Past Due

First thing I guess is my employee Pete has moved on. He found a new job that can provide him with the things I couldn't. While I'm sad at loosing him I can do nothing but support him with his choice. We've had a lot of good times working together and I would like to think I taught him a few things just like he did me. I must say I am going to miss working with him. Best of luck my friend!

I've also been struggling with a repair on this one motor. This has been a pain since it rolled in the door. I'm fixing this car after another shop (for lack of a better term) just did a hack job on it in every sense of the word. Every time I turned around there was something else they had screwed up on this engine. I've drilled out 7 cross threaded broken bolts. Broken bolts are bad enough but when they are cross threaded too it is a major pain in the ass. That is just the start of what they wrecked. Harmonic balancer hammered on 45 degrees off smashing the woodruff key, broken head gaskets, missing/loose bolts and oil leaks from every possible spot that it can leak. After removing the engine and taking it down to the short block to fix all of these problems I can see the end in sight. The engine is back in and 90 percent bolted up. All I am waiting for now is a special tool so I can time the camshafts. The bad part about that is the tool has to come from Germany. It's been a week now and the tool still isn't here. It will be a very happy day when this thing is done and out the door.

I did get the Harley out last week and have been riding almost everyday since. Oh that feels so good! Now if it would just warm up in the mornings so I don't freeze on the way to work I would be as happy as can be. I have got to figure out why when riding in a heavy rain it drops a cylinder. I've tried every secondary ignition part there is on it with either the good parts I took off when I hopped up the engine or new. It will run fine in the shop with a garden hose soaking everything. But as soon as it either rains real hard or I power wash it it drops the cylinder and nothing will bring it back other then getting it dried out. The only thing I haven't tried is a new crank sensor. While I find it hard to believe that the crank sensor will drop just one cylinder I've not ruled it out. I've seen it on Mercedes before where the crank sensor gets wet and causes all kinds of weird running problems. To top it off the local HD dealer has them on stock and they don't stock anything. At about 60 or 70 bucks I guess it is worth a gamble.

fasthair