Initial observations

So I had already thrown the "power port" away by the time u thought to snap some pictures, but here is the remote battery tender line, for your enjoyment.

Bikes galore!

Ah yes, spring is upon us! Weather is war!er and wet, with green grass budding leaves, and rising Rivers!
The air is also alive with sound of uber load road cruisers. Fags! (South park? Anyone?)
Leann just passed her BRC1 THIS WEEKEND SO I FIGURED I BETTER get the ol Suzuki gs500e running again. Surprisingly it did start without too much tinkering, but it also decided to leak gas out the intake. Rascals. I knew the carbs were in decent shape since I had re-jetted them thus winter. A glance around the interwebs pointed me to the rewiring of the ignition coils.
Luckily I happen to have so wiring from work that I had planned to use for the lichtbars on the truck, but I had an extra relay and fuse holder that got donated to the bike. An hour of teardown and reassemble, and maybe an hour of studying wiring diagrams and looking over the bike and sure enough it runs!!
If course I was working on my own this weekend so I don't have any pictures to share. Just ask if you want some details about it!
Afterwards I suited up and took it out for a spin. Ran alright, though the clutch is a bit janky still. It will be next I suppose!

Cheers! :)

Chevy returns to the stable!

Well the jeeps replacement has finally showed up. Presenting the latest addition to the Rallybimmer stable: a 2004 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 crew cab.

About 142,000 miles on the clock. Purchased for the princely sum of $10,000 from Miller Chevrolet in Rogers, MN.

So far it needs a gill and hood, driver seat needs a software update, temp gage is messed up.

I have already replaced the thermostat, radiator cap, and probably all of the coolant.

We have also taken most of the interior out in order to shampoo the carpet.

So far not off to a great start, but hopefully things will calm down!

Welcome chevy!

-gabe

More crappy parts...grrr

So the BMW has been making odd cranky noises lately. Sounding very unhealthy going down these fine MN roads we have. So I finally got to investigating:

On the left are the caliper bolts from the rebuilt caliper I put on a few months ago. On the right are the original BMW pins that I had the foresight to keep!

It appears to me that the originals are some grade of stainless, and have a hex drive, instead of the rebuild pins that have my arch-enemy the torx drive!

I am going to try out using the original pins and seeing if that helps the clunk, wish me luck.

-g

BMW oil filter housing gasket

The old gasket has the consistency of soft sandstone. Slightly embrittled!

BMW oil filter housing gasket.

So the Ci has been leakin oil from the side of the block from quite some time. I decided I had best fix it now before I end up moving into a shitty garage-less apartment.
The gasket itself is an o-ring style gasket that goes between the engine block and the oil filter housing. Getting parts off is the hardest part!
I discovered some rather strange wear on the pressure valve when I got the block off. Not sure what to think of it yet. Probably going to throw it back on like so! :)

Sometimes you just can't win...and sometimes you can!

Well, I managed to get some of the drive dilute problems on the Porsche figured out. Since there are a number of areas that appear to have original parts I am assuming that very little has been done to this car in terms of maintenance.
Since I was expecting some spark plug tubes to show up soon I thought I would go sink in the garage and get the car on stands, etc.
I decided that I should probably take the throttle body off and make sure it is clean. It is fairly straight forward to get everything off with minimal intrusion into anything complex.
I took the ICV, or AIC, servo off the TB and sure enough: caked with some nasty sooty stuff. I liberally applied much carb cleaner and let it sit a few minutes, then plugged the servo into the wiring and turned the ignition on. No reaction.
This is a good thing! Either the servo is shot completely, or it needs more cleaning.
So more carb cleaner, and more poking and scraping with a tiny screwdriver. Then another plugin session with no results. Now I acknowledge that it may likely be shot, so no harm in using a little manual adjustment: plug it in, power it up, and proceed to whack it on the top of the power steering pump that is conveniently siting there: Pop! Buzzzzz.
Working ICV! Great success!
A shot of WD for good measure and I bolted everything back in. Fired the beast up and, miracle of miracles, it now idles down to about 900 RPM!

More smoke

Well I didn't get much progress today. After a long day of driving and interviews I didn't want to do much of anything. I thought perhaps working on this contraption would settle my mind a bit.
So I busted out the duct tape to try to mitigate some of the smoke leakage and figure out why the thing belches smoke everywhere but the hose port.
I got mixed results and then thought I would go back rot the hot iron model for a while. Sadly when I hit the lid with a drill bit it decided to fling the can of warm baby oil all o er the bench. I had had enough. So little positive progress, and now I have a mess to clean up and a prototype to rebuild. *sigh*

Smoke machine 2 mid process

A mid process picture. If you get this far you should probably enjoy a cold beer while the JB hardens