Top Gear!

So I haven't been feeling very good lately and have spent some time surfing you tube. I have been told by quite a few people how good top gear is but I have never really watched it. I finally checked it out and it has had me in tears for the last few days. Here are some of my favorite clips from it. Check them out and you'll see what I mean.

Hopefully this weekend I have enough motivation to get out in the garage. I need to pull the engine out of my white bug and get it ready for it's annual trip to St. George in March. I want to fix some oil leaks that have developed and re-torque the heads on it. I also need to look at my snow blower. Dixie let me know it's not running very good. Check back to see if I get any of that done or if I just waste my time surfing you tube!

Enjoying the Drive part 6.

I haven't posted on this topic for awhile. Winter has slowed down some of the cool cars that are driving on the roads but I still have seen a bunch. I missed a ton of pictures because I didn't have my camera or I was just too slow. I actually missed one today of a cool Ford truck with flames on it. I also had a picture of a Volkswagen Bus that a friend had sent me and I managed to delete it tonight on accident when I was moving it for this post. I am pretty crappy when it comes to this computer stuff but I am trying. Sorry that I lost your picture Ron. Here are the ones I was able to get posted here without deleting them. I like this first one a lot because the truck is just plain cool and he was driving it in a big snowstorm. Very cool in my book!

 This one I snapped today. I saw it driving into Home Depots parking lot. I was headed there also so I took this picture. It is a nice little bug.

The weather has been so nice that I have been driving my lowered bug lately. I was driving to the dentist today and saw my bugs odometer telling me it was number 1. I had to get a picture of it.

I am preparing for my annual road trip this spring to St. George. I am taking a buddy with me this year so it should be pretty fun. I am going to try to get a go pro camera and get some video footage of the trip. It should be a blast. I have a lot of stuff to do on the bug to get it ready in time. Until the next post, enjoy this great weather and take your classic for a drive.

Might be a great start to a once in a lifetime road trip!

I have been dreaming about taking a road trip in an old car starting in Chicago and driving to LA on as much of the old route 66 as I could for a long time now. I debated on flying to Chicago and buying a car there and then heading west. I actually looked for awhile at cars in the Chicago area but the prices were way too high for what you could get. I then thought of traveling it in the opposite direction. I could buy a car in California which wouldn't have rust and drive it to Chicago, sell it there and then fly home. I then came up with a super idea. My Dad is from Ishpeming Michigan. That is in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I have heard many stories about Ishpeming but I have never been there. I thought it would be really cool to drive there with my Dad and see his hometown so I can actually see where He grew up and hear about his old stomping grounds. That right there is the ultimate road trip! Why not go a little further and drive it in an old car. If we do that we could drive home along route 66. I mentioned that to my Dad and He loved the idea. He has been scouting out some cars for the trip and today we went and looked at one. It is a 1957 Studebaker and it would be a great car to take the trip in. It is all original and in really great shape for it's age. It has sat for awhile but the owner has started it every year and has put Stabil in the gas to keep it fresh. The brakes need work but it is a really great base for what we want to do with it. I am pretty sure it would make the 4000 mile journey we are planning with a little bit of love and maintenance. It is just as cool in person as it is in these pictures.

 Plenty of trunk space for our luggage and souvenirs. Ha Ha.

 Here is my Dad checking it out. The floorboards are solid and it is pretty much stock and unmolested.

 It is a V8. That might suck a little gas along the way but it should have good power for cruising.

 The interior is in pretty good shape also.

It would take a little bit to get it roadworthy but I think it should drive down the road pretty good. The 4 side windows are cracked but they are all flat glass which would be easy to replace. The wiring is suppose to be all good. It has an automatic trans which concerns us. If it was a manual trans there isn't much that could go wrong but automatics are another thing. I am betting that it would be almost impossible to find parts for it especially on the road. We are planning on documenting the whole trip.  I will use a go pro camera and put it on you tube and this blog. Hopefully it will happen in 2014 but time will tell. Stay tuned and see if we can make it happen. Until then remember my motto: "Life is too short to drive boring cars!"

Ting cellular service.

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Finished the engine change on the Yukon.

Saturday we installed the engine into the Yukon and took it for a spin. Here are some comparison pictures of the 2 intakes. This first photo shows the intake of the engine we pulled out.

 Here is the one on the engine we installed. You can see how much of a difference there was between the two.

It all started Saturday morning. Here is a summary in pictures of the fun we had. We decided to leave it up on the jack stands to install the engine. It worked out great because we were able to jump underneath it and take care of the bell housing bolts, torque converter bolts, exhaust and starter. We then installed a lot of the accessories on the engine so we didn't have to bend over the whole time.  Here we are lining up the motor mounts. It went in easily and the motor mount bolts installed nicely.

 We changed the way we had the chain hooked up so it wouldn't be so tight against the firewall and the heater core. This way worked much better.

 The hard parts over, now we just have to put everything back together. Ha Ha

 AC pump and belt, power steering pump, and new idler pump installed.

Another view of the progress.

 My Dad let us borrow this little propane heater. It worked awesome and heated up the whole garage. We had it turned off half the time because we were hot. It worked a lot faster then my electric heaters do. Thanks Dad!

 Getting ready for the intake manifold to be installed.

Here is a crappy picture but this is the intake manifold. The manifold has the injectors, fuel rails and throttle body all installed on it. It comes out and installs as a whole assembly. You need to remove this when you remove or install a 5.3. Make sure you replace the gaskets when you do.

 Here Ian is torquing the intake manifold on. It gets torqued in a specific way so make sure you read the service manual when you do it. Here is a word of caution, *****Make sure you watch the back wire that goes to the knock sensors. It can easily fall down into the cylinder head if you don't watch it closely. Make sure it is free before torquing the manifold down.*****

 Intake manifold, alternator, serpentine belt and heater hoses installed.

 The belt was really easy to install at this point.

Radiator and the AC evaporator installed. Isaac came out to the garage to hang out for awhile. He said it was boring in the garage and boring inside the house but less boring in the garage so he decided to stay and watch.

 Moving right along now.

 And now it is almost done. We installed the grill, headlights, radiator cover, intake cover, and battery.

 Also the radiator hoses and other harnesses and hoses.

 And finally the air cleaner box, intake tube the hood. We cranked it over and it started right up. It is a good running engine. This truck should be good for many, many miles now.

We finished it up that night and took it for a spin. It drove great. We couldn't of been happier. It is always a little nerve wracking to fire up a junk yard engine for the first time. You usually don't have a problem but if there is you will be doing all the work again. Dixie is happy to have her van in the garage again. I still need to clean the other side of my garage to get my car back in. Shouldn't be too long before that happens. It was a good weekend and I am finally looking forward to not working in the garage for awhile. Ha Ha.

Little more work done on the Yukon.

We had some time today to work on the Yukon. Here is a comparison picture of the old engine and the new engine. Below is the valve train of the old engine.

 And here is the engine we are installing. This picture shows how clean the engine that is going into the Yukon is. It should be a good engine for many miles and years.

 We were able to get the exhaust manifold, thermostat and some of the pulleys installed. We then pulled it off the engine stand so we could replace the rear main seal. We ran into a little snag with the rear main. We pulled out the old one and compared it to the new one that we had for it. The new one we had was a Timken brand and it didn't look like the quality of the seal was very good. We opted to get a seal from the dealer instead of taking a chance of installing a bad seal. It would be really crappy to install it and have it leak. The only way to replace it is to remove the engine again.

 Here is where the rear main seal is located. The old one is removed in this crappy picture. We had to put the engine on hold because there were no Chevy dealer parts departments open on new years day.

With the engine on hold we decided to move to other things we had on the list to accomplish. One thing was the brakes. The Yukon has an ABS and a brake light on. Ian had taken the master cylinder reservoir into work and cleaned it out. He installed that and then we flushed the remaining brake fluid out of the master cylinder and other brake components. This is a really cool and easy way to accomplish that. It pressurizes the master cylinder reservoir with the hand pump and then all you need to do is open each bleeder valve and let the fluid run until it is clean. It adds fluid from the tank into the reservoir so you don't even need to worry about running it dry. It worked great.

 Here is the front side of the bleeder. We pumped it up to about 30 pounds of pressure.

The last thing we did today was pull the rear differential cover off. It was leaking pretty good so we decided to pull it and seal it up right. I didn't get any pictures of that but if you really want to see how that is done I have some older posts I have done on that subject before. So, that is where we are at as of today. Hopefully we can get the rear seal installed and the engine put back in on Saturday. Until next time, don't text and drive!