Switch over to these on your dremel....
What did you do to your non-G body project today? [2021]
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Got my Remflex gasket for the flipper dually, the regular gasket couldn't deal with the flange warpage. The Remflex worked on my own dually and it was more warped so this should square me away there. Since I was still in fix it mode from that truck I decided to crack into the cruise control on my 98 K1500. After needlessly removing, disassembling, and inspecting the cruise module, I shot the brake switch circuit and found that the brake switch itself is to blame. It sends a disable signal to the cruise all the time. While a switch is cheap, the suspected failed solder joints would have been cheaper.
Texas82GP, had your message pop up in my mail forward notices and came looking to see what you had found.
The Lowes link apparently doesn't like me because it returned an "Access Denied" response to my attempt to visit the site. We no longer have a Lowes franchise here anymore anyway as they shut down two winters ago before the Covid fiasco appeared.
Did take a peek at the Amazon link and, unfortunately, can't use those wheels. The problem at my end is that I am now using the dremel quick release chuck and the matching accessories including both the thick and thin cut off wheels, the grinding wheels, and the abrasive puffs. Blew through and wad of the latter while prepping an SBC bellhousing for polishing. They work great in tight places and on rough surfaces but die easily and throw a brutal amount of dust; dust mask is not an option.
I did use those screw and mandrel mounted cut off wheels and did find that they worked okay but I was breaking them, more like shattering them, and having to deal with that little screw and jeweller's screw drivers was turning out to be a pita. The quickies are much simpler and faster to change out. Just pull the retaining sleeve back to free up the wheel, give it a quarter turn, and off comes the dead item and you're ready to pop on a fresh one.
Most of today's misadventures had more to do with what I was cutting than anything else. 3/8ths exhaust studs are not the nicest of fasteners to deal with and these were both rotten and slathered with Never-Seize. You can't push the tool or the wheel will bind and blow out (Repeatedly). so go slow is about the only way to proceed. The other thing is room and I had none to spare or I would have gone for either air drive or my infamous 4.5 with a razor blade hanging off the mandrel.
Anyway, appreciate the legwork and suggestions. Thanks for taking the time.
Nick
The Lowes link apparently doesn't like me because it returned an "Access Denied" response to my attempt to visit the site. We no longer have a Lowes franchise here anymore anyway as they shut down two winters ago before the Covid fiasco appeared.
Did take a peek at the Amazon link and, unfortunately, can't use those wheels. The problem at my end is that I am now using the dremel quick release chuck and the matching accessories including both the thick and thin cut off wheels, the grinding wheels, and the abrasive puffs. Blew through and wad of the latter while prepping an SBC bellhousing for polishing. They work great in tight places and on rough surfaces but die easily and throw a brutal amount of dust; dust mask is not an option.
I did use those screw and mandrel mounted cut off wheels and did find that they worked okay but I was breaking them, more like shattering them, and having to deal with that little screw and jeweller's screw drivers was turning out to be a pita. The quickies are much simpler and faster to change out. Just pull the retaining sleeve back to free up the wheel, give it a quarter turn, and off comes the dead item and you're ready to pop on a fresh one.
Most of today's misadventures had more to do with what I was cutting than anything else. 3/8ths exhaust studs are not the nicest of fasteners to deal with and these were both rotten and slathered with Never-Seize. You can't push the tool or the wheel will bind and blow out (Repeatedly). so go slow is about the only way to proceed. The other thing is room and I had none to spare or I would have gone for either air drive or my infamous 4.5 with a razor blade hanging off the mandrel.
Anyway, appreciate the legwork and suggestions. Thanks for taking the time.
Nick
As a brief introduction, this was supposed to be an action shot of my custom built whee-ler in action. Turns out that it got more action that I bargained for as the first C15 tank, the one in the picture, turned out to have a damaged valve pocket and the bee-hive end on the gauges just would not seat right. HIIIIIISSSSSSS. So I had to return this tank and score a replacement.
And two of these, an heir and a spare were also items that I scored in my travels. I had been thinking about options in connection with my problems with that drivers side exhaust flange that had been leaking and decided that if I couldn't buy a gasket, (Not they exist for this issue anyway), I would make one. What you see here is a 2 inch hard copper pipe cap, the kind that gets soldered on my plumbers when they are doing pressure tests.
What I did to it was to first shorten its overall length by removing the chunk shown above. This left me with the cap end and about 5/16ths of body. Then i used a hole saw to cut a hole in the cap end itself. I considered going with 1-7/8" for that hole but ended up with 1-3/4" which worked out exactly. The piece that I cut out is what you see leaning against the section of cap body that I removed.
And this is my engine of mass destruction. Essentially what you are seeing here is a L.S. Starrett 1-3/4 metal cutting hole saw mounted on its mandrel and stuffed into a chuck that is mounted to the tailstock of my lathe using a morse taper adapter.
The key here was "Gentle" as in lean extremely gently on the wheel that extends the tailstock sleeve or the hole saw will bind and the lathe will throw the piece of work across the shop where it will get lost.
I sort of wish I had taken a picture of how I was able to shape the round "collar' that I had left by using the exhaust flange on the shelf bandit as a form and a ball pein hammer to persuade the copper to assume the shape of the exhaust gasket surface.
However, the result I got prompted me to immediately climb into the least dirtiest of my bunny suits and slide under the van for a test fit. That exercise resulted in my adding a thin coat of High Heat Copper RTV to both sides of the gasket, setting it in place on the pipe flange, left the whole assembly into position, and running the nuts home. The whole taco is now sitting while the RTV cures thoroughly overnight.
The Nuts? Are ugly, sort of, for values of the term, because I got rid of the small nuts and used coupling nuts instead. They are long enough to completely cover the studs and prevent rust from eroding them down to memories.
Then I went across the street and used my air saw to section my neighbor's seat some more; but that is another story.
Nick
Reinstalled the sway bar on the t bird with new bushings and end links. screamed for over an hour trying to put the ****ing fuel pump on. said **** that sh*t and just used studs and nuts.
it doesn't look like it from the way the rear 1/4s are, but this car is super solid underneath. I'd wager its more solid than half of the g bodies on here 😛
For the time being I'm just gonna keep tinkering on it until it sells. This weekend I'm gonna try and fix the power windows. 3 of the 4 dont work and are unglued from the track. Tank aint gonna be here till october, might do quarters this fall. We'll see what happens.
it doesn't look like it from the way the rear 1/4s are, but this car is super solid underneath. I'd wager its more solid than half of the g bodies on here 😛
For the time being I'm just gonna keep tinkering on it until it sells. This weekend I'm gonna try and fix the power windows. 3 of the 4 dont work and are unglued from the track. Tank aint gonna be here till october, might do quarters this fall. We'll see what happens.
That custom copper gasket worked. Lit 'er off and things sounded close to what i remember as being normal.
Let it warm up to operating temperature and come down to idle then shut it down for a good heat soak. Added some antifreeze to the overflow tank.
Recalled the previous hassles trying to install the doghouse and having the gasket fall off so grabbed a new tube of Marine/RTV Gloozit that is rated for rubber and fiberglass and married the gasket to the edge of the enclosure. Elected to use small shots of the adhesive spaced about 2-3 inches apart except at the curves where I went closer. Stuff grabbed almost immediately (Lot of that going on around here recently. LOL) Gave it a minute or five to set a little more and installed the doghouse, retrieved the section of carpet that covers it, set that in place, and then secured it by installing the supercover over it. The supercover is sort of a console affair that is stock to the vehicle; part glove box and part place for "stuff" to find a place to land and get lost.
Retrieved the passenger's side seat from the cargo bay and put it back on its pedestal.
Put all the misc bits and pieces back to where they used to be. got all the winter storage stuff removed and put elsewhere. Amazing how an immobile object possessing empty space so quickly becomes a storage locker. Actually got out the ladder and put a few of the boxes up on shelf 3. That is the highest shelf above the work bench and only Harley parts with no immediate demand for them get put there. Boxes have large printing on them so I can read the contents without needing to become Sir Edmund Hilary.
Paid a visit to Bob, my neighbor with the seat issues, and brought home another chunk of the project to play with. In addition to sectioning the width of the seat cushion, he wants to section the height of the seat assembly as a whole. Spent an hour re-cutting the outboard legs and jigging the frame up for welding. That might happen tomorrow.
Let it warm up to operating temperature and come down to idle then shut it down for a good heat soak. Added some antifreeze to the overflow tank.
Recalled the previous hassles trying to install the doghouse and having the gasket fall off so grabbed a new tube of Marine/RTV Gloozit that is rated for rubber and fiberglass and married the gasket to the edge of the enclosure. Elected to use small shots of the adhesive spaced about 2-3 inches apart except at the curves where I went closer. Stuff grabbed almost immediately (Lot of that going on around here recently. LOL) Gave it a minute or five to set a little more and installed the doghouse, retrieved the section of carpet that covers it, set that in place, and then secured it by installing the supercover over it. The supercover is sort of a console affair that is stock to the vehicle; part glove box and part place for "stuff" to find a place to land and get lost.
Retrieved the passenger's side seat from the cargo bay and put it back on its pedestal.
Put all the misc bits and pieces back to where they used to be. got all the winter storage stuff removed and put elsewhere. Amazing how an immobile object possessing empty space so quickly becomes a storage locker. Actually got out the ladder and put a few of the boxes up on shelf 3. That is the highest shelf above the work bench and only Harley parts with no immediate demand for them get put there. Boxes have large printing on them so I can read the contents without needing to become Sir Edmund Hilary.
Paid a visit to Bob, my neighbor with the seat issues, and brought home another chunk of the project to play with. In addition to sectioning the width of the seat cushion, he wants to section the height of the seat assembly as a whole. Spent an hour re-cutting the outboard legs and jigging the frame up for welding. That might happen tomorrow.
FORD HAS A BETTER IDEA? Nope.
A while back I was thinking about when the last time the Focus had its coolant changed. Good lord, it hasn't. It's got the original reddish coolant in it. So, off I went and found all the Ford part numbers for the hoses I needed (I think there are 6 or maybe more hoses on this thing. One is about 8 feet long with all sorts of bends and crap on it that wraps from the passenger front of the engine, around the driver side and back to the firewall to the "RH" heater hose connection. It doesn't get driven much (6200 miles as of right now) but when it does get driven, I didn't want old hoses and coolant to be an issue.
What has started out as a "hey, the coolant/heater hoses on the Focus are pushing 10 years old. I think I'll replace them with the coolant" has turned into a freakish nightmare. The placement of the clamps and their clock positions were dreamed up by morons. You can't easily get to most of them without pulling half the front end apart.
I've no experience working on these cars. Zero. So you would think hoses/clamps wouldn't be much of an issue. The way they've sardine packed everything under the hood makes you think again. It LOOKED like not much of a deal, but soon took on a life of its own. So far I've had to remove the heater hose/upper hose distribution block, the complete intake system on the front of the engine (Direct injection so found a little oil baked on the back side of the valves. Thought about doing a cleaning on the valves while it was apart- but now? F** that.
The hose configuration is so stupid. The only GOOD thing they did was use the little lock tabbies on the heater hose to heater core connection, so a twist of the lock, then a grab and turn of the hose and it pops right off. The rest of it is a horror show. EVERYTHING is in the way. I had to remove the intake system because there's a hose that runs behind it between the engine and the intake runners. The upper hose seems easy until you get to the connection on the radiator. It's got a clamp that is supposed to face out toward the fender, and where it is sucks. The clock position could have been 12 o'clock with no issue, but no, it's at 9 o'clock when looking at it from the back of the rad. There's two sheet metal flanges in the way. WTF Ford?? In order to get to it easily, I'm going to have to drop the fan/shroud and the lower radiator/condenser support. Golly good god d***!!
Of course, trying to pre-plan this I sorted through the maze of Ford's stupid numbering system which seems to always use 42 supersession numbers in 2 years. So the numbers on the original hoses are different than the new hoses I found. I figured getting all my hoses from Ford was the best method because of knowing they'd fit. Boy, was I in for a fun ride. Of course, one was discontinued, but I found an NOS one from somewhere and snagged it.
I've never seen anything like it. I could find all sorts of videos on Ford Focus crap to get an idea of what I was looking at and anything to watch out for, but no. NO videos exist for replacing all the coolant/heater hoses on this car. Now I know why. Nobody ever does this as a DIY. If I took my time I could probably do this in a couple hours on a G-body. But NOooo. What a POS.
NEVER again. Now I know why people just run these cars until they puke then send them to the junk yard. At least this car will have good hoses for the next decade. Or maybe until it's run into the ground. I just know I'll never do this one again.
A while back I was thinking about when the last time the Focus had its coolant changed. Good lord, it hasn't. It's got the original reddish coolant in it. So, off I went and found all the Ford part numbers for the hoses I needed (I think there are 6 or maybe more hoses on this thing. One is about 8 feet long with all sorts of bends and crap on it that wraps from the passenger front of the engine, around the driver side and back to the firewall to the "RH" heater hose connection. It doesn't get driven much (6200 miles as of right now) but when it does get driven, I didn't want old hoses and coolant to be an issue.
What has started out as a "hey, the coolant/heater hoses on the Focus are pushing 10 years old. I think I'll replace them with the coolant" has turned into a freakish nightmare. The placement of the clamps and their clock positions were dreamed up by morons. You can't easily get to most of them without pulling half the front end apart.
I've no experience working on these cars. Zero. So you would think hoses/clamps wouldn't be much of an issue. The way they've sardine packed everything under the hood makes you think again. It LOOKED like not much of a deal, but soon took on a life of its own. So far I've had to remove the heater hose/upper hose distribution block, the complete intake system on the front of the engine (Direct injection so found a little oil baked on the back side of the valves. Thought about doing a cleaning on the valves while it was apart- but now? F** that.
The hose configuration is so stupid. The only GOOD thing they did was use the little lock tabbies on the heater hose to heater core connection, so a twist of the lock, then a grab and turn of the hose and it pops right off. The rest of it is a horror show. EVERYTHING is in the way. I had to remove the intake system because there's a hose that runs behind it between the engine and the intake runners. The upper hose seems easy until you get to the connection on the radiator. It's got a clamp that is supposed to face out toward the fender, and where it is sucks. The clock position could have been 12 o'clock with no issue, but no, it's at 9 o'clock when looking at it from the back of the rad. There's two sheet metal flanges in the way. WTF Ford?? In order to get to it easily, I'm going to have to drop the fan/shroud and the lower radiator/condenser support. Golly good god d***!!
Of course, trying to pre-plan this I sorted through the maze of Ford's stupid numbering system which seems to always use 42 supersession numbers in 2 years. So the numbers on the original hoses are different than the new hoses I found. I figured getting all my hoses from Ford was the best method because of knowing they'd fit. Boy, was I in for a fun ride. Of course, one was discontinued, but I found an NOS one from somewhere and snagged it.
I've never seen anything like it. I could find all sorts of videos on Ford Focus crap to get an idea of what I was looking at and anything to watch out for, but no. NO videos exist for replacing all the coolant/heater hoses on this car. Now I know why. Nobody ever does this as a DIY. If I took my time I could probably do this in a couple hours on a G-body. But NOooo. What a POS.
NEVER again. Now I know why people just run these cars until they puke then send them to the junk yard. At least this car will have good hoses for the next decade. Or maybe until it's run into the ground. I just know I'll never do this one again.
Sell it and buy a mustang 😉
At least the engine points the proper direction and the correct wheels would turn.
Rwd cars have some wtf engineering moments. But fwd are, with the exception of longitudinal rivieras/toronados/Eldorado, a wtf of the entire design.
I always said, if fwd was go great all the emergency response vehicles fire/emt/etc would use it...
Don't forget about the early 90s Chrysler cars, they had longitudinal mounted engines as well.
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