Monday December 30, 2019 Guerneville CA.
Working on projects
It was a bit cool outside today but at least it wasn’t raining so I could work on the car’s signal light repair.
The light socket is rusted and one of the wires has broken off so I need to find and replace the socket for the light in the light fixture.
Old car for parts
I kept my last car I replaced around just for that purpose. Parts when I need them. I had to look hard as most of the light sockets on the old car were pretty rusty. I found one that would work with some clean up. I’d have to modify it to fit into the light fixture and glue it in so I worked on that.
I epoxied the socket into the fixture and put a good coat of silicone grease on the electrical parts to keep them from rusting any more. Of course I broke the black light fixture but some more epoxy fixed that up.
Blinkity blink
Just to be safe I tested out the light in the light fixture before I installed it to make sure it works. It did so I installed it carefully as the glue could use some more time to set. I got it all back together and tested it out and it went blinkity blink so that was fixed.
Rats in the van cleanup
While I was waiting for the glue to set on that project I opened up the van to see what kind of damage the rats had done inside of it before I shut them out.
It appeared they hadn’t been in there too long. Their main target was a plastic jar of oats I had stored in there that they’d chewed into and were working on that. That was lucky because there’s a bunch of other food in there that they would have made a bigger mess in, in some other cupboards. The only reason they’d not gotten into them is the oats were keeping them full but the jar was now empty so it wouldn’t have been long before they made an even bigger mess.
I did take all of the bedding and clothes out and put them in the wash. They’d been eating the food on the foam bed. It had a cover so I took it off and washed it which it needed anyway.
Working on the van’s cooling problem
The next thing I wanted to do was to remove this oil cooler I’ve been using on the van for a water cooler added to the radiator. It never worked too good likely because it doesn’t pass a big volume of water. And besides it has a drip so it’s leaking so I plan to remove it.
These van’s have a cooling problem
When they built these vans they mounted the engine in the middle of the van and the engines just don’t get enough air to the radiators especially if one has a V8 in it like I do. They knew they had a problem and moved the engines to the front after a couple years.
Removing the belly pan
To get to all the hoses and stuff the belly pan needs to be removed from the bottom of the van so I got out the tools and removed it.
Second radiator fan
I’d ordered another a bigger fan for the radiator. I figured as long as I was taking one electric fan off that didn’t work out, I might as well use that power to power a fan that might help out a bit. I have one of these on the backside of the radiator along with the mechanical fan so I thought I’d try this one on the front of the radiator pushing the air through the radiator so I’d have two fan’s working away.
Can I do it or not
Once I had the belly pan off I could have a look at things to see how to mount the new fan. Looking at their mounting method it didn’t look too doable so I thought about forgetting putting it on. But after taking a break and studying the problem I think I have an easy way to mount the fan without too much trouble.
By the time the sun was going down I had done what I wanted to get done today. It never hurts to sleep on a project as sometimes a better idea pops up that might work even better.
Nice day getting stuff accomplished while the weather is good.