Bad day in the shop (with a moral!)

[davepl]

I've had worse and so have you, and the problems are trivial compared to people with real problems, but I'm going to complain anyway.

Yesterday was the day to start adding fluids to my multi-year frame-off restoration. So I started adding the engine oil (it's already been on the dyno but it was a year ago, and empty, and I need to re-prime too).

What did I forget? An oil filter. Duh. So of course - giant pool of oil.

Drive an hour round trip because there's nothing local anymore, get a couple of filters, come back, install filter, add oil. All good. Start priming engine. Then I remember that I had pulled the instrument cluster out to fix the temp gauge. Which means the oil line for the oil gauge is now shooting oil into my interior, including my new carpet. That could have been way worse, I was able to clean it such that you'll never see it. Even I can't. At least it was brand new oil from a brand new engine, not black goo.

Then on to coolant. A smarter man would add the water first and the antifreeze later, but I'm not that man, so I started with the glycol first. And of course it leaks at the bottom hose, which is almost inaccessible (in fact had I known it'd have been faster to pull the fan and shroud).

So I'm lying under the car fighting with slippery glycol and this clamp that is apparently bottomed out (won't tighten further) which is why it's leaking. And that's when the antifreeze poured into my eye.

Fortunately last year I "wasted" the money on an eye wash (just the kind you screw to the wall and has two eye-rinser bottles).

With that all done I put the Stant pressure tester on the rad and it's clearly leaking from somewhere. This is a "new" rad from LMC, but I've had it two years so it's out of warranty by now. I find a pinhole leak at the neck. Tried JBWeld but other members encouraged me to fix it right, so on to solder.

That goes reasonably well. A little ugly because I've never done it before and my flux is probably 10 years old, but I'm not making another hour round trip for some flex (I did that today :-) ).

I've been a Plummer for 46 years and this is the first pipe I've soldered. I actually kinda with I had brass rod, maybe I could TIG it?

But it still leaks somewhere, which I eventually find is at the heater-hose return fitting that my truck doesn't even need and shouldn't have in the first place, so the rad is a multi-year replacement I guess. It's capped with some rubber washer and plastic cap, which leaks on its own, and it also leaks where it's brazed/soldered to the tank. It would make a little cloud of soapy bubbles when I poured soapy water on it, so it was pretty clear.

At this point I should have pulled the rad, but I've got dual batteries and a bolted in shroud and a bunch of reasons that I should not have accepted as excuses. But I did, so I tried to solder it in the truck.

That's when I set fire to and melted the edge of my original big block fan shroud.

So today I took it out; I took it and the old original factory rad down to the radiator shop (another hour round trip) to see if I should let them repair the 'new' one or rebuild my original. The tubes in the original look a little bigger, I'd rather have the original, but I don't know about pricing yet. I get there and there's a taped note saying they're taking a couple of weeks off. Sigh. I grew up in the family hardware store and we never closed for a day, let alone a week (other than Sunday and holidays).

Today I soldered it up myself and so far it seems to be holding. I never could get their plastic plug to work so I soldered a brass plug into it. I'll never need that heater hose fitting.

The moral of the story? Unless you need the vehicle to get to work or something important and urgent, when you start to make obvious mistakes, walk away. Find something else to do.

In the end all will be fine, my rad will be a little uglier and I'll never fully trust it, but that's the way it goes.

Ah well, this is the life we chose.