First Jedediah Smith Trail 1822 — 1824

Day 6: August 21st, 2009 Pittsburgh (Car Work)

Today I am already awake around five in the morning and not able to fall asleep again. Just past seven I can hear Helen. So I also get up. Around eight I have finished my breakfast. Due to a blood test, Helen has no breakfast today. I quickly write my diary from yesterday before I check my emails. Then I drive over to Pep Boys. Hopefully, they have my wiper motor!

But I don’t get too far. On Highway 19 to Cranberry is a road construction where you must turn on the headlights. This is now law in Pennsylvania. But when I turn on the lights, all of a sudden nothing works anymore. There is a total power outage and the car only rolls to a stop. I just make it between two poles to get to the side and that’s it. Now I know why my wiper motor has stopped working.

When I left before, the wiper worked again. But for now I must start searching for what can be wrong. Somehow I cannot believe that it has something to do with my wiring. I get my measuring device out and measure at the battery connectors 0V! Oops, what is going on here?!

I wiggle a bit at the positive terminal and suddenly the voltage is back. It seems that this bloody screw has become loose again. I tighten it as good as possible. Then I continue to Pep Boys. There I get M14 oil drain plugs for the case I am not able to get everything sealed with the one I have.

Then I quickly drive over to Walmart and buy a cheap oil filter for the case I am not able to finish my radiator work today completely. While I am at it I also buy some thinner 18 gauge wires for my gauges and the relay driver contacts. All in all I already have enough wires running through the wire outlet.

Then I drive over to David. First I drain the engine oil. There I realize that the oil drain plug has almost no threads left. Then I see that I have still installed the double oversize and not triple oversize version! Okay, in this case I will give the piggy pack version another try. Maybe this will work out.

With a lot of effort and always turning back I cut my thread — whereas it looks more like the threads of this screw are getting flatted out. The only thing reasonable would be to cut a bigger thread in. But this is something I can still do if this will not be getting sealed.

For the seal I take one with a metal outer ring and rubber inside. Additionally, I put some sealant on which I already used to seal the transmission pan. Hopefully, this will be getting sealed! Now it’s time to let everything dry out and I take care of my new oil radiator.

There I must build a whole new mount. But with these perforated rails from Home Depot and the material I already have I am able to build a really reasonable construction. However, there is not really a lot of space to install everything. This is really working on fraction of inches.

Then it’s time to put the hoses on and tighten everything. Next is the splitter running to the oil filter. There I am getting worried that it might not work out because of the height. But also this just fits! There is only not enough room for my second temperature sensor in the oil line. So I will install this one in the transmission line.

Finally, everything is hooked up. David was so nice to bring me the delivery from Amazon. But at the moment I have no time to take a look at it. If something would have been delivered wrong, I would have no chance to correct this anyways.

Just for testing I connect the fan to my battery — and I am pretty much disappointed. There is a lot of air throughput. But it doesn’t run through the radiator and everything blows to the front and side! So this will probably not make this much of a difference…

Around nine I pack my stuff together and drive back home. Helen is still on the way and I have a shower first. Then I am getting ready for dinner. Sam wants to get quickly outside. So I invest these couple of minutes. Then I leave, but only for the Lone Star. It is already past ten and I am not in the mood to drive all the way to the Outback Steakhouse.

The service is okay. But somehow, all are not very friendly in this restaurant. It’s all a bit weird. Around a quarter to eleven I pay and drive back. In the meantime Helen is back and already went to bed. Sam probably has woken her up with all of her barking.

I try to be as quiet as possible and also directly go to bed. All in all, there is still a lot to do tomorrow. But I doubt I will be able to finish everything…