Well, I set out to slap the rear of mom’s Explorer back together right quick and get on to the choptop. 50 trips around collecting tools up again for the project because I kept forgetting what apparently was always the next tool I needed (a garage would at least keep the walks shorter, but I’m still short what i need to make that happen), I got it almost all back together and find the slide pins are sticking bad on a caliper (well, actually both, because I didn’t think to check when I put it on and the side I started with happened to be stuck exactly where I needed it to be, the other side was not though).
Since they moved but not well and when I slid one out, and the first one I slid out was pretty clean I tried hitting it with some grease and sending it back in, which didn’t work. At that point I had enough of working on the Explorer for today. But let me back up for a minute. While I was working on the Explorer I was interrupted with a parts delivery and dad decided to work on his Ranger which required my help a few times and also to get the AC stuff squared away (condenser and orifice tube replacement).
I know someone is liable to insist I should replace the accumulater too, but the system had good pressure, we just found evidence of a potential leak on the condenser when we pulled the core support, and verified by cleaning it and waiting a week or so. The AC was blowing cool but not cold too, so I really wasn’t surprised. Since the system really wasn’t open long, I don’t see a need to change extra parts. Everything else showed no evidence of a leak. I’ll just vac it down for an hour or two, make sure it holds pressure overnight at least, then fill it up.
So after all of that, I finally got to tinker with the choptop. Took glass cleaner and cleaned all the glass and mirrors and lights. Made sure all the lights work (they do, but for some reason I have hyper flash). Not sure why, I can check but I don’t believe there are any LED lights in it yet. Wondering if the blinker module thing is going bad, but I wanted to go to LED and put a new variable/LED blinker relay. So I guess we’ll see if that fixes it. Found I had an intake tube leak because I had forgot to hook up the tube over to the valve cover (oops), bet it runs even better now. It ran pretty good when I brought it home other than not being real happy at idle, but I’m betting that oops will help it with more than just idle.
Didn’t get to the brakes like I wanted to on it. Guess that’s tomorrow. Oh well, some things got done today and some didn’t but progress forward happened and that’s good enough. So I’m now on the front porch with a cigar and beer after a tasty dinner and I don’t really feel like I can complain. Tomorrow is another day. Yesterday is ancient history. If tomorrow doesn’t happen, then oh well, I did what I could.
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