What did you do to your car today?

[scrounger]

Great job tuning your boost enriching.  coaster.

Have you checked your mileage yet?

I found a port on the bottom of the pressure chamber. I am going to try putting a vacuum pump on  this lower port and see if I can measure the travel that way. Take out the top stop and see if I can measure travel. Boost and vacuum should be equal.

Weather has been too cold to do more than just drive mine.

[ORCoaster]

Scrounger, isn't that "port" you found at the bottom of the bowl just the vent to the atmosphere?  I don't' think you will measure anything with a gauge there.  Maybe I am not dialed in right on what it is you are referring to as a port.

Not driven enough to figure miles per gallon as most of my driving is short to work in town.  I do take notice of the boost gauge and EGT gauge both being lower.  I can do better climbing the hills in third now and am not bogging the engine.  So I claim improvement for now. Watch my in-town mileage be some heart-stopping 19 MPG or something. 

It is nice to have a vehicle you don't NEED to fill up all the time.  One of the main reasons I own the Caddy!  Sometimes when I am filling up the attendant, yeah here in OR you can't fill yer own, will ask what kind of mileage I get with that little truck.  I keep a book of all the times I fill up and I generally have it in hand about the time the question comes up.  I will reply with something like, well the last time I put fuel in this little monster was three months ago and I put close to 300 miles on the tank.  You just put 12 or so gallons in it so you do the math.  I say close to 25 and those were in-town miles.  Maybe the next time I fill with 12 gallons I will be on the other side of 400? 

[scrounger]

Yes it looks like a vent, with a rubber nipple on it. I am hoping to put a vacuum on it and measure the depth of the diaphragm from the top as I measure  the vacuum.
It is on my list. Too much winter right now.

[ORCoaster]

OK, I think I have a better idea of what you are up to.  You would maybe disassemble the top. Mark the sides of the pin with something like a Sharpe pen and then reassemble.  Then by applying a vacuum to the vent it would pull the pin-up and down and you would get an indication of the full length of travel.  I am not so sure the actual boost you can create will mimic the vacuum you can apply however If you just drive it a bit to full boost you will get a mark on it under actual conditions.

Ok, I had a laugh at myself this morning I should share with you.  I was driving about a mile down the road today and looked at the fuel gauge and noticed it had moved just a tiny bit off the Full mark.  I thought, hmm I usually get about 60 miles before that happens.  I wonder if that number is still good?  I looked over at the odometer and it said 8.9 and was not moving.  What the What I thought.  Then I noticed the speedometer was not showing me moving either.  What is that all about?

Well, it finally dawned on me that I never reattached the cable in the back of the cluster after I had it apart.  So I have been driving all week with it disconnected. I drive with my left hand covering the speedometer most of the time and I use the tach in place of the OEM clock to do almost all my speed checks.  I move with traffic and RPMs are more important to me than speed. 

So I will head to the station tomorrow and probably put in a couple of gallons of fuel and try this again for another week.  What can I say, other than lack of focus and attention to detail?  Especially the driving for a week and not even noticing the speedometer was at zero. 

[scrounger]

Thanks for the advice on checking the boost enrichment circuit.  You know your ideas work. Hopefully the tuning on my jetta will be close.

Yeah
I was at the grocery store last week and the guy loading my  car says "Every time you come in I wonder how I can fit it all in your trunk."  Yet if fits with room to spare.  We get enough food for a month or more.

I  told him about the age, diesel motor, economy, he gets excited and says "I should get one of these." Then I mention the manual shift transmission. Could see the confusion.

[ORCoaster]

I find it very funny that the best anti-theft device I have in my cars, all of them is a manual transmission.  Even the wife drives them, insisted on it when we bought her a 2003 Matrix.  That is the new car in the drive. 

I still have to lock the doors and the canopies on the trucks as some low life decided my Jump and Carry, hydraulic jacks, and speakers behind the seat all need to be his one afternoon. 

[srgtlord]

The old 85 golf fired right up even at 3 degrees Fahrenheit. The fact that it still starts on the first turn of the key is nothing short of a miracle

[skyrling540]

Hello, today I was driving and on the road about 40 km from home I caught a slipper, unfortunately it was not pleasant because it was at night and it was quite cold, unfortunately it's good that although I had a spare wheel

[scrounger]

"Slipper" is a new term to me in this context  The only usage that I can think of is a house shoe or a type of clutch.

Thanks for the education.

The good news is that it was only slipping on the bottom.

[srgtlord]

Took the 85 Golf out in the middle of a typical New England winter storm. Was the only 2WD vehicle on the road and the only vehicle for most of the trip

[ORCoaster]

Today I replaced the water pump and that valve that shuts off the hot water to the heater core.  I suspected a plastic impeller pump that had gone south so I purchased a new one.  In taking apart the old one I see a metal impeller that is solid on the shaft.  So why did I have water barely pumping into the reservoir at an RPM of about 2 K? 

I put it all back together, new pump on, and low and behold I have a steady stream of coolant at idle.  Hmm, did I miss checking the tension of the belt?  Oh well, at 140 K I can't say I needed a new pump but I now have one.  It had the 40 mm hub on it.  Saving the old one for posterity, or if someone says they need it. 

The heater valve wouldn't shut off completely so I put on a new one.  Hope that takes the heat away in the summer.  I don't need my toes cooking in the heat of the summer.

At least it was sunny and nice in the driveway today.  Having a bit of a drought with nearly three weeks of little to no rain. 

[scrounger]

Learned something OC
A shut off valve. Is that something that was added? Is the water pump driven off of the timing belt?

Guess I need to break out Bentleys.

We were in the season of ice and snow the last few days it has been the season of mud Today is frozen mud ruts. Gonna pass on driving on it.

Thanks for the vw winter update.

[ORCoaster]

Scrounger,  all of the heater systems have a valve that closes the flow of hot coolant to the heater core.  Some people delete them and then they have hot cores all the time.  It is located inline at the firewall near the brake booster on my cars. 

I wasn't sure if it was the poor adjustment of the cable that was causing the core to stay hot all the time or a bad valve.  Once I got it off I could still blow through it when it was supposed to be completely shut off.  The cable adjustment may have been off as well so I will have to watch that as I drive on warm days.   

On my engine, the crankshaft pulley drives both the alternator and the water pump. No A/C on this old Caddy but I may need to think about adding it.
 

Temp was 68 today,  I really can't believe it is February out there.  But they say it will go away come Monday.  East winds will stop and that is what has been giving the coast a blast of heat for the last couple of weeks.

[ORCoaster]

Found a coolant leak at the fan sensor, and tightened it.

Tore off the dash to get to the heater controls and reattached the hot and cold cable.

Pulled the cold start cable and reattached the front to the outside of the cable by crimping it back on.

Lost the little clip that holds the cold start cable to the IP about 20 times before I finally got it on using a different pair of pliers.

Adjusted the top screw on the LDA to get some fuel off the first part of the boost cycle.  Seemed like it was too much, but no black smoke.

Tore into another TD pump I bought for a short song last week to get to the bottom and free up the vane pump.  Looks good inside other than some rust on one part. 

Drank some coffee and tried to keep my feet warm.  Not bad out at 50 and very cloudy but hey at least it isn't raining.

[scrounger]

In March had my first on-the-road-stoppage in the 12 years that I have owned mine.

It had been starting a bit slower but ran fine maybe with a bit less boost but okay. Had been doing that for maybe a month.

Was on the road and it gradually started losing power at low rpm. Wouldn't idle without foot feed.  Still running quiet, normal temp and oil pressure. About 10 miles from home was in 3rd gear and it wasn't making enough power to pull it. I immediately thought about a blockage in the fuel system but the fuel filter was only a few months old

Pushed the clutch in and pulled over dead stick.

Pulled the hood release and hmmm there were air bubbles in the clear section of fuel line.  For fuel line I had been using some 1/4" refrigerator ice maker line for the last 11 years. The end hooked to the motor pump had cracked around where I had used a miniature hose clamp.

Looked in my tool box and didn't have my wire cutters as I had pulled them out for another project. I didn't have my pocket knife and didn't think my Glock would help. Luckily the the next guy coming down the road, stopped and I used his knife to trim off an inch of the line and luckily it primed itself enough just as the battery was dying.  Has been running fine since. 

I got some new fuel line, both the yellow translucent and some black but have not installed it.
Has been 50-70 recently but today we got 3" of snow.

Hope that everyone's diesels are still running.