I want to acknowledge everyone (not individually mind you!) for reading this blog. I can't be sure how it happened, but I've learned that many more friends and family are following my trials and tribulations than I imagined. I thank you and will try to keep it light!
Word for the day: "Irrigation"
The weather man tells me we had the 3rd wettest June on record. I'd call that irrigation. And yet, my lawn looks no better than it did on July 1st in 2012, 2011, 2010... well, you get the picture. I'd say the dormancy thing is genetically coded in the rye grass. 15 inches of water, but it's not fooled! And that's a good thing because I HATE MOWING IN JULY!
Okay, progress has been slow during the last few weeks. My uncles memorial (great party though!), Courtney's graduation (Yippee!) and a host of other early summer distractions. That's okay because if you think I'm worried that one of you fools is going to take this project away from me, I'm not. It's not going anywhere! So on I plod. There have, as always, been a slew of petty projects.
Rocker Assembly - I dug it out of it's hiding place, which I kept clean, thankfully. Let's see, where are those pesky push-rods? I put them in a flat box, labeled 1-12 and taped them down. Okay, once found, they went into a bath of mineral spirits and cleaned with Scotch-Brite. Then, I dropped them into their respective holes (careful to not lose position) and oiled liberally. Then, the rockers get another spritz of WD-40 before getting dropped onto the head. For now, I've just torqued the hold down bolts but kept the adjusters finger tight.
Next, install the intake manifold and carburetor. It turns out that what I thought would be a trivial little task became a more involved project. First, while it appeared that the exhaust headers aligned pretty well, it had to be just right to allow the intake to fit and allow me to finger tighten the hold down bolts. Then, I discovered that the hardware was not installed properly before I disassembled the engine. No problems and there was no lasting damage, so with the correct washers and a wee bit of MacGyvering, the manifolds are on and tight! Hip, hip, hooray!
Today (Tuesday, July 1) I came home from some successful field work and, feeling all powerful, I decided this evening would be the evening to reassemble the tranmission and transfer case. I had spent the weekend cleaning the remaining road grime from the transfer and preparing it for the new seals and gaskets. The tranmission was a used (warranty = 1 year) unit, but I wanted to replace the one critical seal at the front shaft. Again, I have all the parts, so time is a-wasting. No photos of the tranny seal, but here is the cover I removed (you can see the paint missing from the bolts) and the seal is pressed into a recess in the back of that cover. Also, a new gasket was installed.
On the transfer, I wanted to replace all the seals and check the bearings. The auxilliary drive (otherwise called the FRONT drive) has it's own shaft and coupling on the transfer case. I removed the coupling and replaced the main seal. The new one was a bit different with a "cup" seal that rides up behind the back of the flange. The bearing was a bit dirty (shown here) and I gave it a flush with spirits and then a bath of oil before installing the seal and flange. I clamped the flange in the vise to keep it from spinning while I torqued the nut.
No ridge on the bearing surface. Oh so fine!
This bearing cleaned up nicely.
I could spend another hour on this little puppy and bore you to tears, but I'm going to throw in a few random pics of the reassembly and the finished unit.
Bottom line, the tranny/transfer is assembled and ready to install. I had my sons-in-law-to-be (or maybe not-to-be) with me when we got the assembly between the truck's legs, ready for insertion (smile) when I decided to call it a night. It was too late to work, but not too late for a cold pop! So we got a cold pop and headed for the ranch.
If there are typos, too bad: it's 12:30AM!!!! See y'all next time! (ya hear?)
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