Posted by bronson
Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:17:00 GMT
Brennan and I took a look a the fuel pump over the weekend. It’s trivial to diagnose when you’ve got the right tools.
The big problem? Over a year ago, I pulled the center console to install a motorized radio antenna (got rid of the worthless radio antenna embedded in the rear window heating element). When I replaced the console, I pinched a wire underneath one of the rear mounting bolts. Apparently it took a year for the bolt to wear through the insulation… Then it started blowing 10A fuses for two weeks, then it blew 30A fuses for a week, then it died for good. My fuel pump, replaced with almost 200,000 miles on it, was probably still running fine.
Two strange things remain:
The fuses would only blow when the motor was under 2000 RPM. If I could get it started without blowing the fuse, I could drive all day by keeping the engine racing. I can’t explain this at all… There should be basically no difference in voltage across the pump at 500 RPM vs 2000 RPM.
Replacing the fuel pump DID completely fix the problem for two weeks. I figure the old pump was drawing a lot more current than the new one, making it more likely to blow a fuse. But, this too seems rather strange. Short circuits can be really finicky beasts.
That explains why I was blowing the fuse so regularly. Except… wiring the pump to the dome light would have fixed this, no question. I should have been right back on the road. What happened? While replacing the fuel pump (in fading light, using a screwdriver and scissors, head spinning from the gas fumes…) I didn’t see that there was a tiny plastic cap over the outlet on the new pump. I managed to jam the cap into the fuel hose, stuffing it up for good. Brennan and I pulled the fuel filter and found that the pump works but there’s no pressure in the line. Blocked line. I would have figured this out if I’d had a fuel pressure gauge. You just can’t pull a fuel filter with a screwdriver and scissors to check. You need wrenches.
So, it was operator error. Twice. How humbling.
If I had removed that 4 cent part before I jammed it in, I would have probabably made it to Winters. At $300 for the truck and $120 for the vandalized tire, it was a pretty costly mistake. Arg! On the other hand, I loved visiting the Hills. Carter got to help fix the Rover and use tiedowns to tow things with his tricycle. It was a great weekend.
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Posted by bronson
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 22:00:00 GMT
THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS!! Arg.
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Posted by bronson
Sun, 06 Nov 2005 07:15:00 GMT
Why did my left rear tire get slashed some time on Wednesday? It was parked near Brennan and Eve’s house on a nice suburban street. Where do these lowlifes come from?
Then somebody, possibly the same person, phoned the police on Thursday asking to have an abandoned car towed. My car. That I’d parked there Tuesday morning. Since a car must remain a week before it gets towed, the caller clearly lied about how long I’d been parked there.
A few days ago, while unsuccessfully replacing the fuel pump, I found one of Brennan’s business cards under the floor mat and chucked it onto the dash to throw away later. The cops investigating the complaint saw the card and called Brennan. They said that if the card weren’t there, the Rover would have been towed on Friday afternoon. A few hours before I returned from Winters. The license plate is on the car, the registration is current, why can’t they just call me? Why does random coincidence have to save my butt?
Thanks to the police, I do know who called in the complaint. Mr. NextDoorNeighbor, it’s pretty stupid to give anonymous tips from your home phone! I don’t know if you are the person who slashed my tire, but I do know that you are the person who lied about how long I was parked there. I admit, I’m baffled. You don’t seem like the sort of person who would perjur himself over such a petty thing. Were you just having a bad day or something?
Unfortunately, you’re lucky. I need to leave for Tehachapi tonight and won’t be back for at least 6 months so I don’t get to confront you about the lie. If you DID slash my tire, I can only hope that karma pays attention to what you have done.
Now I’m 0 for 2 in the justice department. Criminy.
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Posted by bronson
Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:50:00 GMT
- 12:30 pm Oct 31: stop at the Valencia Shell for gas.
- 12:35 pm: blow too many fuses trying to start the motor. Replacing the pump motor had appeared to fix the problem but apparently only for a week. Luckily - 1:00: Buy a new fuel pump.
BP is in Valencia.
Stranded in Valencia, unpacking the car
(including gas welding rig) to access the pump.
- 3:00: replace fuel pump. Still blowing fuses. That must mean that the fault is between the fuse and the pump.
- 4:00: Wire fuel pump to the rear dome light. Yes! The fuel pump now works fine. Fuel rail pressurised. But the car still doesn’t start. There must be some other device critical to the engine hanging off that fuse. I need to replace it. Go buy more fuses from the Shell station.
- 5:00: Now everything is blown. The plastic on the new fuse has melted and bubbled but still flows current. Dawning realization that Shell has sold me a defective fuse. Something else in my electrical system is now blown instead of the fuse. That’s a show stopper. What a Halloween.
Darkness is falling. I need to be in Winters tomorrow. Despair!
- 5:30: Start calling around. U-Haul costs $360.00. That’s hard to justify, especially because I’ll be stranded in Winters at the end of it. The nearest minivan is in the Burbank Airport. I need to move all my stuff so a sedan just won’t do.
- 7:00: Enterprise has a truck! $70.00/day, unlimited mileage. Fantastic.
- 8:30: Visit Eve and Brennan for an hour.
- 9:30: leave Bakersfield for Tehachapi to grab the trailer.
- 10:30: There is a lock on the trailer (for good reason – there’s a crazy woman who wants to steal everything up here). But no key for the lock. So… Take the hitch apart. It was a stunningly beautiful night up there. Mountain breeze, stars everwhere.
- 11:30: All hooked up, time to leave.
Arriving in Bakersfield at first light.
- 1:30: Arrive in Valencia. The 3 hours of sleep I got the night before are beating me about the head. Pull into a parking lot and crash in the truck.
- 3:30: Wake up. Load the Rover onto the trailer. After struggling to use axle straps as a come-along, a guy shows up with a $50 portable winch. A few minutes later, the Rover is loaded. I gotta get me one of these.
- 4:30: Leave for Bakersfield.
- 5:30: Drop the Rover in front of Eve and Brennan’s.
- 11:00: Arrive in Winters. Now it’s time to start moving. Ouch. But, given the circumstances, the last 24 hours have gone pretty well.
Lessons:
- The Coleman Cold Heat soldering tool sucks ass. It’s got no thermal mass. It can melt solder, but it can’t make it stick to anything. It’s about as effective a soldering iron as a cold monkey wrench. Save your $15.00.
- The Silverado has a great engine but awful seats and suspension. Talk about swampy. I’m getting afraid that the SUV-addicted American car industry is going to have to learn the lessons from 1973 all over again.
Update: Added the photos.
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Posted by bronson
Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:46:00 GMT
The power supply on the 7904 is definitely toast. I’m leaving Ventura in a few hours so it will remain broken until I can return with some real test equipment. Current score: machines 3, humans 2. I’ll have to return.
Got a good pic of Detch laying some of the worst MIG beads you’ve ever seen. We fabbed a trailer hitch keeper out of a rail off a broken bedframe. It looks like hell but it works great. As usual, it got dark before we finished. Trivia: Festival pronounces Detch to rhyme with hitch instead of how it should, rhyming with wretch. It’s got to be a bug.
Notice how he’s welding to the frame right under the gas tank. We had the spray bottle there for safety.
(We actually bricked the tank and filler in with plywood and had big fire extingusihers and a garden hose ready to go. Not that they would have done much good if the gas had caught…).
Also, Detch introduced me to Adblock. On the left, the regular ebay home page. On the right, ebay with all DoubleClick ads removed. No more flashing. This rules!
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Posted by bronson
Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:01:28 GMT
Great… Now my
7904 is blowing its 4 amp fuse every time it’s switched on. I love this old machine but I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!
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Posted by bronson
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:52:00 GMT
Right after I found out that my identity had been stolen (early Oct) I went to the PA police department to report it. They were very kind but said they can’t do anything about it because it’s not in their jurisdiction and that I need to open a case where the crime was committed. Um, it’s a computer crime. It wasn’t committed anywhere (well, technically it was, but only the crook knows where).
I did manage to figure out that the fraudulent checking account was opened near Los Angeles. I’ve been in Boston for the last 3 weeks so I tried to contacting the LAPD by phone. I left 8 messages over the last 3 weeks. They called me back once. They said that they can’t do anything and that I need to contact my local police. Which is strange because just about every message I left mentioned that I had.
Luckily, I’m in Socal now. I can straighten things out in person. Except the LAPD told me that I’m not a resident of LA, and that I need to have the Palo Alto police forward them the case information. By mail. And that’s it. They won’t even talk to me. It’s really strange. To protect and serve. Hello?
So…. Palo Alto won’t open a case because the crime wasn’t committed there, and LA won’t open a case because I’m not an LA resident. I’m wedged. I’ve left messages for both police departments and now, surprise surprise, I’m waiting for calls back.
I really envy that crook.
Posted in Living | Tags ID, Theft | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by bronson
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 17:02:00 GMT
(clearing junk off the laptop before Detch gets it…)
The biggest limitation to using distcc is that you must have identical compilers on all the computers participating in the compile. Identical. Their recommendation of matching minor version numbers just wasn’t enough. I’m lucky it bombed out instead of generating corrupted binaries.
I was trying to add two Ubuntu machines (gcc-3.3.6) to a Gentoo ebuild (gcc-3.3.5+). The emerge that should have run all night came to a halt after about ½ hour. It sucks that distcc bails out completely when it runs into an error on a remote machine. It should log the error and re-try locally.
This mismatched-gcc problem can be worked around. Just copy the following files onto on all machines participating (skip the gentoo arch-specific stuff unless you’re emerging):
as cc gcc i686-pc-linux-gnu-c++ i686-pc-linux-gnu-gcc strip
c++ g++ gcc-3.3 i686-pc-linux-gnu-g++ i686-pc-linux-gnu-strip
Then, launch distcc with:
$ DISTCCD_PATH=DIR distccd --allow 192.168.1.109 --no-detach --log-stderr --log-level warning
Really, though, it’s probably not worth the trouble (and danger!) unless all machines are running the exact same distribution.
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Posted by bronson
Mon, 24 Oct 2005 02:20:00 GMT
So… The dealer wants $650 for a fuel pump because the car is so old that the part has been discontinued. Blue book for the entire car is twice that. Aftermarket fuel pumps only $200, but I need one today because mine keeps blowing 30 amp fuses (normally it takes a 10A fuse). Following directions on rangerovers.net, I managed to fit a generic pump into the Rover frame. Instructions below.
Here’s a pic of my very old pump assembly torn apart. Notice how there’s nothing inside the pulser (oval metal thing in the lower left). It looks like it’s just a rubber diaphragm that flexes a little to dissipate pressure spikes (it should be called an anti-pulser). I also tore the rubber off the black lump in the positive lead… I’m not sure, but it looks like an inductor to suppress voltage spikes before they can arc across a loose connector.
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Posted by bronson
Sat, 22 Oct 2005 15:00:00 GMT
When they brought us unsalted tortilla chips from a bag and salsa more like marinara than pico de gallo I suppose we should have left… Weak ritas and uninspired food, though they did accurately capture the post-mex bloat. Boston is 0 for 3 for Mexican. Still looking.
I’m leaving for the Bay Area in a few hours. First I’ll drive to LA to open a case on the lowlife who stole my ID and bounced a ton of checks in my name (dealing with the LAPD by phone is near impossible). I’ll visit some estranged friends, then banzai back across the country with the car. Given America’s lack of control over gas prices, I’ll probably spend 2/3 as much on gas as my car is worth. To somebody else.
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