Friday, Jan. 25, 2013, Guerneville, CA.
Took the van for a test drive today.
I needed to go to the credit union to deposit some money today, so I planned a bit of shopping too. And while I was at it, I took the van instead of the car to see how it would work out now that I thought I had all the bugs out of the new TBI fuel injection project.
Stopped at the credit union first.
First off was the credit union in Sebastopol. The new throttle adjustment I made seemed to be working real good. The van seemed to idle a bit high sometimes, but I was hoping it would work out as the computer set itself up as I drove it around. Otherwise, good, good. I liked it.
The van is working real good.
It starts right up, no messing with the choke anymore, no dying warming up, and when you shut it down, it’s off, no more gas dumping and no more smells. When I want it to go, just turn the key and it goes, no more cranking and cranking to get it started. So far so good.
TBI kit By Howell: http://howellefi.com/
Whole Foods, where are you?
Next I was going to go the the Whole Foods store in Sebastopol to try and find some No corn in the food type food, but I’d never been there before and only barely thought I knew where it was. After working my way around Sebastopol’s one way street thingy and taking about forever to get back around to where I thought the store was, I was wrong, just enough to miss it, but did see it over the other side of the street as I passed. But,………….not going to do that around the one way streets again today, it’ll just have to wait until next time, maybe.
Next up, Wally World.
On to Wally World. I wanted to see what they had in LED dome lights for my van and a some brown paint for the back door and a couple other things.
I always check out the shoes as I go by, just in case they have the kind I use, as they don’t always,. I did spy a pair of leather type that might be good in the dessert, so I bought a pair and a new shirt, headed for the automotive department. They didn’t have any of the LED units that I was looking for, but I did buy some other stuff, of course. :O) Like the spare fuses for my van injection stuff, as they take the new type spade, compared to the old glass type, which I had.
Pepboys too.
Paid for that and went over to PepBoys auto and found a light that would work for the dome and some other stuff too. :O) I thought of going to Costco and do some food shopping, but…………..the heck with it, I have plenty to eat at home.
Worked on the van when I got home.
Once I got home, I worked on the van a bit. I greased the drive lines and checked the oil in the transmission and transfer case as they both have slow seal leaks on the shifting shafts. Even though the oil looks like it is leaking bad, it really is only slow leaks and no oil was needed.
Something is leaking.
When I pulled into the driveway, I parked on a dry spot and while I was under there, I noticed a wet spot, something was dripping, but what? A closer inspection looked like the bottom of the radiator overflow tank I made about a year ago was leaking at one of the glued pipe joints.
A vacuum port I didn’t get plugged.
While I was checking that out, I found that I had not plugged all of the TBI injectors vacuum ports. It has a bunch of them and I thought I had plugged them all, but I missed one that was a quarter inch hose, so I made a plug and plugged off that port. Might have had something to do with the fast idle I thought I detected earlier during my test drive.
Need to get new parts for the leaking radiator over flow tank.
I’m going to have to get new ABS pipe parts to remake the radiator overflow tank as I don’t think regluing the pipe joint would work out for the long run, and I don’t want to have to deal with it out in the desert some where.
And the new LED dome light needed some fixing too.
My new dome light was supposed to have all the adapters it needed so it would fit inside my old dome light, but…………..you guessed it, not an adapter for my old van, only adapters for newer type cars.
Oh well, so I broke the glass out of my old light bulb that was no longer needed and soldered the new light wires into the old bulb metal base to power it up. Seems to work real good, now I don’t have to feel so guilty about leaving it on more when I’m on battery power.
Only thing is there were no specifications on what this new light draws, so don’t really know if it draws less than the old filament one or not. Hope so, they are supposed to. :O)
Those rear van tires really spin now.
I wanted to put the van back inside my car port for the night, so I started the van and drove around the yard lining up for the carport backing. During this process, I spun the back tires more than once.
Plugging the vacuum line seemed to help the low end a lot. Maybe it was just the wet grass? We’ll see how it goes on the next test drive, which might just be the trip to Arizona, coming up real soon.
Real happy with the New TBI injection unit.
Right now, at least, I’m real happy with how the new TBI injection conversion has worked out.
My nice new propane tank got all muddy.
The only other thing I noticed is that I’m getting a lot of mud thrown on my new under the van propane tank valves, off the front drivers tire, when I turn in the mud. That tire has a mud flap, but I may need to add a little one just in front of the tank to keep things a bit cleaner. I’ll need to find an old truck tire mud flap or something to make one out of. Have to keep my eyes open, may find one on the river? :O)
Got some things done today, time to play some more tomorrow.
Had a nice day.