Tales of Gunston

I went to the shop for a short while yesterday (less than an hour). The only thing I did was clean the dirt out of the bead of the front tire of the motorcycle and air it back up. The dirt was from the wreck.

Here's the hole in the block of the Volvo. You can see part of the cylinder wall through the hole. 

There are now two Caddys down at the shop. There are also two Volvos ... left. There were two other Volvos, but Gerald scrapped them.

He had been told that one (which was given to him) had either a cracked block or a bad head gasket. We thought about pulling the head with the engine in the car, but he decided that he wanted only the transmission. So, we pulled it over on its side and were getting ready to pull the tranny when I discovered they problem with the engine. It had obviously thrown a rod, punching quite a hole in the side of the block. Gerald thought that it could have been fixed with JB Weld, but we didn't do anything with it since he was scrapping it anyway.

Now we're down to the two Caddys, two Volvos, the firetruck, his Chevy pickup, and his Jeep Cherokee. We haven't done much the first half of July, but Gerald hasn't stopped nagging me about fixing Shafe's motorcycle (Honda CBR1000). I've got most of the parts lined up, but haven't had a whole lot of time to work on it. With Shafe moving back into the area, no doubt we'll be spending some time down there working on it. Regardless, Gerald won't let me work on Jill until the bike is gone.

Two Saturdays ago, March 13, I started working on Jenny, particularly the driver's door handle. Apparently, it had been worked on before but the PO didn't want to fix it. So the parts were tie wrapped to part of the interior of the door. Most of the pieces were in there.

I didn't do much on the brake system, although I had previously purchased a bottle of the Hydraulic System Mineral Oil (HSMO) for the brake booster/shock level hydraulic system, and had put the bottle in only to discover the leak was one of the sensor switches on the accumulator. (It's a complicated system.)

Johnny V. came down and tried to clean up Rocky to sell. Gerald worked on it a little bit and bled the brakes on Emily's Nova. I left somewhat early.


Last Saturday, Gerald, having fetched the '68 Benz and another Volvo, spent that day taking the Benz to W.V. I on the other hand had glorious hopes of getting Jenny on the road. The previous Thursday, I fetched 3 more bottles of HSMO from Rosenthal, and ordered (with instructions to overnight) a door handle and the low pressure warning switch. They were from two different vendors, and the switch arrived on Friday, but the door handle didn't.

I got the one Pirelli put on the spare wheel, a new Uniroyal to match the others and the valve stem fixed on the other flat. However, Jade started having trouble, i.e., not starting. A tree fell down blocking Gunston Road and knocking out power all down that way. I managed to get the accumulator assembly off, but after comparing the numbers, it turned out I had ordered the wrong switch. I blame Coventry West because their website identifies the low pressure switch as the upper one, and it was my upper one that was leaking. So all I got done on Saturday was the tires fixed.

Sunday, Jade started up, and was fine until last night. I was going to go out and pick up some dinner for us after getting home, and she did the same thing as she did on Saturday. She wouldn't start. I check the spark, and the fuel pump relay switch and both checked out positive. I gave up, and tried it this morning, and she started right up. It definitely is a strange problem, and I have trouble deducing what it could be. Perhaps the fuel pump relay is indeed having issues. I'd like to work on it tonight, but I don't know what to look for, especially if it's running and not having problems.

Off to the beltway . . .

Gerald put the new tires on Sylvester and yesterday took it to a shop which recalibrated the speedometer. He went to court this morning and they dismissed his ticket. Then he went to Philadelphia to pick up Rocky, a Volvo station wagon.

On Monday, I put a bid on the Jaguar behind the bank. Welcome Jenny to the family, a 1989 XJ6.

Saturday turned out to be a nice day. My little family went to Annandale for donuts in the morning. On the way back, we stopped in Springfield to look for a Jaguar behind a bank somewhere. Deidre's mom had seen it behind a strip mall and mentioned it to us. We finally found it, and I took a look at it.

I arrived at the shop after Noon. Jersey was out of the shop, and Gerald and Emily were cleaning some of Gerald's stuff up. We did end up having to shoot one little bottle rocket off since there were a bunch of birds in a tree and they were annoying Gerald and Emily.

Abe rolls quite easily, and once we got him off of the dolly, I pulled and pushed him a couple times back and forth on the cul-de-sac. With Emily steering, we tried to slowly get him down the incline toward the shop. Gravity almost won, but we were fortunate to get him stopped before he hit anything. We tried using Jersey to push him into the shop, but it's only rear-wheel-drive without posi, so Gerald spun the back right tire until it started steaming/smoking. Then he got Red Cloud ('88 Jeep Cherokee with four-wheel-drive) and pushed Jersey, which, in turn, pushed Abe into the shop.

Abe has a 455 ci engine, which means it is not original (probably and Olds engine, late 60's - early 70's). Gerald took the plugs out and put oil in the cylinders. After putting a spare battery in it, we cranked it a couple of times to get the oil distributed throughout it. Then he put some gasoline in the carb, cranked it again, and it burst into life -- along with a cloud of white smoke from the oil in the cylinders. We let it run for only a little bit because it doesn't have a radiator yet. But it was glorious to hear it come to life.

I then hurriedly changed the oil in Jade, and left Gerald to close up shop because I had to leave.

Back in January one Saturday, we got inspired and went and Gerald bought a tow dolly and we hauled the Woody down to Shafe in Norfolk. No mishaps, believe it or not (although we didn't get back until midnight).

Then the torque converter (according to my preliminary diagnosis) went out on Jill. She's been sitting there for a while. Actually, it seems to me that Jill went down before we got rid of the Woody because if we would have had the tow dolly, I wouldn't have wasted all that money on a tow truck ....

Gerald got a ticket for reckless. Then he hit a pothole with Sylvester (thank you Fairfax County), which started an interesting course of events.

This pothole damaged two of his wheels, as well as one of the tires. Checking ebay first, he found he could get another whole Volvo for less than the cost of just wheels. This added Jersey to our family, albeit temporarily. Somewhere along the line, JV bought on ebay a Volvo that runs pretty well (especially after changing the fuel pump fuse or something silly like that). Then he bought another one, an older one. Then Gerald hit the big time when he got Abe, a 1950 Cadillac. Last weekend, he and Belle went out to get Abe in Lincoln, NE (if you haven't figured out by now why it's called "Abe", then you're just stupid) and while he had to stop for a little while somewhere in Ohio to get his A/C compressor changed, he made it back without too much mishap.

Tomorrow, we're apparently going to be getting Jersey out of the shop to make room for Abe. We also might be changing the wheels on Sylvester, but maybe not. I need to change the oil in Jade. If we do anything with Jill, it will probably just be to bring her back to the apartments here.

Oh, and no more fireworks now that Deb & Jamey have had their baby.

The main goal for yesterday was to get Sylvester's alternator changed. That we did, and believe it or not, it had been the problem (not the vibrating problem, which still has not been identified). How long the battery will survive remains to be seen.

A secondary goal was to clear enough space (since Gerald had gotten the woody out) to get the fire truck back into the garage for the first time in about a year. That we did, after sitting around drinking, smoking (Gerald), burning a beer box and shooting off some fireworks.

We considered it to be a successful day, and a good time was had by all.