8:04 am - Monday - April 6th - TWW - 55° F, humidity 30%, cloud cover 87%, wind 4 mph out of the southeast.....heavy cloud cover today with a forecast high of 65° F. On this date in 2015 TLE and I were hiking around Goosenecks State Park....
....I took this panorama shot of our campsite in the distance....just beyond the campsite is a 1,000' deep canyon. The view this morning....
....there will be little, or no sun this day, so our Predator 5000 is running for the first time this month.
As you know, we have been in the middle of an almost 10 day wind event here at TWW, and have put off working on several projects including finishing installing the insulation board in the shed, and installing the new auxiliary turbo water pump in the VW. When we awoke Sunday to the absence of wind we decided to get right on those aforementioned tasks, and 'knock them out of the park'. It took less than an hour to cut the two pieces for the two doors, and affix them....
....now, all that is left is to cut the pieces for the floor, and install the turbine roof vent.
Next up it was time to dive into the project to which I assigned the rest of the day....remove and replace the damaged auxiliary turbo water pump on the Beetle. I've never done this job before, and wasn't sure how long it might take, but TLE and I were committed to finishing it Sunday, no matter what....
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....first I moved the '69 Jeep CJ-5 out of the right garage bay, and into the empty space I drove the VW Beetle. As you can see, I now have a four wheeled tool cart courtesy of Charles and Phyllis who brought this back from their Texas trip. In order to remove the damaged pump I had to remove three hose clamps, the two bolts which affix it to the front of the engine bay, just above the radiator, and unplug the wiring....
....that was the most difficult part of the job. As you can see (above) the intake nipple broke off the pump causing the massive coolant loss in just a couple of minutes. Even after removing the hose clamps it was difficult to remove the hoses which have been in place for about 25 years....lol...but I did. Installing the new pump took less than 20 minutes, and the entire job about 90 minutes. Way, way less time than I expected. Now it was time to pour in the new coolant, which Charles had purchased at O'Reilly's down in Phoenix a few days ago. It took one gallon to fill the system, and the coolant reservoir. I got into the driver seat of the VW and started the 1.8 liter engine, then went back to the front of the car to look for any leaks......
.....there were no leaks! I let the engine idle, and come up to temperature, and it ran fine...whew! What a relief to see no dumbell lights on the instrument display! Once I was satisfied the engine was running as it should I shut it down, then checked the oil which needed about 1/2 quart. Finally we began to put away the tools. It was about 2 pm at the time. Now if this had been the actual engine water pump, that would have been a 2, or 3 day job for me, because you have to remove the entire front bumper assembly to get at it, plus deal with the timing belt. The new pump is made by Bosch, and that is who I turn to when needing to replace parts on the VW. Back when our fuel pump ceased working in 2015 I bought an aftermarket one on Amazon, and within 3 years it failed, so that time I bought Bosch fuel pump, and have had no issues in 8 years.
Around 6:40 pm TLE and I headed outside to the 'sunset fire deck' (no fire this night) to watch the sun set....we were not disappointed....
.....(by the way, sunset is at 7 pm now) we remained there until almost 7:30 pm as the sunset continued to evolve, then headed back inside to watch the first episode of Season 50 of Survivor, which was 2.5 hours in length! For Season 5 they invited people from all 24 years of Survivor, and based on the first episode it should be a very interesting season.
Thanks for stopping by!
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