroed out the timing since we cannot figure this damn thing out, then we zeroed out the carb adjustments and tuned them according to forum posts. It seems to idle pretty well so far but it still dies once in a while. If I let off the gas gradually then it is fine but it's that sudden drop in fuel that seems to be affecting it.

I have not rebuilt the carb, I have not had it off the motor, I was told it was rebuilt but can I trust the PO? He had it for 3 days and only got it started twice, once was when we were checking it out. Anyways, for now it seems pretty good, I still plan to run it up hwy 18 tomorrow to a friends 22nd birthday party. I just have to play the throttle like a fiddle and make sure it doesn't die. As long as it does on the offramp I am in good shape since that is downhill and I will need to slow down anyways.

Well enough about that shizzy, what is everyone else doing?

 

sounds like your stalling problem is a pretty common thing, and is the reason that many car-makers use a little thing called a dashpot - basically a little device that slows down the throttle closing the last little bit so it doesn't stall in that situation. you might look into those and see if one was supposed to be on your carb

in other news, i was driving this morning and got a nice little wake-up call. someone on 522 threw a pretty big rock into my windshield, here's the view of the damage from the inside https://www.dropbox.com/s/7ko3sf83k5...2011.29.55.jpg about 2" shattered center with about a 4" ring around it. so much for having a perfect window.
i was following an empty dumptruck, not really paying attention, and don't have a clue if he somehow dropped the rock or if someone in the head-on lane dropped it.

another fun one i had this afternoon, i was working on a buick, tracking down a coolant leak, and found it was leaking coolant from the serpentine belt tensioner. WTF!? who in their right mind would design a car that has 4 coolant connections to the belt tensioner, none of which have anything to do with tensioning the belt. what were the engineers smoking that day

 

I will have to look into that...

As for the rock thing, that doesn't look as bad as I thought. I imagined the windshield being shattered. GM is stupid and the way they built their buicks. After having worked in a dealership where they sell and fix them I know what you mean by "what were the engineers smoking that day"... It's pretty sad actually. they are great cars and drive like a dream if they didn't have so many problems.