bicycle_ben

So I noticed a little engine oil in my air cleaner box the other day. today when I checked there was A LOT of oil and it was bubbly. it wasnt brown and foamy like when you get water in the oil, it simply looked like a straw had blown bubbles through it. the oil seems to be coming UP through the breather hose from the valve cover to the air cleaner. if my haynes manual serves me right it shows air should be going DOWN from the air cleaner to the valve cover. anyway this is part of the PCV system I guess and I really dont have any Idea how bad it is on a scale from a 1 dollar part to a new engine.

we are going to leave the coffee shop where we are getting internet and play with the car some. if someone figures something out could you guys call me in case i cant get internet? 503 538 1571 thanks so much for trying to help!

we are in more or less down town Minneapolis but we are going to see if we can work something out that lets us limp the car out to Shakopee, MN which is a few miles south and west of down town. can things get shipped to a USPS or FedEx / UPS office care of "ben howard" ?

by ea you mean like EA81 ?

i dont remember exactly how i got my pads in there when i did it but i know for a fact that i dont own any special tools and yeah we are kinda stuck here for a few days till we get this dealt with. Napa claims they can order some rebuilt ones or whatever but given NO ONE else even pretends to be able to order them im going to bet Napa is going to have trouble actually getting them for me. id totally have you send a set up but i dont have an address out here in the mid west, we are driving across the US from Oregon to NY and back.

i put pads in this thing when i got it and just stuffed the pistons back in there by hand somehow. isnt there that weird thing that fits inside the piston like a spread pair of pliers and helps you twist or somehow push the piston back in?

passenger side is the one that is sticking. my thought was that the leaking means the seal is broken which might cause the piston to jam against it somewhere. ill check and see if the pins are sticky too. the E brake on both sides will stick if you pull it. they dont return when the E brake is released so if i use the E brake i have to manually return each caliper.

i have an 81 GL wagon and my right brake caliper leaked a little. guess its tired of that because now its sticking, causing the brakes to drag. its chewed up the pads and now im sitting a few thousand miles from home and no one can find my brake calipers! i can get pads and drive it but its just going to keep eating them. should i look in junk yards to find less trashed calipers or what? -ben

i actually didnt have to remove any retainers or move anything to get the seals out. each seal had a little crack in it (where it was leaking) and i was able to poke a screwdriver in there and pop them out like you would any other seal

i got mine out and set to work putting in the ones Napa sold me... yeah they sold me something that was totally wrong and they didnt have the right thing in stock. they said they had one somewhere in portland and another one in seattle or something... not good they gave me a number CR 10666 schucks didnt have them. but gave me the part number skf 10665 auto zone didnt have them either but they gave me the number 222745 tomorrow im going to call and see if mcguire bearing in portland is open on the saturday of a holiday weekend because they stock a ton of bearings and seals for things.

i dont think i have anything like that on the 81 but ive never worked on this part before and my haynes manual almost pretends that these oil seals dont exist. i wish i had a picture of this - there really is nothing stopping the seal from coming out except that i cant get traction to pull it out.

so i have an 81 4WD wagon and the seals on the transmission outputs ( to the CV axles )are leaking on either side. the problem i have is i cant figure out how to get the old seals out without damaging something. can i just shove a screw driver in between the output shaft and the old oil seal then pry it out without hurting anything? it looks like i might hurt something that way but thinking about it now im fairly sure it would be ok.

hmm the picture is being screwy here too http://lh6.ggpht.com/_czIamuN1qLs/Sp3WKOc8KrI/AAAAAAAAAOk/1zaES8PK2y4/s912/IMG_3890%5B1%5D.jpg with and without the linky thing

my haynes repair manual calls it "solenoid valve 1" ... not very helpful. on the back it says hitachi and AESUI28 or AESU128 i think it might be an EGR solenoid valve but im not sure - no parts people including the subaru dealership knew what it was ... so i figure ill put the internet to good use basically the story is that someone prior to me had silicone ed the vacuum hose onto it(the mystery part) because the nipple the hose should attach to is broken off. the silicone has has decided to fall off causing a vacuum leak which causes the engine to idle poorly and has caused me to go hunting for a replacement instead of just ciliconeing it back on ...which i might just do i do like me some long run on sentences

if your idiot lights all come on id lean toward the alternator being bad. get it to the point where the car dies and then have schucks test the alternator

mine did that when the alternator died. all the idiot lights would come on and it would run till the carb ran out of fuel. often you could let it sit and the alternator would cool off and work again for a bit.

ok sounds like a good idea, ill have to try that later today.

so i have a 1981 GL wagon that i did a little rally driving with last weekend. prior to this weekend it idled super smooth now it wont idle at all. it runs great when the gas is on or i have the idle adjust screw turned way up im fairly sure its a vaccume leak so i messed around with some of the lines and it ran good again during my next drive. its back to not idling again. any ideas for how to find a leak ?

yay for friends with lifts and hydraulic presses !

yeah i felt the wiggle and though it was ball joints so i have already done those. im just going to drive into mcguire bearing because they have what i need and cheaper !

haha everything i do to this poor car i keep track as a percentage of its value i think im going to pull the worst wheel apart right now because im bored and it will help me make sure that i dont end up getting sold the wrong thing.

schucks has them for $25, i guess this is monday afternoons project good call on the freezer thing! i have used a torch to expand something a couple of times but the freezer is a new one for me.

i have an 81 GL wagon. my front end chatters a little on the freeway and makes some rumbling noise. when i have the wheels off the ground on a jack i can wiggle the front tires left right and up down. the strut doesnt move but you can see where the CV axle wiggles on the back side. is there a bearing in there that i can replace? on a side note as the car warms up sometimes the needle indicates that it gets super warm and then cools back down to operating temp. is this a bad thermostat? -ben

haha yeah i know what you mean about making problems it first died while in traffic and i shut it off and it started right back up again and ran fine for 30 minutes. then it did it again and i didnt even turn the switches off, i just pop started it because i was still rolling (in traffic again) and again it ran for a while. then it died while on the freeway with no traffic and it wouldnt start right back up so i pulled over and there there happened to be this guy hitch hiking. ordinarily i would have picked the guy up but my car wasnt going to be much help to the guy anyway i let it sit for a minute and it fired back up and ran for a mile and died. i pushed it into a lot and it sat for a few minutes, fied up and ran for a minute and died again. the last two times i have started it, it ran till it warmed up and died.

well the car has run 3,000 miles with the switches in there there is one switch for acc, one for ignition and a push button for the starter circuit. when the car is running the acc can be turned off and you loose things like the heater and radio which i dont have but the car keeps running. if you turn the ignition switch off the car turns off. i have wiring diagrams that show a layout which sounds like what you described - a heat switch going into the volt regulator and the volt regulator feeding the fuel pump. the problem is i dont have a full wiring diagram, just a bunch of less complex wiring diagrams which show simplified versions of each system so i cant really tell how things are inter connected. the volt regulator is fresh out of a box so its unlikely to be bad. i guess im going to have to find the heat sensor and see if the car runs with it un plugged or shorted around whichever the non bad state is.