I can’t say for sure if there is some supernatural entity that watches over humans attempts to wrench on their cars, but if there is I feel like they must be some manner of miserable, cruel being, gorged on stolen 10mm sockets and deriving joy from our pain. I say this because this weekend instead of doing the things I wanted to do on my Citroën 2CV, I attempted to make some repairs to my ’89 Ford F-150 that ended up in mild disaster. Oy.
I still have a healthy list of things I need to do on the 2CV – install a new voltage regulator (it’s on order), assemble the headlight angle doohickey the proper way, change the gear oil, replace the CV boots, and so on. But I have other vehicles that need attention, like my purple-ish pickup truck that I need to do pickup truck things.
I replaced the water pump on the truck a number of months ago, and after a short period of trouble-free operation, it started creating a mobile sauna everywhere I went, and it looked like the cause was coolant escaping from the thermostat housing. It seemed like a bad gasket.
Also, somehow the serpentine belt has become strangely ragged, and while I’m not sure why this happened, it happened, so I decided to replace this raggedy belt:
The belt replacement went fine, so that was good at least. I removed the thermostat housing and removed the old gasket, which, as you can see, wasn’t in great shape:
That’s non-ideal, and if I were steam, I’d escape from there, too. The new gasket looked downright luxurious:
I got a new thermostat as well, and as I was installing it in the housing and getting it all back together, I remember thinking those bolts weren’t quite as tight as they probably should have been, which may have contributed to the escaping coolant. So I decided to use a breaker bar and get them nice and snug.
This was a mistake.
As I was tightening the lower bolt, I decided to give it one more good twist, and that’s when I heard the snick sound that make my heart drop. Did I crack the housing?
I cracked the housing.
I’m an idiot. It’s a cast part, and I should have known better. In an act of wild, unhinged optimism, I started the truck and drove it around the block, just to see if the crack would actually allow coolant to escape.
It did. Crap. I guess I need to get a new thermostat housing.
So, that’s frustrating. I was running out of daylight and free time, but I wanted to do some stuff on the 2CV, so I did some little things I’ve been meaning to do. Small things, but fun things. One was an excuse to 3D print a part.
The rear interior door handles for the 2CV are sort of strange. They’re these little levers on the underside of the latching mechanism (the upper lever is to lock/unlock) and they have a little black plastic knob/lever thing on their ends.
I was missing the one on the driver’s side rear door; with the plastic part gone, it’s just a little metal tab that’s hard to see and get your finger around. They’re kind of difficult to notice anyway for 2CV-unfamiliar rear seat passengers, which are the vast majority of people around here. So, to make them more obvious, I printed new plastic levers in red.
They seem to work pretty well!
Classy, right?
I also decided to set up my sound system/in-car navigation/center stack screen setup. That’s just an aggrandized way of saying some place to hold/charge my phone and a Bluetooth speaker:
I still need to find neater ways to tuck those wires out of the way, but I found the wiper motor cover makes a great mounting place for a magnetic phone charger, and I shoved a cheap BT speaker in the oddments tray. The setup seems to work pretty well!
The phone’s position is good, providing an easy view of a map if needed, and the speaker makes music or podcasts audible over the not-really-whisper-quiet air-cooled flat-twin. I plan on daily driving this thing, so this sort of thing is important.
Oh, and for reasons I don’t understand and don’t really want to question, the interior light and hazard lights decided to start to work again after months and months of dormancy. I did nothing special to make this happen, but I’m not complaining!
I need to fix the truck before next weekend. Hopefully the new thermostat housing will do it!
A breaker bar???
I inherited a big torque wrench from my dad that he bought back when he was daily driving a Kenworth for work.
It’s pretty rusty and I have never felt it click at the lowest setting. So, I think it’s essentially a breaker bar. Probably time to toss/recycle it.
I never had a torque wrench before that. Apparently, I had a good sense for what was tight enough and not too tight. No wheels have fallen off, and nothing has been broken.
Somehow, my worst repair attempts haven’t gone too badly in the end. I think I’m paranoid and am just more likely to resort to asking for or buying help when I’m not sure.
I snapped a couple studs off someone’s car trying to remove the lug nuts. It did fix the problem in the short term – tire came off, there were enough studs remaining to limp home on the spare. But these days I know to try some percussion and not just force and might have been able to avoid snapping them.
And undertightened a (plastic, buried deeply under the intake piping) oil filter housing once and spewed oil all over my garage floor. Cleanup was a pain, but we noticed it immediately so no engine harm done.
Hopefully you 3D-printed those handles out of ABS or PETG rather than PLA as PLA can’t handle the hot in-car temps in the summer months, it warps!
I learned that the hard way taking my 3D printed 4×5 camera to my in-laws and leaving it in my un-airconditioned car for about an hour. Came back to a Dali-esque facsimile of my former camera
I suspect that Jason also uses a Fire Axe to prepare home cooked meals 😉
Next week’s update; Torch tows the F150 home with his 2CV and freaks out the neighbours.
Jason beat up the Marshall with a pipe. Woo-hoo! Outlaw country!
I heard read that in the voice of Mojo Nixon.
Debbie Gibson is pregnant with my two headed love child?
I don’t know why I’m just now hearing this but, wowie zowie.
The upside to work from home.
Dailying a 2CV is not an issue. There’s like 11 parts in the whole car and it’s pretty obvious what’s wrong and how to fix it, if need be.
That truck has been nothing but trouble. Maybe it really should just be for farm use. The farm upstate.
Thanks for posting that image of Marshall with the hood open and all that steam.
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/cs_marshal_steam_1.jpg
I might use it on this site whenever somebody asks about buying a F*rd.
The breaker in breaker bar means you are going to break something whether you like it or not.
The old ‘twist and curse’.
Move slowly. and break things anyway?
A breaker bar in thermostat housing bolts?!?!?!? You need to ask Santa for a torque wrench.
I don’t think Santa stops at the Torchinsky residence
Not since the chainsaw incident.
Hanukkah Harry Perhaps ?
https://share.google/vPubIQV21RY2x1RCE
One year we went to watch “Babe” in a practically empty theater. Good times!