It was empty

I went camping this weekend, and on the way back I climbed up a deserted, winding mountain road. It was fun to throw a 1-ton van around like it was a sportscar!

But as I got to the top of the hill, my transmission (under my feet) felt really really hot again! Oh no! Didn't I just change the fluid and solve that problem?

I found a flat spot near the top of the road, and checked. The transmission dipstick was bone dry! DOH! I put in a quart of fluid and kept on going. It helped a little.

When I got back into town, I checked on a flat spot again. Sure enough, still empty.

The service manual says that it takes 20 quarts! It says I was supposed to put in 14 quarts, then put in a half-pint at a time, with the engine hot and running, run it through all the gears, then check again, until it got to the fill line, which should be 20 quarts. Well, the dipstick is the fill hole, so this is a huge pain, because not only does this take forever, but it takes even longer since the dipstick tube gets coated with fluid and the reading is useless. You have to wait like an additional half hour for the fluid to drain out before the dipstick reading makes any sense.

So, I just cheated, and since there was 13.5 quarts of old fluid that came OUT of the transmission, I just put 13.5 back IN and figured that should be the same. I assumed that there just was more fluid somewhere in the system that I didn't manage to drain out when I cleaned it.

Well, I was wrong. The transmission was dangerously low all along, and I filled it dangerously low with new, clean fluid. That was not smart.

So what I've done is, the slow way: fill it with a half-pint, go drive somewhere wasting fuel to heat the thing up, find a level spot, check it, fill it with another half-pint, go do some more useless driving, then check it again, fill it again, etc.

Slow and wasteful of expensive fuel. But, it works. I've got the transmission full to about halfway up the hot fill range. I'd like to top it up a bit more, but that can wait. It does seem to run a lot better now, and the grinding sound I had for years is gone. Temperature feels fine too.

Massive work completed

I just completed what is probably the most massive and productive batch of maintenance I've ever done on my van. It went very well.

The secret was to do it in recursive, repetitive steps. This is because my van is, as a friend recently put it, "a rolling booby trap". It's true. It really sucks working on this thing. It's got a huge 7.3L diesel engine squashed into an engine compartment designed for a much smaller gas engine. The engine itself is great. But getting to stuff is a nightmare. I really have to take the whole thing apart in order to get to just about anything, and there are goofy design decisions in the way at every step, plus the usual old-vehicle things like frozen bolts and deterioration.

So I learned the technique: first plan carefully, of course, and order any parts I might need in advance. Then take apart the first layer of stuff I need to remove. If necessary, fight all the rusted/frozen/stuck bolts to the death. Then reassemble (using anti-seize!). Wait, and order more parts if needed. Reaarch more. Rest. Go back and re-dismantle what I'd just put back together-- more easily thanks to the anti-sieze and practice-- and go deal with the next layer of stuff to fight. Finally I get to my objective, and I can do the work.

I was lucky enough that the rain FINALLY stopped (hopefully until fall), and even more lucky to have a safe, quiet, centrally-located, long-term parking space to use for working, two weekends in a row. The whole project took 5 days.

So I replaced my fuel pump. And.... the fuel leak is at long last gone! Getting to the fuel pump required removing the exhaust, up-pipes, and turbo, and also loosening the fuel filter housing, as well as the usual rigamarole of removing all the air intake hoses, the doghouse cover, and disconnecting two batteries under the hood and in a separate housing on the frame rail. Yeah. I had to destroy and replace four frozen bolts in order to get to this point.

While I was doing all this, I also replaced turbo pedestal o-rings, fuel supply sleeves, and fuel filter, and I cleaned off an enormous amount of fuel and dirt and melted rubber and who-knows-what-all-else from the V of the engine and all around that area. Basically, I finally made my van biodiesel-ready-- after almost 4 years of driving it on biodiesel. Every rubber object in contact with fuel (including now the diaphragm of the fuel pump) has been replaced with biodiesel-rated Viton. Yes, this is something I should have done after first buying the van, but, hey, I was pretty ignnorant, and emotionally not very healthy then either.

While I was at it, I also retrofitted an inline transmission fluid filter onto the return hose of the transmission cooler.

My headaches appear to be gone. I think it may have been the glasses all along. I probably do need bifocals, but I'd rather spend the money for that than for brain surgery, that's for sure. I have an appointment to get a CAT scan next week so we'll see what's going on for real then.

The improvement continues

Life continues to get better financially, which makes life better for me in every other way possible.

Last month, I made twice as much as I spent! I successfully kept my spending down to about the mininum I've been able to keep it down to sustainably, and yet I managed somehow to make twice that much.

That's a profit. I actually made a profit. For the first time in 10 years, I made more than it costs for me to stay alive.

I cannot express in words what a relief this is. Now I just need to keep this going, every month, for the rest of my life. Well, that doesn't sound like any fun, but that's the reality. And, since it was easier this month than last month, that's encouraging.

Tranny shack

I have noticed that my cab seems a lot hotter lately. I investigated and found a couple random things.

One, the exhaust pipes leading into the turbo had rusted really badly. I scraped the rust off and coated them with peanut oil. But why are they rusting so much? Is the heat coming from some problem that is causing the engine to run too hot? Cooling system is normal, but then the cooling system is SUPPOSED to keep an engine cool that is running too hot. It's still strain on the cooling system if it's running hot. But is it? And why?

Secondly, my transmission fluid level had gotten low. So I topped it up. Maybe that's where the heat is coming from? It seems a bit cooler since I topped it up. I investigated and found that I really should have changed the fluid and filter a long time ago, it's supposed to be 15K miles and I've gone past that, also didn't know when the previous owner had last done that job, if at all. And that might explain the grinding noise I hear in 2nd and 3rd too. So that's a task I've got to do, and I purchased the parts and supplies and will tackle it as soon as the rain stops. There's a leak from the rear of the transmission where it couples to the driveshaft, but that looks like it'd be a huge task to fix, so I'll leave that for later.

The fuel pump is still leaking, and I really have no excuse for not fixing that in the next few weeks, weather permitting.

Maybe my exhaust heat is coming from just having more of a lead foot lately. And, I realized as it is now June and still raining, that perhaps the rusty exhaust is simply from this being an exceptionally wet and rainy winter. More stuff to think about.

Another random van-related problem is that there are sensors which will tell me everything I need to know-- including the transmission fluid temperature, and all kinds of data-- but I can't have access to it because Ford wants $7500 for the documentation of the Mode 6 OBDII codes. Theives. There is software I could buy which would read this stuff, but it is $300. I might end up having to spring for it, just to make my diagnostics easier.

Bolted

I am an intuitive kind of guy. I get senses, premonitions, vague musings, and then I investigate them and try to nail them down factually. This drives a friend of mine crazy-- he's very German, and the whole idea of intuition irritates him to no end. But I do have very sharp senses, and, when I do the work to follow up on them with more Germanic, deterministic, scientific kinds of techniques, the intuitions almost always turn out to be right. Usually my intuitions are driven by sounds and feelings, more than visual things.

Suddenly, I got a sense that my metal overhead cabinet lockers were not bolted on right and were going to fall down on my head. I've always heard a lot of clattering and banging around back there when I drive, but I figured it was normal. Suddenly I got a sense it was not normal, it was urgent. So I investigated, and they both seem pretty sturdy.

But while I was at it, I had a look at my wooden kitchen cabinets. And, one of them was not properly bolted in! When I put them in over a year and a half ago, I missed the hat channel (the closest thing I have to studs in the outside walls), and I guess I just figured that was good enough. They were sturdy at the time. But they were never really done right; the screws were just in the plywood, which means they weren't securely bolted in. And, from all the driving around, the metal screws had basically sawed part of the wooden plywood into sawdust, and thus worked themselves loose. The cabinet was flopping around and would have fallen down on my nice counter and sink.

So I unscrewed the screws and started drilling them back in elsewhere, feeling around for the hat channel. It was almost an inch to the right on both sides. Now that thing is in there good, and it ain't going anywhere.

Glad I followed my intuition there. Note to self: if metal isn't fastened to metal in a moving vehicle, it isn't really fastened.

Summer suspicion season

My existence depends on people not paying attention. I live in people's neighborhoods, at their sufferance. As long as they don't notice me, I'm happy and safe. That's usually the case with suburbanites-- they're locked in their houses in front of the TV most of the time. And especially in winter, which is rainy season here in California.

But summer is the season of suburbanites stepping out of their houses for the first time in 9 months, and actually talking to each other. They finally start paying attention to what's going on... including my presence, and suddenly they don't like it.

This happens to me every summer. Last year it really rattled me. This year, I've gotten used to it. The solution that worked last year, and will probably work this year too, is simply to abandon my favorite spots and find new ones.

But when suburban suspicion hits, it really hits me like a punch in the stomach. It's very unsettling. And I've had three of these in the last week! First, in one of my favorite spots, two people were walking some dogs. The dogs were barking like crazy at my van. The man walking the dogs doesn't think it's any big deal. The woman walking with him is wondering why the dogs are freaking out. She asks him whose truck that is. He says, "Hmm, it's a commercial truck, but there's no sidepanel on it, could be anyone's, I don't know", and doesn't give it another thought. She's not buying it though. On the way back, the dogs freak out some more, and she says, "Wow, they keep wanting to look backwards". Yeah, at me, no doubt. I saw no reason to panic-- thanks to the man's utter lack of concern--, but I left the next morning, haven't been back, and won't be until fall, thank you very much.

Then two days later, another favorite spot, I park at like 10pm, and get ready for bed. As is my habit, I usually turn off my headlights and just use parking lights to park. And I hear someone saying, "It drove up with its lights off!" Great. In this case, I left immediately.

Then another couple days later, in a totally new spot in a somewhat more rural area that I rarely visit, I wake up from a nap to hear two neighbors talking to each other, and one guy says, "Something's not right about that truck." Then I hear the other one talking about blocking the street or sidewalk (I was parked same as everyone on that street), how technically something or other, etc. I left an hour later.

What's hard about this is that I feel like I'm getting beaten up, from all sides, and that there is nowhere I can be safe. I need to escape to a place where I'm not hated and feared. It is no fun to be hated and feared.

Last year I went camping, where I could pay for a parking space and be somewhere I had absolutely every right-- I paid for it!-- to be. And that took the anxiety off. And then I started just looking for new parking spots. I think that will work this year too, so off I will go.

The sounds of Crown Victoria

I have really good hearing. This helps me with a lot of things, like overhearing conversations, or diagnosing/recognizing mechanical problems. It's also annoying, as when I'm parked around noisy motors, power tools, etc.

But another useful thing is that I can recognize very clearly the sound of some vehicles. Crown Victorias, for example, with their police-outfitted engines, are very unique-sounding. Whenever I hear one, I know exactly what it is (and it almost always gets my heart rate up too) . A trip over to the window-- or the sound of a radio, or worse, a flashing light, a knock on the door, or a ticket on the windshield-- always confirms it (though I have occasionally confused a taxicab-- still a Crown Vic with the same kind of configuration).

I think the unique thing about those vehicles is the way they idle. They're powerful engines, and always well-maintained, but they sound like they're working hard at idle. They usually have either two alternators or a very heavy-duty alternator, to run all the police-related 12v equipment (laptop, sirens, radios, powerful lights, etc), so that's probably why the engine is pulling hard at idle. The loud whining/grinding of the alternator is an easy giveaway too.

So the past two days, in two completely different jurisdictions, I've heard cops idling near me. Very disconcerting, but apparently they weren't interested in me, which was a huge relief.

Two days ago, in the middle of the night, I heard one idling, for about 15-20 minutes. The cop got out of the car, walked around-- thankfully, not towards me. Then got back in. No radio sounds, no lights. I didn't hear the cop drive off, but all of a sudden the sound was gone. Huh? I went to the window and looked around-- nobody around. Wow, he drove off fast, and cleanly and SMOOTHLY too, no screeching tires. Just vaporized, from idling to gone in an instant. Then a few minutes later, off in the distance, I hear a siren, and some very serious guy talking at someone through a megaphone. Hmm, well maybe the cop was sitting around doing paperwork, or getting instructions, or something. Sounds like he got whomever he was looking for. I looked in the morning, and no tickets on my windsheild, no "friendly notices", nothing. So that was good.

Yesterday, in broad daylight, in a totally different city, I hear the same sound. This time I go right to the window, and sure enough, the cop is right there acrooss the street. He's parked on the opposite side of the street, which is a very good sign-- when they are after you they park behind you, so if you drive off they can run after you, or directly in front blocking you, or both. The cop doesn't get out of the car. About 20 minutes later, he drives off. Hmm, another paperwork moment? I have no idea.

I'm pretty sure none of them are interested in me or has any reason to be. I don't worry nearly as much as I used to, now that I have a bit more understanding of what they're about and what motivates them.

A few months ago I was parked in a huge shopping mall parking lot with 4 cop cars parked right next to me-- all of them hanging out-- while I was doing the same-- visiting with a friend in here--, and I had no fear at all, just said my goodbyes after a while and then drove off. They either didn't know or didn't care that I was there-- just another delivery truck serving one of the businesses in the mall.

So this cops-idling-around-me thing is probably coincidence, but if it keeps going on, then I'll have to try to figure out what's up and why.