Bought 13 quarts of Dextron 6 atf for the Buick. Plan to siphon out some at a time and keep doing fluid changes until the color improves.
Just changed two quarts right now. Fluid was a little brown with a hint of pink. Not great. She hesitates going into 2nd gear so I might drop in some Lucas stop slip in there.
1 Like
Making good ground on the Buick. After a couple changes of the ATF and adding the stop slip she seems to be responding better.
Still has an issue with downshifting after slowing down, wants to stay in overdrive I think unless I come to a complete stop.
Fixed the speed sensor issue with electrical contact cleaner spray on the wires and plugs.
Now the real question is how do I make this car DOW?
2 Likes
Sounds like that trans is on its last leg. I wouldnt put the time, money, and work into gasifying something that wont last long. Dont ask how i know.
If you really want to gasify a passenger car, Mike L had a trailer mounted gasifier, and Herb ? Had a unit hanging off the back of a cadillac.
3 Likes
I agree with Andy. Put your gasifier on a trailer if you want to do the car. I made the mistake of a gasifier on a not-worthy truck. The last square body dodge looked good but suffers from Great Lakes region frame rust. The frame even looked good. But ended up being paper-thin rusting from the inside. So start over or do a lot of plating on a truck frame with a limited life.
2 Likes
I was thinking of getting a 500lb luggage rack from harbor freight and mounting a reactor on that. Probably a cross draft or updraft charcoal unit. Put a Reese hitch adapter on the car that way I can take it on and off.
The transmission was shifting worse before I changed the fluid. I didn’t change out all of the old stuff, just until the color improved and added Lucas to it.
If it still shifts poorly I’m going to see if it’s the solenoids. Those aren’t too bad of a fix. She only has 120k miles.
2 Likes
My brother was a GM mechanic specialized in transmission repairs in the 80s and 90s. He always said a can of liquid never fixed a transmission when GM Transmissions start to shift bad at around 150k miles it is time to put a kit in them and replace the old worn out clutches. He always said the black you get out in the oil change is your old clutch plate liners burned off and floating in the oil.
I wouldn’t put much effort short of a full rebuild into a transmission over 100k but that is just me.
As to the gasifer on the hitch. Well I wouldn’t want to get rear ended with one being the first point of impact and only hanging on a 2 inch receiver. I would much rather it was a trailer unit with a more solid frame and axle.
Luckily the color wasn’t that bad. Still had some pink to it. I’m thinking it’s the solenoids because the transmission hesistates but isn’t slipping. It still positively goes into gear but just doesn’t want to go in unless I really give it the beans. I was hoping it was just the speed sensor but now that I’ve fixed that wiring, and changed some of the fluid, while it’s shifting a little better it’s still noticeable.
I think another indicator of the solenoids is its hesitation to downshift while slowing down unless I come to a complete stop.
1 Like
Kids on bus sent off to school.
Waiting for the grasses to dry from nightly dew-down for a trimming before the upcoming
four days of rain.
I found and watched this hydrogen versus gasoline in IC engines video:
Some answers in this for us.
Of course woodgas we use blended gasses. Not just pure hydrogen.
Listen carefully (or, CC text translated read) for the many secondary issues.
S.U.
3 Likes
Getting the Sierra ready for a test with the Double Flute. I’ll see if i can make it clear my driveway. Luckily she has Tow Mode so it can stay in a higher rpm before shifting and probably locks out 4th gear. Won’t have the MAF for the test so I hope that won’t throw it off too much. Just wanting to make sure it will even run the Sierra before I go permanently modding the air intake.
2 Likes
Hi All,
Warmish rainy day now for a few, so time to dig into to some puzzling interests.
A late 20’s something new neighbor was across the fence asking me why older vehicles seem to last longer . . . be easier to work on. He was thinking 60’s and 70’s stuff. Yeah. I said. IF you did work on them constantly!
And I told him the early 90’s stuff was the peak of best balance of longevity and reparability in my experiences.
Here is a video were the guy is agreeing with me.
Better rationally explaining the many why’s factors:
The Read More text under the video window when watched on youtube, is long and words explains very well the video out to about the 9 minutes mark. (read this waiting for his opening sponsor sales bla-bla to run-out)
The actual video gets again very interesting after that to the ending.
Foods-for-thought
Yep. Early 90’s to mid-90’s ARE the ones to woodgas pursue. Sad. Sad. For you rust out folks. Now that IS the real planned take-a-way. Forcing you to spend out again. And again. And again.
Steve unruh
7 Likes
I think this one would be good visitor to Argos
Woodgas tractor
Unfortunately, it’s only in Czech, but pictures talk internationaly and Google would translate the rest.
3 Likes
In my mind the main reason cars will run 300k or more now is because the engines are no longer assembled by human beings. Precision assembly by machines that don’t come to work hung over or are totally disinterested in the mind numbing repetition of their jobs. Having built engines and having spent hours gaping piston rings on just one engine I never understood how an assembler was pulling rings out of a tray and slapping them on a piston.
Too tight a gap and the heat will bind the piston in the cylinder so the obvious solution was to make all the rings over gapped. A lot of blow by and gas diluting the oil in the pan causing extra friction for imprecisely toleranced bearings meant that 100k was just about miracle mileage.
Even back in the late sixties early seventies the Checker Cab was getting over 250K on their cars. These cars were powered by 327 GM engines, the same as you were getting in your Impala. The difference was that they were purchased, totally torn down and then blueprinted to exact specs. That was it. No special forged cranks, rods, wrist pins. Sure, your power is greatly increased and fuel consumption greatly decreased because of you computer run fuel and ignition systems but that’s not why they last longer.
1 Like
Also if you drove a U.S. manufactured car in the early seventies, at least in Michigan, you were driving with rusted out rocker panels and holes rotted through the bottoms of your doors. At that time the Japanese steel was not much better but German steel lasted at least five times longer. Not only was the steel crap but the panels were actually designed to trap moisture. That’s why every time you bought a new car they were trying to sell you Zeibart rust proofing. Full court press. Even though it was mostly useless you sprung for it because you knew you would be driving a rust bucket in a few years. At that time I was working structural steel for a subsidiary of U.S. Steel. They were big on promoting their Corten steel at that time. The stuff was designed to oxidize on the surface and then seal itself. It held paint better than average steel and if the paint was damaged the area was never going to rust through. At that time it was only about ten per cent for expensive than regular US steel. Also had a higher tensile strength. Car manufacturers would have no part of it. Rust was definitely part of their agenda.
1 Like
Hello KamilK.
The text translates over good to just o.k. depending on the person posting.
Ha! Probably just like us slang-slingers here.
There is a good working powering woodgas video on page 15; comment #214:
S.U.
2 Likes
This is a fact?
That is a lot of trouble to go to for Taxi.
The best car Engines ever made seem to me to have been the big six cylinder engines. I can think of very few people that complain about the reliability of the 300 ford, the super slant six, AMC and Chev inline engines as built. These only sucked when you added the hap- hazard emissions controls of the 70s. They were the best compromise of conservative design reliability and economy for their time
I had VW with a PD engine in it claimed to be a 300,000 mile engine but its not the fact it was a diesel it was the high tolerances of its machining that made a difference and the quality of the parts. This bring up a point as GOOD as an engine design or manufacturing is, like the PD was it was only as good as the parts and some of the rods were crap. A PD could go 300,000 miles or more, and it could also randomly spit a rod out on the highway to ventilate the block ( often limping home on 3 cylinders )
Seems to be a lot of the design changes to cars in the 70s were to save weight and reduce costs. Thinner steel rusts out faster simply put.
Road salt use went through the roof here in Canada in the 70s and into the 80s to make the roads clean and dry, a safety driven thing that was bad for cars. Today I notice they use a hell of lot less salt for environmental reasons and I feel this is extending the life of cars as much as improved corrosion protection. I drive a cheap car, not really well made from Korea. At 11 years the epoxy paint galvanizing and factory rust protection has been excellent ( the car is still a cheap piece of crap from a mechanical standpoint ).
The big three were not going to build crap for the sake of forcing you to buy a new car sooner only to see a disgruntled customer buy an import.
I worked in a Dpt at Algoma steel where we made automotive sheet. We never made bad steel for cars. It had to be low in tramp alloys, high finish quality, pickled, and very very consistent. If it was not non of the car stamping from it would have met the standards required to make nice tight fitting fenders and doors.
What comes after that was not within our control.
In east Germany they made a car called the Trabi, and it had a service life of almost 30s with much attention to up keep. It was made of truly shitty steel covered in plastic parts… But it did not rust out, it was just a nightmare to try and assemble a tight tolerance body out of. We could have cars that run for a million miles and do not rust. They might not be the kinds of things we want to drive in though.
Most people do not want to own a car for life, they want the cheapest expression of fashion and Utility they cab afford and they want to change it as times taste ad necessity dictates…
Again we can look east to countries like Czechoslovakia where a car like a Tatra 603 would return to the factory every 5 years for overhaul and updating. There are very few examples of an early 603 untouched because they were never intended to be scrapped but rather rebuilt over and over to save money.
( they looked like a melted Jelly bean and I doubt many today would really want one unless your a quirky fellow like me )
In America they once built the most reliable cost effective modern car deigned to have along service life, be easy to repair and deliver the best value over its life. It was the Checker. In every way this is a design that like the Tatra makes sense, but they were ugly too…
Now expanding out a thought for a moment:
Whirlpool seems to have made every appliance in my home, because only Speedqueen comes to mind as an independent company that produces a quality durable good designed to last. But I do not know a single person ( myself included ) that owns one outside of commercial use.
Logic would alone would dictate we all want and purchase things designed to last long and wear hard from our cloths to our shoes but we chose to buy cheap and replace it more often. Its the main driver of our economic system of mass production and consumption.
What does this really costs us when a modern item of utility is reduced to something we scrap rather than fix? Is it really true we design things to die and early death now? How long can we go on like this?
Careful what you wish for?
If you took me to a car lot and showed me a car that slides through the wind like Chrysler airflow and was built for bad roads and snowbanks like a Russian Lada, had the corrosion resistance of my Snotta and the engine and driveline components of a Toyota and the conservative interior of an 80s Malibu and ride of a Citrion GS…
I would buy it and drive off into the sunset a satisfied man, but no one wants a people’s car in 2021.
I don’t want to replace shit anymore.
I can’t afford…
Life goes on Summer 2021.
Yes its actually even more fun to be on strike in a Pandemic than this scene would indicate.
I am feeling particularly pessimistic today as you may have noticed.
I pulled this off the world-o-meter.
Not very often do I look at this but I did today because I was wondering what the births and deaths looked like. Our consumption though was on my mind.
260,444,068Energy used today (MWh), of which:
221,704,697- from non-renewable sources (MWh)
39,220,605- from renewable sources (MWh)
1,631,955,475,946 Solar energy striking Earth [today](javascript:void(0)) (MWh)
53,417,021Oil pumped today (barrels)
1,471,561,159,551Oil left (barrels)
15,346Days to the end of oil (~42 years)
1,088,546,756,956Natural Gas left (boe)
57,292Days to the end of natural gas
4,305,344,137,897Coal left (boe)
148,460Days to the end of coal
Not that much trouble when you are building the same engine over and over. The bores were accurate so if you could order rings at a specific size then you could just slap them in. The rest of us had to buy them and then square them in the bore, stick a feeler gauge in the gap, pull it back out and at least for me, grind a couple of turns on a hand cranked grinder, stick it back in, square it up and remeasure trying to sneak up on the right gap. I’m sure it was a little more trouble getting the main bearings fitted accurately, even for them. The thing about taxi’s and police cars is that they may have 300K on the odometer but then there are countless hours sitting idling and all stop and go driving. I’d rather have a 200K highway driven engine than the 20k one grandma fired up a couple of times a week to go to church or the store.
1 Like
Handy and useful YouTube keyboard shortcuts (especially with embedded adverts): First-J,K,L. J rewinds 10 seconds, L fast forward 10 seconds, K=stop / start. Direction arrows side to side are 5 seconds. < and > are a few frames forward or reverse. Numbers 1-9 and 0 are percentage of video with 0 (Zero) being back to the beginning. There are more, but those are VERY useful. Try it you will like it. 
(these of course work best on a laptop / desktop computer.)
I was so insanely busy and flustered at Argos I did not take pictures. Today I have vowed to not let that happen again. I must get back on that horse, and begin planning for next year. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The human interaction with good friends was priceless! I thank all who came, especially those who eased the burden by helping with a thousand little things. 
5 Likes
So your telling me the folks at Checker were ordering new engines, then stripping them down to do a low level blue print?
I just find this really surprising.
The Continental engined versions used a motor designed for industrial use ( pumps forklifts generators ect ). I would not bat an eye hearing one setting records simply as built.
I was reading a little more about Checker today because I have time on my hands ( still on lock down too, and strike now too … such joys eh ? )
The last Checker in NY had over a million miles on it and was retired at 17 years of service.
The concept of wabi-sabi Japanese word that does not translate but means imperfect minimalist but fit for purpose. We could sure do with a big dose of that today. If we could make fewer things but much better quality how our world would be different.
I would like to see rather than just a Energy star rating on things that sets the standard for how much something consumes but a Quality star rating that explains how much a device will save over its projected lifetime.
We should embrace this… ( I exaggerate a little bare with me )
Not this… ( disposability with a promises of riches to the lucky )
1 Like
Tree service guy finally came out and felled the only one we couldn’t do ourselves. Big old Oak that went dead last year. Absolute unit of a tree. Diameter at the trunk is at least 3 feet. I’ll take some photos of what we got when it’s light out.
4 Likes