Hot rodding the exmark rider!

Well it was bound to happen sooner or later...

One of our laborers decided that it would be a good idea to allow a riding mower, specifically a ten thousand dollar exmark E-Series, to leak oil all over a customer's driveway.  Instead of not using the mower, this individual continued to use it until the oil was all but gone.  This in turn damaged the engine to the point where it did not lock up, but when I finally got it into my shop, you can hear something catch in the rotating assembly...

...in short, this engine needs to be rebuilt.

So here it is, the beginning on February, and this rider is rearing its ugly head.  I have a choice, either take the engine apart and rebuild it, or fix the oil leak knowing that sooner or later it will blow up and probably do so in the middle of suburbia.

Or, I could replace the engine.  It seems we have two Kawasaki engines, one of which is rated at 31 horsepower, on the shelf.  Brand new. Zero hours on them.  The problem is that the damaged engine is a Kohler.

The positives:

Both engines make enough horsepower to drive the belts and move the chassis (Kohler is a Command Pro 25, making 25 horsepower.  The Kawasaki is a FX850V making 31 horsepower.)

Both engines bolt right on to the chassis via threaded holes in the oil pan, the bolt pattern is the same.

Both engines have the same size shaft, and the under pulleys for the PTO and clutch will fit.

The negatives:

The back half of the wiring harness is different. (The part that wires into the engine itself.)

Some hardware will have to be sourced.

Exmark never installed this Kawasaki engine on an E-Series rider.

Day one: Disassembly.

I removed the engine shroud that covers the wiring harness going to the engine and its various parts and labeled them so that rewiring and splicing would be easier than just taking it apart and trying to guess where the wires go.  There are two wires to consider that live under the shroud, those being a carburetor reference wire and an ignition module wire (for the purposes of shutting the engine off.) There are also wires, not connected to the engine directly, for the starter and chassis ground. I labeled these as well.  One wire had a terminal on it that went to nothing, so that was appropriately labeled.
I then disconnected the harness at a six pin connector in the back, and set it aside.

I drained the oil out of the old engine (apparently not all of it, though) and removed the electric clutch (which promptly fell apart, necessitating repair) and the hydro drive pulley, along with placing the belts to the side.  At this point notes were made regarding reassembly, parts were set aside, and the old engine was removed from the chassis.

Day two: Check the fitment.

I made a cardboard template of the bolt pattern for the engine, and found that the Kawasaki engine will bolt right on to the chassis.  After recruiting help to get the engine off of the shelf, and moving said engine to my workbench, I discovered that the muffler off of the old engine will not fit on to the new engine.  Not a big deal, as we can order one or modify one to fit.  At this point I decided to make absolutely sure that the pulleys and clutch will fit, they do.  The portion of the crankshaft that sticks out of the engine is also the same length.  All positive things.

Day three: engine installation.

Bolting up an engine to a chassis when someone stores about three tons of SHIT on your lift table is a royal pain in the ass, but I did it.  The fun part, however, is trying to install the pulleys while getting phone call after phone call about absolutely NOTHING.  Now that the pulleys and belt for the hydro drive is installed, it's time to source a muffler.

Enter what is probably the absolute worst lawnmower shop in the history of lawnmower shops who inform me that this particular engine was never installed in this particular chassis. Thanks guys, get me a muffler like I asked for and we will be ok...

Day Four: (one week later because this lawnmower shop SUCKS!) Muffler install and final assembly.

As much as installing an engine on to a chassis is a pain in the ass on the floor, installing a muffler on to an engine that is already on the chassis is possible, but also a pain in the ass.  Mostly because of the gaskets that need to be installed.  After fighting with this for about 30 minutes, on goes the muffler, the wiring is sorted out and installed, and final assembly commences.  All engine mounting bolts are secured with Loctite blue in a convenient gel formulation.

The blade drive belt (which is run by an electric clutch) would have been installed, except for someone using the mower as a pick a part deal and snatching an idler pulley while I wasn't looking.  Once that pulley was installed, the belt went on, the engine was started, the functions were checked, and the test run commences...

Except for one bracket for the muffler this is ready to go to battle with the grass.

Installation notes (if anyone cares):

-Should you need to order parts for the chassis, they remain stock.
-Should you need to order parts for the engine, use the model and serial number off of the engine.(all small engines have a model and a serial number on a decal somewhere on the block)
-The stock muffler (important-for the NEW engine) will fit and clear the stock guard plates that surround the engine and protect it from the operator, err, impacts....
-With any new engine, regardless of what it is installed on, disable the ignition system and use the starter to spin that motor for about twenty seconds. This will send the oil from the oil pan to the moving parts and lubricate them.  This is sometimes called "dry firing" and it can save your engine from premature wear.
-You may have to shorten the fuel line (like I did) so that you don't have two feet of fuel line left over, hanging off the engine, that the fuel has to fight to get through.
-In my case, the choke cable had to be replaced because the stocker was too short.  I used a stock throttle cable.
-You have to know a bit about wiring, like how to read a wiring diagram, to make the electrical system work. 
-Consult a professional if in doubt.

Replacing Lift Gate Struts

The lift gate struts on the Durango have been failing quite miserably ever since I bought it last year.  Seeing as how I had a couple of free hours this morning, I decided that replacing them would be a good idea, mostly because the lift gate weighs in at a couple hundred pounds, and if it were to hit you in the head it can hurt.

The best way to tell if the struts are failing is if they will not hold the gate up.  Most of them are gas charged so there is no telltale oil leaking to indicate impending failure.  Simply open the gate and watch to see if the gate falls down.  If it does, especially in cold weather, the struts are failing and need to be replaced.

In my case I needed obviously replacement struts, a ratchet and a T30 torx bit socket to remove and install the struts.  You will also either need someone to hold up the gate while the struts are changed out or you can do what I did, and use something to prop the gate up while you are working.

Also, you need to take notice of the orientation of the strut. In this case the body is pointed up and the rod is pointed down.  The new struts go on in the same orientation.

...and here is that makeshift prop rod I talked about earlier...again a second person would be just as helpful here.

So I am first going to remove the top bolt first, though it doesn't really matter which one you start with.  What does matter is making sure that the gate is supported during the removal process because again you really do not want this gate to hit you in the head.

As you can see here, the bolt is somewhat permanently attached to the strut.  At least this way you don't have to worry about losing hardware.

In the above picture you can see the old part (bottom) compared to the new part.  Take note of the arrow on the old part: it indicates the mounting orientation.

Installation in this case should start with the upper bolt, then the lower bolt.  At this point, open the gate again, and make sure it stays open. Just as a side note, these are replaced in pairs to ensure proper operation and long service life.

How to change your battery the right way

The girlfriend's car is getting harder to start, and this is due to the battery being over five years old or so, which is about all you will get out of a battery on average.  A battery is not that difficult to change out, but if it is done the wrong way, you can do some serious damage to your car.  Here is the right way to change the battery in your car.  I am using a 2006 Accord for this demonstration but you can apply this principle to any car or truck.

Step one is to locate the battery in the vehicle.  Typically this is under the hood, but in some cars it can be in the trunk or under the back seat.  If you just happen to drive an older Dodge Viper, it is actually behind the rear bumper under the car.

Step two is to remove whatever hold down assembly being used to hold the battery in place.  In this case, it is a metal bracket retained by "J" bolts.

 Once you get the retaining bracket out of the way (It's the metal thing in the center of the battery) You can remove the NEGATIVE cable.  If you cannot readily identify the negative cable, you can look at the battery itself, which will have markings on it, typically POS and/or a + sign for positive and NEG and/or a - sign for negative.  Remove the negative cable and mark it if necessary.

In this case the negative cable is the one on the right.

The positive cable comes off next, and in this case it has a red cover to identify it.  Once this is done, the battery can be removed.  This battery has a cover that goes around it, which is easy to remove.

The installation is the reverse of removal, but something you need to remember is that the negative cable is the first to be removed and the last to be installed.  Also, do not ever connect the cables backwards (positive to negative and vice versa) because you will do damage to the vehicle, like frying the alternator, and the battery could potentially explode.

So, how can you tell if your battery is getting weak?

Listen to the engine start.  You should have an idea of what it is supposed to sound like on a typical day.  When the battery gets weaker you will be able to hear the delay in getting the car started.

You can also have the battery tested at an auto parts store, some of which will do this for free.

Lastly, make sure that the alternator is working at capacity, which is typically at 14 volts or so at idle.

Door Speaker replacement

After having to get the truck to pass inspection by putting a lot of work to it, I decided that it was time to address another issue that has been a thorn in my side, and that issue is that only the right side speakers were working properly. The drivers side speakers, on the other hand, either did not work or worked poorly, and the result was that no matter what you were listening to, other than talk radio, it sounded off. 

My first thought was that someone had replaced the stereo with an aftermarket one and had gone and blown out the left channel.  Listening to the music, however, I was able to detect a faint noise coming from the rear door speaker, which told me that the wiring was intact and the left channel from the radio was intact.

So these panels come off with a few screws being removed, but in this case you have to pull up on the door panel slightly before pulling it out.  If you do not do this, you will break off the tabs that seat the panel and end up with a panel that will not stay on.

When I opened up the rear panel, I was greeted with this:

On the left is how a speaker is supposed to look.  On the right, not so much.  This speaker had a little bit of noise coming out of it but not really enough to be intelligible.

You can see that the paper cone on the right hand speaker has ripped and separated from the frame.  This kind of damage suggests that a lot of bass was put through the speaker at a very loud volume.  Speakers, like everything else, have their limits, and these limits were clearly exceeded.

The front door was an entirely different matter, as I discovered a couple of things, like the tweeter (small speaker used to reproduce high frequency noises) had been disconnected, and the cone of the speaker just fell out of the door once the panel was removed, which would explain why there was absolutely no noise at all.  This tells me that someone tried to fix this before, and either could not or gave up for whatever reason.  The garbage inside the door also suggested something stupid went on at some point... 

Yep, so the speaker just fell apart there.  Three screws hold the speaker in place to the door frame.  These come out fairly easy.

Once the speaker is out, it's easy to separate the speaker from the frame.  Push those two tabs at the top out to the side and use a screwdriver to pry up on the speaker frame enough to clear the tabs.  Repeat this two more times and the speaker is out of the spacer.

On the top is the speaker frame spacer.  To install the new speaker to the spacer, I used a quick setting sealant, usually for oil pans and such, to hold the new speaker in place, as shown in the bottom picture.

Above is the new speaker with the sealant in place. I let it cure for half an hour or so before installation.  Supposedly it cures in five minutes or so but I could not see taking any chances with this.

TOP: This is the factory speaker connection. BOTTOM: I cut out the speaker connection and added these convenient terminals to connect to the aftermarket speaker.  The days of not having proper terminals on any wire end are long gone. You can blame progress for this, but to me bare wires being used as a wire terminal never really made any sense.

So now, you reinstall the speaker and this is a good time to make sure that it actually works before you put the door back together. Why? Because it is far easier to make repairs without taking the whole door apart again.  

So there you go, finally a fun project that adds no horsepower but increases driving pleasure...

String trimmer loss of power cause and repair.

Our subject today is how to fix your string trimmer when your laborers decide that they are going to misuse and abuse it to the point where it loses power and does not run at full tilt. 

A little backstory here: The company I work for bought several brand new string trimmers over the winter, most of which were impressed into service this spring, which as of this writing was less than 90 days ago.  Over the past week or two, several of them have come into the shop with massive power losses as the chief complaint.  What's the first thing I have noticed?  The guards have been modified. 

Tying the guards back to get a larger arc to cut down more weeds is a common trick employed by landscape laborers to get the job done faster, but it comes with a cost, and that cost is massive carbon buildup in the very small (less than 100cc) cylinder bore.  Essentially, allowing the string to come out longer than the factory intended places a drag on the clutch and the rings of the piston.  Drag means extra heat, but not necessarily more fuel being burned, and this is what leads to the carbon buildup.

In this first picture, you can see that some goofass has taken it upon himself to tie the guard back closer to the shaft and therefore allow more trimmer line than necessary (or designed for) to be out at one time.  This trimmer has a very small engine on it, and all this will do for you is screw that engine up over a very short period of time. So the first thing I am going to do is...

Cut that line and make sure that the guard has not been completely messed up.  I also cut the excess line off because of the drag I mentioned earlier.  Which would you prefer? Either get the job done a little slower or not get the job done at all because I am busy fixing the machine you screwed up?

Top picture in this set of three shows you the allen head bolt that needs to be removed.  The second picture is of the muffler heat guard, which just lifts out of the way. Now in the third picture, this is the muffler.  Two 5/16ths nuts and two lockwashers  per side and the muffler will lift off. There will be a gasket behind the muffler which can be lifted out.  You might have to move (bend) a metal shield behind the muffler to get the gasket out.  The bolts slide out on either side.

It is hard to see in this picture but there is sufficient carbon build up to slow down the exhaust gases upon exiting the engine.  Remove the spark plug so that the piston moves up and down freely, and when the piston is at BOTTOM dead center (all the way down and just barely starting to return to the top)...

...I use a small battery terminal brush to clean out the carbon. Then I blow it out with compressed air as shown.

You might have to do this a couple of times to get as much carbon loosened up and blown out as possible.  The next step after this is to reinstall the spark plug, find a spot where you will not catch anything on fire, and start the engine.  be forewarned, there will be sparks flying for a couple of minutes.  This is more carbon leaving the cylinder. Run the engine at full throttle for about a minute.

Reassemble the muffler assembly reversing the steps previously outlined and test again.  You will definitely hear a difference in the engine. Tightening the muffler down will force the metal piece back into place, if necessary.

This is written for an Echo string trimmer model SRM 266T.  Other makes and models look similar but essentially all work in the same manner.

Dodge "rocking seat" repair...the right way.

The truck has a problem that is commonly referred to as a "rocking seat" issue.  What happens is that when you accelerate or hit the brakes, the seats will move forward and backward.  This is a problem not only from a comfort standpoint, but it is enough to cause inspection failure.

The issue that causes this problem is that Chrysler decided to use rubber bushings in its seat tracks, which break down over time due to the grease they used to lubricate the seat track. It seems that their engineers forgot that petroleum based products rot out rubber.

Dorman Products has a repair kit (Part number 924-073) that is supposed to remedy this issue.  I decided to document this repair mostly because the other ideas of using washers to fix this just did not sound right, look right, or, as I found, work right.

You will need:
-3/8" drive ratchet and/or 1/2" ratchet
-18mm, 13mm, and 16mm sockets in the drive you are using
-1/2" combination wrench
-T25 torx driver
-Dorman repair kit (part number 924-073)


Step one: Remove the seat. 

Move the seat as far back as it can go, and remove the two bolts that hold the front of the seat in place.  Move the seat as far forward as it can go, and remove the two bolts that hold the seat in place in the back.  Use the seat controls to raise the seat as high as it will go and then remove the bolt that anchors the seat belt to the seat frame, lift the seat and disconnect the wiring for the motors, heater, etc. (There are two sets of wires and they are color coded.)

This is the rear seat anchor bolt.  It is a fine thread bolt so using air tools is not recommended.

The seat belt anchor spot to the seat frame.

These are the wires. One white plug, one green.

I moved the seat to the cargo area to finish working on it, that way I am not dragging the parts I need to install all over the place, and this brings us to part two: Remove the worm gears.

Turn the seat upside down and, using a T25 torx driver, remove the two small bolts that hold the bracket in place that allows seat movement.  Then, using a 1/2" wrench, remove the bolt that holds the worm gear in place. You may have to slide the seat track down and/or up to coax the worm gear out of the seat track.

Interesting that one of the little torx head bolts is missing...this tells me that this was attempted before.

This is the bolt that holds the seat track in place.

Step three: Disassemble the worm gear assembly.

The worm gear is essentially a long threaded bolt with specialized ends on it that allows the seat to move back and forth. There is an aluminum bracket with rubber bushings in it that needs to come off of the assembly.

This is the bracket and also where the bushings are supposed to be...these rotted away.

If you take a close look at these worm gears, you will see that someone decided that installing washers to take up the space was a good idea....right up until the worm gear was rendered useless when the washers apparently destroyed the threads.

On the left, worm gear with bushings that are no longer there.  On the right, worm gear with damaged threads.

When you remove the block in the center of the bracket, you will take notice that the block has a flat side and a pointed side.  The pointed side needs to be facing up.  This is also a good time to clean up the block and bracket.

Part of the rebuild kit.

The rebuild kit contains eight of these nylon spacers and two bolts. Reinstall the metal block (pointed end up) into the aluminum piece, then install one of the nylon spacers on one side of the block, which is actually a specialized nut. You might have to persuade the second spacer to go in, which can be done by either tapping it in with a small hammer (and notice I said "tap" and not "beat the shit out of") or lightly sanding the face of the spacer, constantly checking the fit.

Once you have done this procedure to both sides, you must make the position of the brackets on the worm gears the same on either side, then reverse the steps to reinstall the gears, and then the seat.

It might be helpful to mark the worm gears as to which side they go on and reinstall them in that order.

After installation, I found that the rocking issue is gone.  The kit cost about $25 with shipping, but you might be able to get it through a local parts dealer for a little cheaper.  My local parts dealer didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about, so I opted once again for parts geek and their yet to let me down or piss me off delivery time and service.

As far as time goes you can count on spending about 30 minutes or so per seat.  I would take the time to go ahead and clean out the area under the seat (I found another $1.56 under my driver seat alone) as well as make sure you have the time to get this done in one shot.

You get what you pay for

So today I decide to leave work for lunch, mostly because there are times I just don't want to be there.  After getting some iced tea there I am, sitting in my now street legal Durango, and some old dude decides to bang on my passenger side window.

My first thought was aggressive panhandler and that I should just kick his scummy ass for touching my truck.  I was kind of right...

It turns out he wanted to know if he could fix the dents on the passenger side of the truck, for the princely sum of...ready?  Eighty-five dollars.  I told him no, you cannot fix those for $85, and I just got done spending all my money making the damn truck pass inspection.

The rest of the conversation went like this:

Him: No I can fix those right here for $85.

Me: No, I don't have $85.

Him: Well how about $65.

Me: No, I don't have money and you cant fix those properly for $65.

Him: Well I can follow you to wherever you are going and...

Me: If you follow me anywhere I am calling the cops.

Him: Well how much money do you have?

Me in irate-and-fucking-done-with-this mode:

NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN FUCKING BUSINESS HOW MUCH MONEY I HAVE, NOW FUCK OFF!

Is it possible to have a dent removed for $85? Well, possibly.  I cannot imagine it being a dent much larger than a half inch wide or so.  A dent that is, well, just a dent without creasing the metalwork maybe can be done by one of those "paintless dent removal" outfits for that price. Don't get me wrong I am not trying to knock one of these outfits, but I have admittedly never used them because I usually could care less about minor dents.

My dents are about fist sized, and in the case of the right rear door the metal is creased.  Frankly if anything I would just replace the door and call it a day.  Same with the fender.

I tell you this story to tell you another story, and that is that you most certainly do get what you pay for in this world.  Do you want a decent paint job? Decent paint jobs can be had at Macco sometimes for as low as $299.00.  Think you will get rust repair with that? Think again...their ads all say you will not.  Same with bodywork.

The same can be applied to tools of any trade.  In this case, hand tools that you pay a little bit for are going to last longer, have lifetime or forever warranties, and probably are not going to break in the middle of the job you are trying to do.  This is why I prefer to buy my tools from NAPA (Irwin, napa professional, lisle) Sears (craftsman, lisle) Home Depot (husky), Snap on and Matco.  When you go cheap, a lot of times there is no warranty, no guarantee, and in the case of Harbor Freight (from personal experience) good luck getting replacement parts.

The problem with things like a "decent" paint job, "decent" hand tools, and "decent" almost any other service is that your vision of "decent" will greatly differ from the roadside paint and body man's "decent".  Or to put it another way: To properly repair the one dent in the rear quarter of my truck, some dent pulling is going to be involved.  This may remove most but not all of the dent.  What is left will have to be covered in body filler, sanded, primered, sanded again, primered again, top coated with matching paint and then clear coated. The sanding alone is going to take time because you have to use more than one grit (roughness) of sandpaper.  My truck might look silver but it is actually called by Chrysler "bright platinum" and there is a bit of metal flake in the paint. (google that)  Do you think the roadside guy has that in his car?

The bottom line is this: quality costs money in many cases. Probably in most cases.  If you want a proper repair, you should expect to have to pay for it.  I am not saying to go to the most expensive repair shop out there but I am saying that while having your brakes replaced for $25 per axle might sound like a good deal, no way in hell is that job going to be done right by someone with any sort of experience, or a shop for that matter.  It's been my experience that getting work done on the cheap is a lot like rushing through a job just to say you got the job done, in the sense that down the line you are going to end up spending more money to get it done right.

My brother once commented on my facebook page that if you have the money to do something twice then you have the money to have it done right the first time.  Think about that for a minute.  Let's say you go and have your brake pads replaced, but since you decided to "save" money, you bought the cheapest pads out there.  What happens when you have to replace them in a year?  Presuming that you are not stomping on the brakes every time you stop, you now have to pay someone to replace the pads, you are without your car for a time, and you are shelling out money that you could allocate for something else.

Now let's say you actually spent money on those pads. Again not stomping on the brakes at every stop, you could get two or three years out of those pads, possibly more.  There are those that will say that you end up spending the same amount of money with buying more expensive pads and not replacing them as often.  I offer that you are leaving out the time it takes to replace them, the money for the labor to replace them (which is the same no matter what brand of part you decide to purchase) and the down time on the vehicle.

The bottom line here is that you get what you pay for...and tell roadside hucksters to fuck off when they accost you.