Will it ever end? Got correct water pump, got it installed, the water pipe back in, the starter fits too! Filled the water up and on the final liter, there it was, the drip. I feel around & try to get a look, it seems it is not the water pump. There is the water outlet just above it, and it looks like the leakage is seeping from the bottom of that. I pull off the fitting and look at the gasket. It’s not actually a problem with the gasket, but the aluminum on the head has erroded away enough at the bottom edge that it looks like the gasket doesn’t have enough flat surface to seal correctly. The one downfall of the Toyota OEM coated metal gaskets. I can either go with an aftermarket fiber gasket, or try get another Toyota gasket and use some RTV on it. I’m torn, I much prefer the Toyota gaskets. To really fix this problem I should take the head back to the machine shop and have them weld and machine the surface, but that would be a hell of a lot of work to do over. Yuck. Time to sleep.
Author Archive for snm
Page 10 of 18
Last night after finishing Scats taillights in the dark, I went for it with the ghetto roller, and installed the hose replacement. Works like a charm no leaks from the pipe. Unfortunately with those leaks taken care of, it looks like the water pump is indeed leaking. I think I disturbed the seal between the two halves of the pump body. In any case I decided to replace the pump and gaskets. Unfortunately the pump I got from Napa is the wrong one.
Saw a really short medical professional with a fake orangy tan and purple scrubs. The “Oompa-Loompa” song started playing in my head: Coffee almost came out of my nose.
(0)In a span of less than five minutes and a distance of less than three miles between two parking lots in Waipahu, I saw three Suzy SJ410’s and an equal number of Toyota MR-S’s. Do all little cars eventually end up in Waipahu?
(0)I’d gotten tunnel vision with this water pipe thing repeatedy bashing and zapping the thing. Both Dave and Chucky came up with the solution of cutting the pipe and replacing the offending section with hose. Doh! Simple and effective. I was even able to take the pipe to Napa and they found a close match of the curves in a preformed hose, nice! My only concern was retaining the hose onto the cut sections of pipe, usually there are flares of some type to help keep hoses from blowing off fittings. My first attempt was to solder a ring of heavy wire to the end. That met with failure. Perhaps needed to get even more aggresive with the grinding and get it cleaner, but it wasn’t looking promising. A search of the Net came up with a couple solutions. One was to run a bead of weld. I could do that. Another was to find a cheap Chine sheet metal bead roller and mod it. Of course could fork out the dinero for a real pipe bead roller. But the other method using a homebrew tool to “roll” a bead looked interesting. It involves sacrificing a Vice-grip, or suitable China substitute (although even Vice-Grip brand ones are made in China now) and moding the jaws to approximate the action of a bead roller. The simplest I saw was to weld two lumps on one jaw, and a single meshing lump on the opposite jaw. The next was to take a exhaust tubing clamp of the correct side and welding it to one side jaw, and a thick washer to mesh in the groove in the other jaw. From the pictures, that seemed top work pretty well, but the washers were reported to often fail. I then found someones solution to that was to use a woodruf key. Continue reading ‘Ghetto Fab’
To give some details to yesterdays car nuttyness, four red light runners, one with a blue & white a little behind me but he may not have seen it, bummer. Left turn from Piikoi under the freeway old guy in right lane crosses the solid marked curve into my lane & I have to slam on brakes, and then maybe 50 yards down someone crosses the solid white from left into my lane. Pickup zips along then crosses the solid/median at last minute cutting in front of me at the Pearl ridge/Moanalua Rd exit. Supertailgate pickup coming down Pali townbound, and then seeing coming across motorcycle rider with passenger laid down on the median at the Nuuanu exit. Lucky for them those markers are flexy poles and they laid it down before the raised median! And finally almost back to office, governement use lisence plate hybrid Ford Fusion with large MMA diecut stickers on rear window driving like an asshat!
(0)Stay safe out on the streets out there today. I think it’s Crazy Driver Day or something! Will elaborate later.
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Ugh ugh and tripple ugh! Third day of trying to weld this damn pipe, and no success in getting it completely watertight. It looks solid enough but despite trying five times tonight, no success. I’m giving up for tonight and possibly for good on this. I might chance ordering a new one from Toyota and smushing it, or if I get the MR2 supercharged one that the starter is supposedly for maybe it’ll all be moot and fit perfectly, although the Toyota parts diagrams are confusing on that.
Was this all a pipe dream?
So took off that offending pipe again. Can see its leaking at the patch weld. I’m not entirely convinced the water pump is leaking so I’ll wait on taking that apart. Will have to wait till tomorrow to try and reweld.
Damn it, air-cooled engine is sounding hood right about now. My patch still leaks, although much less. Leak is a leak. But with it that much less, realized the water pump is leaking too!