Milestone

Wow! The project is now in the garage! It's actually been in there for about a week (note the cushions from the patio chairs being stored on top of the cab - it's going to be a challenge for me to keep my dear truck clean of "storage" items), but posting to the blog has taken some time.

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I wasn't planning on putting the truck into the garage that Thursday, but I had just gotten tired of not making any progress on the truck, and came home angry about it that day. I decided that, ready or not, the truck was moving into the garage that afternoon. Got home, pawned the attention-hogging child off on his mother, and told them I was going out to move the truck. On my way out the door, my loving wife was saying something about the garage smelling like gasoline. As I stepped out and closed the door, I was thinking, "Huh? Why's it gonna smell like gasoline?"  Oh yeah, the hole in the fuel tank. Dammit - I'm not going to let that stop me, I'll just drain the tank after I get it into the garage.

 

I got the battery installed, finally got the engine to crank, and backed into the garage. I thought that I'd be slick about it and just run the engine until the gas tank was empty. I opened all the doors and windows, turned on a fan, and waited outside for the tank to run dry. After a while, I thought that I'd check the mileage record and found that there was just under twelve gallons of gas in the tank. It's going to take hours to empty the tank!

 

Plan number two was to drain the tank via the fuel lines. It seemed like a good idea, until I found that there was no way to crack a line open except for the fittings up by the fuel pump. I pulled the clamps and the gas started to flow out of the line. Well, not really flow...more like a pathetic trickle. Without the pump pulling fuel through the line, this idea wasn't going to work.

 

On to the plan number three: I'm going to stick a hose down the filler neck and start a siphon out to my portable gas cans. Great idea, except I don't have a hose long enough to do the job.

 

Plan number four: Drop the tank. Easy. Just remove the rusty nuts from the hangers, gently lower a nearly full tank, and all's good. Did I mention the time limit? At this point, I've been working with the truck for thirty minutes. I'm really supposed to be inside cooking dinner. (Special thanks to lovey wife Cari for finishing dinner and handling Levi's bath that night!) Some crazy voice in my head told me that it was no problem, I'd have the tank removed in a half hour, tops.

 

I had the tank removed in seventy minutes. Not too shabby, considering that the hangers and hardware are near impossible to get a good hold on with the wrenches needed. I patiently held the hanger rod with one wrench and turned the nut off with another wrench - one agonizingly slow eighth of a turn at a time. Hopes ran high as the nuts reached the end of the rods and the tank was almost free.

 

The floor jack that I was using to lower the tank slowly to the floor turned out to be not so helpful. It held the weight all right, but the tank wouldn't clear the frame while on the jack. The jack came out, and the tank started to move clear - until it hung on the filler hose. Did I mention that I smell gas? There's a hole in the tank, the nearly full tank is hanging at an angle from the filler hose, and gasoline is starting to drip down my arm. That crazy voice in my head (the one that was so confident earlier) started to hum. The hum slowly built into a buzz that shortly exploded into a shrill scream of AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGGGHHHHAAAAAAAAA as it tried to tell the rational part of my brain about the explosive properties of gasoline vapor. HURRY! GET THE FILLER HOSE DISCONNECTED! I SMELL GAS! IT'S GONNA GO BOOM! DON'T DROP THAT WRENCH! OH NO, THE TROUBLE LIGHT IS A HOT BARE BULB REALLY CLOSE TO THE LEAKING TANK!   Damn, that voice in my head really freaks out sometimes. I think I'll just keep moving quickly but carefully towards disconnecting the filler and vent hoses...

After a few (remarkably long) minutes, I got the tank free and out of the garage - out to the open air, where an explosion would be a little bit easier to deal with (right?!).

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This counts as major progress towards goal number one! The truck is in the garage and the fuel tank is dropped. I'm making a list of the parts I need to replace the tank and re-plumb the fuel system; once I price that out, we'll move forward on making this thing a daily driver.

 

 

Safe inside for the winter (along with the snowblower).

The nice big empty spot where the fuel tank used to be...

Little Things

Progress on the truck has been slow. The main goal for the past few weeks has been to get the truck into the garage. The obstacles to meeting this goal have been many, and they've all been little things. Interconnected little things. To get the truck into the garage, the car has to come out. To get the car out of the garage, the no-start condition must be corrected. To fix the starter, it must be trouble-shot. To troubleshoot, the garage needs to be cleaned. It goes on and on.

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The starting problem on the car was annoying and getting worse by the day. A few months ago, the starter wouldn't turn on the first turn of the key. Switch the key on and back a few times and the car would start - not too bad a problem to live with. After a few weeks of that, during a torrential rain storm, the switchy trick stopped working. It took forty minutes of turning the key (no way that I'm doing any repair/diagnostics in a storm when I'm running late to pick up at preschool - just cuss and turn the key-repeatedly) for the starter to spin. In the days following, the starter would take up to ten minutes to decide to turn. Not too inconvenient; just leave for work early and remember to not turn off the engine when picking up at preschool (I don't need thirty little kids watching and waiting for the car to start...).

 

Eventually, I decided that something needed to be done. If I was going to keep driving the car throughout the winter, the starter needed to work regularly. If I was going to park outside (because the truck was in the garage), the weak start needed to improve (it's only going to get colder and harder to crank the engine). I started researching options. A new starter for the Prizm was over $100. The starter solenoid that piggybacks onto the starter is over $100. I thought that the relay might be the problem with the key not working, and the starter might be why it cranked so slowly. This was going to be an expensive fix. I decided to only replace the solenoid and to preheat the engine block with a plug-in block heater (to make it easier for the weak starter to spin the engine).

 

Now, being that I'm cheap - or mainly just not willing to spend money on something that I think isn't worth it - I decided to dig a little deeper. I saw a posting somewhere on the internet about the possibility of rebuilding the contacts on the solenoid for cheap. I thought that might be the way to go, so I started looking for the solenoid on my engine. It's tricky to find. The starter is high on the front of the engine, tucked under the exhaust manifold. It looked like a whole bunch of work to get that thing out of it's home, but I figured that if it saved a lot of cash, I'd be willing to do the work. I set aside some time, and got to digging the solenoid/starter combo out of the engine bay.

 

I managed to twist off 70% of the rusty bolts holding the plastic engine shields under the car. By twisting off, I mean that when I was done, only 30% of the original fasteners were left to secure the panels. That's not a good start. When pulling the panels and reaching to remove the starter, one of the things you run into is the terminal for the positive cable from the battery. It's that thingy below...

 

As I was nursing some wounds and planning the next move, I had the thought to check the battery wire connections. There was a little bit of corrosion on the battery terminals themselves, so I cleaned it off. Under that little flippy cover on the solenoid terminal, there was a wire connection with a lot of corrosion. I scraped that off and made the metal all shiny, then reassembled the starter circuit. To my complete astonishment, the starter worked on the first turn of the key (at full strength/speed, too!). That one little terminal was the reason the car wasn't starting....

 

Sometimes it's the little things that get to you....