Injectors
Sometimes, when you spend a lot of time doing preventative maintenance on a vehicle, you can't help but feel as if you may have wasted much of that time. The job in question could have waited, right? Maybe a long time?
On the other end of the spectrum- I pulled my fuel injectors today to discover that they were horrid.
I've shipped them off to be rebuilt, hopefully by Monday, and can't wait to install them again and feel the difference in performance, I predict a very noticeable gain in mileage and power with less noise, less sooty exhaust, and a smoother ride.
Of course, much of the other stuff I worked on could probably have waited a long time. Such is life.
here are "before" pictures of the injectors. The photographic quality is not excellent, I was in a hurry.
On the other end of the spectrum- I pulled my fuel injectors today to discover that they were horrid.
I've shipped them off to be rebuilt, hopefully by Monday, and can't wait to install them again and feel the difference in performance, I predict a very noticeable gain in mileage and power with less noise, less sooty exhaust, and a smoother ride.
Of course, much of the other stuff I worked on could probably have waited a long time. Such is life.
here are "before" pictures of the injectors. The photographic quality is not excellent, I was in a hurry.
Labels: land cruiser, repair, tamarindo
Work Day
It's darn warm in the garage, but once I got started....
I'm now pulling the injectors to send them to be serviced
and
cleaning the intake manifold and replacing gaskets that were leaking
and
replacing some heater hoses because the heater valve broke and I've got to McGyver it until my Dad flies down
and
I figure that since I won't have injectors until Monday, I may as well attack the big end bearings,
so
I'm draining the oil and dropping the pan
and
need to pound out dents and paint the pan
so
I might as well take it to the welder to get a skid plate added
and
the turbo is still acting up a little so I'm pulling it out
and
replacing a bunch of hoses and gaskets while I'm there
it'll be interesting to see how much I get done today vs. this weekend.
I'll try to take a photo or two, but not too likely as all the jobs involve much oil and I don't like that on the camera so much.
Now if only the temp were in the low 90s instead of near 100, I'd be happier.
I'm now pulling the injectors to send them to be serviced
and
cleaning the intake manifold and replacing gaskets that were leaking
and
replacing some heater hoses because the heater valve broke and I've got to McGyver it until my Dad flies down
and
I figure that since I won't have injectors until Monday, I may as well attack the big end bearings,
so
I'm draining the oil and dropping the pan
and
need to pound out dents and paint the pan
so
I might as well take it to the welder to get a skid plate added
and
the turbo is still acting up a little so I'm pulling it out
and
replacing a bunch of hoses and gaskets while I'm there
it'll be interesting to see how much I get done today vs. this weekend.
I'll try to take a photo or two, but not too likely as all the jobs involve much oil and I don't like that on the camera so much.
Now if only the temp were in the low 90s instead of near 100, I'd be happier.
Labels: land cruiser, repair, weather
Driving Day, Boo to Blogger, New Link
I spent all day (and I mean, all day) behind the wheel yesterday for the first time in a long time. It wasn't so bad, I'm pleased to report. I'll get back to the nuances, but first a little venting and a link.
Blogger just sent me a note saying that they won't be supporting ftp-based blogs anymore. WTH? Now why in good gravy would they do that? It appears that they would rather shoulder the cost of the bandwidth than have me pay for my own site, or they want me to get a custom url... I haven't even read the whole note yet, but I'm frustrated by yet another example of the computer-based world's inability to just leave well-enough alone. We've been using this system for.... I don't remember how long! 5 years? But now we'll be doing something different. So if you see major operating issues with Sandcruiser.com come about May 1, it is because Google has decided to mess with things and we're trying to find the least painful solution. If anyone has any suggestions for alternative blogging software/systems, please feel free to let me know.
And speaking of blogs- I just found Bio Truck Expedition which is a well-written travelogue about a man with wanderlust and a veggie-powered Mercedes van. His exploits to date include some QT in an Indian jail (for having a satphone) as well as some mechanical mishaps, hang-gliding, and who-know-what. Take a look, you'll probably enjoy reading about his travels.
As for yesterday:
Got up at 4, didn't get out of here until a little after 6:30 due to a coffee machine failure, low tire pressure, some pressing email, and a desire to play with the dog a little bit before leaving her alone all day long. Took the new highway to San Jose from Caldera. It is a much nicer road than the old highway. The tolls aren't too high, but might seem that way to many locals. I didn't keep track but would estimate that it was about 2,000 colones, total, which is under $4. It almost certainly saves at least $4 in fuel and wear and tear on the vehicle. I'm sure that under normal conditions, it also saves much time. I was unlucky in that there were two spots in which they were doing road repair due to rock slides.... so I waited for about 15 minutes at each and had more traffic, so it probably added 45 minutes to the drive, which erased much of the gains of taking the fast road. So be it. I arrived at the US Embassy around 10-something (Note: 4 1/2 hours to San Jose is a big step up from the old highway which takes 5-7 hours. All this for a drive that is less than 150 miles).
The Embassy trip marks for me the very first time that I've felt preferential treatment for being a gringo in Costa Rica. Upon arrival I skipped to the front of the 50-person line and was admitted straight into the 1st security checkpoint. Should you go there, be aware that they will hold your iPod, phone, flashlight, headphones... pretty much anything electronic, while you are inside the embassy. I am sure it is for "security" but I suspect that a fringe benefit is that people are less likely to miss the audio prompts for "8....3....4 to Window 4" which has the net effect of speeding things right along, but makes the wait more boring (glad I brought a book).
They have a photo booth at the entrance, for $2 you get the two passport photos that are requested on the forms and website, only one of which is needed, as I'll explain later.
I then got to skip ahead of the next line, which consisted of over 100 people. Wow. The little blue US passport was like a magic wand in that place: just wave it at the person tending the line and they pull the nylon tape out of the way and usher you to the next stop. Good stuff!
At the window, things proceeded well with the exception of the person behind the glass insisting that I put at least two US phone numbers. See... I don't call US phone numbers very often, and the only ones that I do call, I store them in my cellphone for reference. My cellphone was handily locked in the security checkpoint.... so I finally took a page out of my Tico survival manual: When you are required to furnish information that you don't know, and suspect is arbitrary, just make it up. So, hey, if someone calls 408-701-0001 looking for Steve.... um.... tell them I'm out of town? Sorry about that.
$75 and another brief wait got me a chance to chat with a very nice young lady who seemed to be a little slow on the uptake, but was so full of smiles that it was easy to patient with her. She offered to give me one of those fat-daddy upgraded passports because "You seem to travel a lot". Which is nice, because if past history is any indication of future performance (despite what your stock broker tells you, it usually is) I'll probably have a pretty large number of stamps in my new passport within the first month. She then informed me that my new passport would be ready in about 14 days, at which point I would need to return, with my old passport, to get my new one. In reading the website at the US Embassy Passport Page I knew that her info was only mostly true. But she didn't really seem to know that, which I found oddly disconcerting. The following are just four of the odd bits of misinformation on the website:
Along the way I accidentally pulled a serious Tico line-cutting move. If you have spent any time in Costa Rica, at some point a Tico has jumped the queue and pushed their way ahead of you. This can happen in the bank, or at a bar, or onto a bus, or a grocery store, almost anywhere. I 100% guarantee it has happened to you; unless you are sitting in the airport reading this. Even then, odds are pretty high that it happened getting off of the plane. As a visitor to this wonderful country, I usually just shrug it off and keep doing whatever I'm doing, but it does bug me. Well, yesterday I was the grand-cutter-of-long-lines. Maybe it was due to the unprecedented courtesy of the embassy security who kept letting me cut in other lines, or maybe it was subconscious expression of years of frustration, or maybe I was just tired and didn't notice. One thing is for sure: when I walked out of the thick glass "inner sanctum" door of the passport processing facility, and walked right up to the DHL desk and started talking to the DHL guy, I did so right in the face of about 45 people who were waiting in line, and would probably continue to wait in line for at least 1/2 hour before getting anything done. I did it without malice, but once I realized that I had cut off all of those people, I must confess that I did snicker a little bit (internally) at how, for the first time, I as on the winning end of such a bold move.
After my Embassy coup (getting in and out in less than 90 minutes really did seem a coup to me), I had to navigate across town to pick some stuff up for a friend. It sucked, but my momentary getting-lost-in-Heredia experience probably saved the friend many hours or many $$ in work, so I'm glad to have helped. Maybe I atoned for my line-cutting.
From there I worked my way back across town to do some shopping and to find some roofing sealant stuff. I won't go into all the details, but this roofing stuff shouldn't be my job in the first place. The rat-bastard son of a motherless goat designer who built Oro del Sol did a poor job of designing the walls. There are leaks. He is legally required to fix them, but hasn't done so, despite many many appeals from us. At one point the guy actually had the gall to tell me that it would cost me more to sue him than to just fix the leak. He was right, so I'm fixing the leak but spewing venom at every opportunity. He did give us $55 worth of material to fix it ourselves, which covered about 1/2 the problm, but kept giving me "mañana" on getting me the rest of the material. Anyway, he is a bad person based on my business dealings with him and I'll take a moment to assure everyone that the odds of me selling/buying another Patrick Rey home are very nearly zero. Unless the current owner has been there long enough to have fixed the problems that he left behind. Rant over.
I've been searching high and low for this Alucapa stuff from Venezuela. Apparently there is one place that sells it in Costa Rica. ONE. I finally found them and the guy was super-nice. Nice enough to help guide me through the industrial area in which they are located, by cellphone, to get me to the store just before closing. Upon arriving I was dismayed to find out that they are all out of Alucapa. Won't get more till around June. Arrrrgh!! Frustration! But I hung around, mostly because I was so frustrated I didn't want to drive and kill someone, and we chatted. After a spell, I discovered that they did have some end-cuts in a pile. Pretty big end-cuts. Big enough, in fact, that when we put a bunch together it was actually more than a full roll. Whoo-hoo! I asked if I could buy the cuts, the friendly guy disappeared into the office for a minute, then returned and said, "Just take it". Now, I know I only "scored" $55 worth of free material. But compared to getting nothing, or re-inventing the wheel, or waiting until June (well into the rainy season), I was elated.
As if that wasn't enough, I asked for directions to get to where I was going next, in order to miss the rapidly accumulating huge traffic jam, and the nice fellow offered to lead me all the way across town, through rush hour traffic, as he was sorta going in the same direction anyway. He probably added 1/2 hour to his evening commute, but saved me at least an hour. What a nice guy! If you need roofing products in San Jose, check out Cindu, in La Uruca, in front of Loza.
I did my last errand, a quick trip to the Costa Rica ARB distributor, to pick up 2 orings that defy Costa Rican postal transit (two tries, no success to date). The proprietor there is a great guy and I wish I had more time to chew the fat with him, but it was getting dark and I wanted to get home.
So at 6pm, after a very long day, I set out on a long drive back to Tamarindo. I did stop along the road and ate a GREAT dinner (whole fried corvina, yucca, salad, lemonade, hot coffee... all for about $7) which took nearly an hour. I also had to stop a few more times to stretch and walk around a bit as I was feeling drowsy. I got in the door at 11:09pm, exhausted.
Whew.
*Note on DHL: "'closer to you", in this case, means that DHL can only deliver your passport to the "nearest DHL office", which actually means "nearest DHL distribution center", which, for me, means Liberia. That's about an hour from my house, but much better than driving back to San Jose for it. Still.... if they can take it to their office, why can't they take it to my office? Isn't that what DHL does? Deliver stuff?
Blogger just sent me a note saying that they won't be supporting ftp-based blogs anymore. WTH? Now why in good gravy would they do that? It appears that they would rather shoulder the cost of the bandwidth than have me pay for my own site, or they want me to get a custom url... I haven't even read the whole note yet, but I'm frustrated by yet another example of the computer-based world's inability to just leave well-enough alone. We've been using this system for.... I don't remember how long! 5 years? But now we'll be doing something different. So if you see major operating issues with Sandcruiser.com come about May 1, it is because Google has decided to mess with things and we're trying to find the least painful solution. If anyone has any suggestions for alternative blogging software/systems, please feel free to let me know.
And speaking of blogs- I just found Bio Truck Expedition which is a well-written travelogue about a man with wanderlust and a veggie-powered Mercedes van. His exploits to date include some QT in an Indian jail (for having a satphone) as well as some mechanical mishaps, hang-gliding, and who-know-what. Take a look, you'll probably enjoy reading about his travels.
As for yesterday:
Got up at 4, didn't get out of here until a little after 6:30 due to a coffee machine failure, low tire pressure, some pressing email, and a desire to play with the dog a little bit before leaving her alone all day long. Took the new highway to San Jose from Caldera. It is a much nicer road than the old highway. The tolls aren't too high, but might seem that way to many locals. I didn't keep track but would estimate that it was about 2,000 colones, total, which is under $4. It almost certainly saves at least $4 in fuel and wear and tear on the vehicle. I'm sure that under normal conditions, it also saves much time. I was unlucky in that there were two spots in which they were doing road repair due to rock slides.... so I waited for about 15 minutes at each and had more traffic, so it probably added 45 minutes to the drive, which erased much of the gains of taking the fast road. So be it. I arrived at the US Embassy around 10-something (Note: 4 1/2 hours to San Jose is a big step up from the old highway which takes 5-7 hours. All this for a drive that is less than 150 miles).
The Embassy trip marks for me the very first time that I've felt preferential treatment for being a gringo in Costa Rica. Upon arrival I skipped to the front of the 50-person line and was admitted straight into the 1st security checkpoint. Should you go there, be aware that they will hold your iPod, phone, flashlight, headphones... pretty much anything electronic, while you are inside the embassy. I am sure it is for "security" but I suspect that a fringe benefit is that people are less likely to miss the audio prompts for "8....3....4 to Window 4" which has the net effect of speeding things right along, but makes the wait more boring (glad I brought a book).
They have a photo booth at the entrance, for $2 you get the two passport photos that are requested on the forms and website, only one of which is needed, as I'll explain later.
I then got to skip ahead of the next line, which consisted of over 100 people. Wow. The little blue US passport was like a magic wand in that place: just wave it at the person tending the line and they pull the nylon tape out of the way and usher you to the next stop. Good stuff!
At the window, things proceeded well with the exception of the person behind the glass insisting that I put at least two US phone numbers. See... I don't call US phone numbers very often, and the only ones that I do call, I store them in my cellphone for reference. My cellphone was handily locked in the security checkpoint.... so I finally took a page out of my Tico survival manual: When you are required to furnish information that you don't know, and suspect is arbitrary, just make it up. So, hey, if someone calls 408-701-0001 looking for Steve.... um.... tell them I'm out of town? Sorry about that.
$75 and another brief wait got me a chance to chat with a very nice young lady who seemed to be a little slow on the uptake, but was so full of smiles that it was easy to patient with her. She offered to give me one of those fat-daddy upgraded passports because "You seem to travel a lot". Which is nice, because if past history is any indication of future performance (despite what your stock broker tells you, it usually is) I'll probably have a pretty large number of stamps in my new passport within the first month. She then informed me that my new passport would be ready in about 14 days, at which point I would need to return, with my old passport, to get my new one. In reading the website at the US Embassy Passport Page I knew that her info was only mostly true. But she didn't really seem to know that, which I found oddly disconcerting. The following are just four of the odd bits of misinformation on the website:
| The website says | My Experience |
| "You need two passport photos." | I got two, carried one around, then finally asked "What about this second photo" to which she replied "Give it to your wife!" Huh. Sure glad I bought two photos. No harm done, but... Why ask for two if you only need one? |
| "Since October 1, 2007, DHL can deliver your passport for you for a nominal fee" | This is true! For only $6 or so, DHL can get your passport closer to you*. But the girl behind the window disavowed knowledge of how it worked, even though I am certain that she does it every single day. Odd. |
| "Your passport will be ready in 10-12 days" | The window girl said 14-15 days, the DHL guys said 12 days. It isn't so critical to my life to know exactly when they say that it'll be ready as I assume it will be ready within 7-21 days and that's just that. But they might try to get their stories straight. |
| The most confusing: The website says that you can pay DHL to take your old passport back, where it will be canceled, then they will bring your new passport. (That's another couple dollars and would save someone like me many hours of driving or flying to get my passport) | I asked the window girl if I could just leave my passport... She was HORRIFIED. I may as well have asked her to eat a live snake. She went on and on about how the passport is a crucial identity document, should always be safe, never leave it anywhere, blah blah blah. "But...", I tried, "...wouldn't it be safer to leave it with the State Department than to send it to them via DHL in 10 days?" .... she was having none of that. NONE! of that. So I went to the DHL counter and he said: "Oh, just have her cancel the passport now, so you don't have to pay to send it back and wait an extra day." Eureka. It is all in the wording. "Cancel"is what I should have said, not "leave". So I go back to nice window girl: "Can you cancel this now so that I don't have to send it back?" to which she replies.... "Oh, you can just punch some holes in it, so that it can't be scanned." It remains to be seen if they are going to demand my old passport before sending my new one. I'm at about 50/50 on the odds. Time will tell. |
Along the way I accidentally pulled a serious Tico line-cutting move. If you have spent any time in Costa Rica, at some point a Tico has jumped the queue and pushed their way ahead of you. This can happen in the bank, or at a bar, or onto a bus, or a grocery store, almost anywhere. I 100% guarantee it has happened to you; unless you are sitting in the airport reading this. Even then, odds are pretty high that it happened getting off of the plane. As a visitor to this wonderful country, I usually just shrug it off and keep doing whatever I'm doing, but it does bug me. Well, yesterday I was the grand-cutter-of-long-lines. Maybe it was due to the unprecedented courtesy of the embassy security who kept letting me cut in other lines, or maybe it was subconscious expression of years of frustration, or maybe I was just tired and didn't notice. One thing is for sure: when I walked out of the thick glass "inner sanctum" door of the passport processing facility, and walked right up to the DHL desk and started talking to the DHL guy, I did so right in the face of about 45 people who were waiting in line, and would probably continue to wait in line for at least 1/2 hour before getting anything done. I did it without malice, but once I realized that I had cut off all of those people, I must confess that I did snicker a little bit (internally) at how, for the first time, I as on the winning end of such a bold move.
After my Embassy coup (getting in and out in less than 90 minutes really did seem a coup to me), I had to navigate across town to pick some stuff up for a friend. It sucked, but my momentary getting-lost-in-Heredia experience probably saved the friend many hours or many $$ in work, so I'm glad to have helped. Maybe I atoned for my line-cutting.
From there I worked my way back across town to do some shopping and to find some roofing sealant stuff. I won't go into all the details, but this roofing stuff shouldn't be my job in the first place. The rat-bastard son of a motherless goat designer who built Oro del Sol did a poor job of designing the walls. There are leaks. He is legally required to fix them, but hasn't done so, despite many many appeals from us. At one point the guy actually had the gall to tell me that it would cost me more to sue him than to just fix the leak. He was right, so I'm fixing the leak but spewing venom at every opportunity. He did give us $55 worth of material to fix it ourselves, which covered about 1/2 the problm, but kept giving me "mañana" on getting me the rest of the material. Anyway, he is a bad person based on my business dealings with him and I'll take a moment to assure everyone that the odds of me selling/buying another Patrick Rey home are very nearly zero. Unless the current owner has been there long enough to have fixed the problems that he left behind. Rant over.
I've been searching high and low for this Alucapa stuff from Venezuela. Apparently there is one place that sells it in Costa Rica. ONE. I finally found them and the guy was super-nice. Nice enough to help guide me through the industrial area in which they are located, by cellphone, to get me to the store just before closing. Upon arriving I was dismayed to find out that they are all out of Alucapa. Won't get more till around June. Arrrrgh!! Frustration! But I hung around, mostly because I was so frustrated I didn't want to drive and kill someone, and we chatted. After a spell, I discovered that they did have some end-cuts in a pile. Pretty big end-cuts. Big enough, in fact, that when we put a bunch together it was actually more than a full roll. Whoo-hoo! I asked if I could buy the cuts, the friendly guy disappeared into the office for a minute, then returned and said, "Just take it". Now, I know I only "scored" $55 worth of free material. But compared to getting nothing, or re-inventing the wheel, or waiting until June (well into the rainy season), I was elated.
As if that wasn't enough, I asked for directions to get to where I was going next, in order to miss the rapidly accumulating huge traffic jam, and the nice fellow offered to lead me all the way across town, through rush hour traffic, as he was sorta going in the same direction anyway. He probably added 1/2 hour to his evening commute, but saved me at least an hour. What a nice guy! If you need roofing products in San Jose, check out Cindu, in La Uruca, in front of Loza.
I did my last errand, a quick trip to the Costa Rica ARB distributor, to pick up 2 orings that defy Costa Rican postal transit (two tries, no success to date). The proprietor there is a great guy and I wish I had more time to chew the fat with him, but it was getting dark and I wanted to get home.
So at 6pm, after a very long day, I set out on a long drive back to Tamarindo. I did stop along the road and ate a GREAT dinner (whole fried corvina, yucca, salad, lemonade, hot coffee... all for about $7) which took nearly an hour. I also had to stop a few more times to stretch and walk around a bit as I was feeling drowsy. I got in the door at 11:09pm, exhausted.
Whew.
*Note on DHL: "'closer to you", in this case, means that DHL can only deliver your passport to the "nearest DHL office", which actually means "nearest DHL distribution center", which, for me, means Liberia. That's about an hour from my house, but much better than driving back to San Jose for it. Still.... if they can take it to their office, why can't they take it to my office? Isn't that what DHL does? Deliver stuff?
Labels: Costa Rica, land cruiser, passport, photo, repair, travel
piano for sale
Yamaha Piano. From the late 80s. Great fun to own, sounds very good. In Tamarindo.
$2,500 OBO.
$2,500 OBO.
Overland Camper
Ulysses and Penolope
More like a land-train, really, than an off road vehicle. But it is an interesting concept, at least. I would rather travel in something a bit smaller, but I suppose that if you want to travel AND have your condo too, this is the way to go!
More like a land-train, really, than an off road vehicle. But it is an interesting concept, at least. I would rather travel in something a bit smaller, but I suppose that if you want to travel AND have your condo too, this is the way to go!
Labels: 4wd, expedition, travel
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