'69 Van is showing wear

Drained differential fluid with a siphon after seeing how dirty it was all over my brake shoes. While it was slowly dripping I thought I'd investigate the rust colored tailpipe. That was the last time that tail pipe will be on the van. It crumbled into my hands. Ok. Now I gotta go all the back until it stops crumbling. That turned to be almost to the muffler. And the only remaining part was pointing the exhaust exactly at the fuel tank. Only BP execs would think that was a good idea so I rerouted it with aluminum cans and the remains of a hard drive I've got stashed in my van since finding it on the beach clean up crew in Baja.

The wheel bearing, for those who care, is lubricated by the differential fluid through vent holes. I suspect the fluid was so dirty that it stopped lubricating anything. I'm still mystified by when I went to check the fluid level, expecting it to be low, it was overfilled. How do you overfill the differential with a fill hole on the side. There's only one level it can ever reach but it was way over that level even after it leaked out the wheel. I'm running through scenarios in my head as to how the fluid would be higher than the fill hole. Did they tip the van on one side and then fill it through the axle shaft? That would do it? Or was it jacked way up on one side when they filled it through the fill hole? That would allow you to add extra. I'm confused. Any Click & Clack wannabes out there? How could there be a cup or two extra fluid in a side fill hole differential. The point of the side hole is that you can't overfill it. You fill until it reached the bottom of the hole and that's it. You can't add anymore because it will just pour out. But someone managed to do just that.

OR something has blocked one side of the axle and pushed all the fluid into the bell housing. But there is an oil seal that prevents anything from getting in there and what I pulled out was all attached to the axleshaft.

Any ideas?

Now the fluid is clean and filled to the fill hole. 2 quarts of clean 90W gear oil.

The genius tire guys at the second place torqued the bolts to 150 pounds.
"150?"
"Yep, you got a big van there."
"I'll never get them off."
"You can if you stand on the tire iron."
"Are you blind? I weigh 150 with my belt buckle on. No chance is my weight going to move those nuts."
"It'll be fine."

I should've told them to give me a break and loosen them because today I wanted to inspect the other side bearing and of course could not budge the lug nuts without breaking my spine. I had a torque wrench up to 140 and it didn't move. No breaker bars in the shop unfortunately. Thanks, Tires For Less!

I have to say that I had the music on and was under the van and doing all kinds of maintenance. One thing that working with my hands all day does is give me lightning fast operation manuevers like taking two bolts off at once or visualizing actuator rods for the rear door latch that has given me problems from day one and in 5 minutes fixing it like a pro. I will be the last remaining 1969 Econoline expert in the world.

The whole process is like Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. I'm like Pirsig and take it too far into the whole "What caused this in the metaphysical sense?" zone that leads into a wonderland of philosophical adventures. My element is on my knees with a wrench in my hand fishing in a dark cavity of the van door for a hidden thread. Everywhere else I am a slave in an assembly line. The van is my universe and I am learning it back and forth. If that van gets to Labrador from Cabo San Lucas I'm telling you it will be one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. Maybe one of the greatest Gyspy journeys I've ever heard of. The Hippie equivalent of going to the moon. The van was in pieces in La Paz. I've already passed the one year mark that I've been trying to get there. But the only test is if it makes it one day. Snow season begins next week in Labrador so I'm out of time. I need a new tailpipe section and maybe new front brake shoes. And some kind of awning for the windows that leak badly.

On the job front I blazed through multiple semiconductor wafer cutting equipment cables like I was born to do it. Nothing fazes me now. The highest compliment they give assemblers is calling them "A Machine". Think about that.

I just wish semiconductor wafers were not an environmental abomination. I can hear the wolf howl in pain every time I crimp a male mate 'n lock pin on the end of ribbon cable. All of this labor will be cursed by some future generation. I guarantee it. These are smart people I work for but they aren't smart enough to see the big picture. That's what being an expert in electronics engineering does; it puts blinders on your personal philosophy. It takes a big man to critically examine what you are doing and take some moral inventory. There's not much of that going on at work. It's a rat race with no concern for consequences. I won't last much longer there. A friend told me I don't belong in population centers. I guess I'm still thinking of Portsmouth as a small town but it really is jam packed with traffic and people and $900 one bedroom apartments. It's too high class for my whiffle ball soul.

Chicken Farmer...

Kicked the tires of a neglected CM 400E today. You'll be happy to know I came to my senses and didn't buy it though I spun through Claremont like I'd owned it for years. I'm hesitant to buy a bike with no plates and the guy claims he had never put gasoline in it since he bought it. So...you want $900 because you found it in a field and brought it to your driveway?

Claremont and Bradford are two of the few places not ravaged by crystal meth. Every other town on the planet is full of junkies.This is the last week of regular posts because I'll be on the road next week. Maybe working and maybe not. Either way, the only stories I'll have to tell are getting tickets or getting fired or leaving this gasoline obsessed country for somewhere simple. Only an outsider would recognize how diseased this country is. It's like a doctor saying, "You gotta quit smoking or you will die of lung cancer." and the smoker says, "It's so hard. And my mother smoked for 40 years and died when she was 80." WE CAN'T DRIVE LIKE THIS ANYMORE. IT HAS TO STOP!"
But addiction is what America is about except gasoline addiction has no rehab clinic. And it fucks the entire planet. But don't take my word for it. Listen to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. They'll tell you the truth!!

Two cylinders. That's what I want. Until then I'll be using my single cylinder 1974 Vespa Ciao as my main mode of transportation. Of course I will.

Wasted on the way....

The good news is that my van went to Eliot under the worst conditions, the wheel seizing and squealing and differential fluid pouring into the road and here it is waiting for the bridge to go up again. I fixed it on my own terms and never doubted it for a second. The bad news is that someone got axed at my job and that means we're all on the chopping block.
Tired of all this running around. Everyone agrees the world is fucked up but when I say I want to spend my last $800 on a 30 year old motorcycle they look at me like I'm insane. If I'm insane then what do you call it when 5% of the population of the planet produces 25% of the pollution? What category of insane is that? What do you call a media that is obsessed with trivial celebrity cellulite stories while the polar ice caps are melting? IS that more insane than my sleeping in my van? Or less? Think about it.

I almost got punched in the face tonight because Wakefield gave up a walk off homerun in the 11th inning and I was so pissed I started to clap, like "Way to go, you asshole!" But everyone thought I was a hater because I was wearing my Dodgers cap. That made me laugh. ME? A HATER OF THE RED SOX? I decided (I was drunk and didn't decide anything) to play along and I literally got up and yelled, "Why? What's the problem? They suck. The Red Sox are LOSERS! THEY LOSE IN THE 11th INNING!" and I'll tell you that when you say that in a Red Sox bar the evil I got hit with was as bad as it gets. But you know what? I'm not afraid. Fuck anyone who assumes they know me. Fuck them even if they did punch me in the face. I had drunk a bowl of loudmouth soup and it tasted good. So I ran my mouth. All you fanatics are assholes. Get a life! The world is literally ending for many species and humanity is next in line. Excuse me for buying a motorcycle.

Tired of being punching bag...

No bright and cheery post today, folks. No. My optimistic days are over. My smile is upside down and my gout is acting up in my big toe that now looks like it got run over by a herd of elephants. If you want laughs then go read the Onion. I'm pissed and I'm swinging. You've been warned.

First of all, the pro garage shop "Performance (i.e $80/hr) Auto" over behind Jittos took my frozen bearing off my axle and installed the new one. Glad they could fit my humble van in between their vintage restore projects. There were no vinyl banners there and even though I would've felt better if I'd seen a Playboy calender on the wall the man I gave the axle to had forgotten more about auto mechanics than I'll ever know. His shit could change a tire better than the assholes at NTB. Unfortunately, he didn't know that his shop only took cash so when I rushed over there exactly as they closed I was totally out of luck. Translation: lots of driving with absolutely no results. Yes, the axle is finished and yes it's safe in their garage because they didn't trust me to pay them tomorrow after I planned to spend all day today working on the van. Incremental steps toward completion to make me bite my nails and think the pain in my leg is a blood clot. It's easy to say bring the whole project to a shop but as I've said, this is a 5 hour job that will cost $400-600 plus parts at a shop. I'm trying to do it for just parts but they've got my axle in hock now for $100 all because I didn't know to stop at the bank on the way there. These are the details that get left out of most home mechanic anecdotes. Passed a guy in a motorized wheelchair who collects aluminum cans. I wanted to stop and interview him and plan to do it when I get a chance. He hauls a trailer...and there was so much traffic at the corner of south and route 1 that he had to wait. In fact, traffic on 236 in Eliot is horrible and traffic everywhere is very very bad. We're really fucking shit up, people. Anyone but a corporate slave/media drone could see that this is a completely insane way of life.

Anyway, all this driving around, seething because this simple fucking task now requires three trips to Jittos whose steak bomb is gross and whose pizza sucks and just teases me, and all this driving next to Walmart and Big Lots and one after another disgusting store made me realize something I must now bring to your attention...

Something horrible happened between 1975 and 1985 in Portsmouth. What happened was a centralized, bike friendly town got sold to the tycoons in Newington and is now a sprawling asphalt ridden jungle with million dollar downtown sidewalks that lead nowhere except to a soulless vacuum of expensive coffee and designer jeans. I'll tell you how that happened: every adult who lived in Portsmouth in that critical decade of 1975-1985 completely whored themselves out to Chinese made super crap that could only be marketable in truck-friendly big box malls outside of town. How they look themselves in the mirror now is a mystery. Maybe the wrinkles and dementia and senility make their sleep more restful, but that will not prevent my accusing them of a horrible crime. They sold out the soul of this town to where it resembles some kind of miniature Van Nuys to me and nothing is cheaper outside of town now except bulk buckets of cheese filled pretzels and Chinese made computers. That's what The Little Store got destroyed by. I admired one or two adults back then but I see it was only because I was childish. There were no real men and women who tried to protect the soul of this town. None. We needed a Braveheart and we got Longshanks. The King of England. They laid down and hoped their cowardice would be lost to the sands of time. Mostly, it has been. My generation is so soaked with alcohol and divorce regrets that the blame game never gets to the vicious and unforgivable crime that was committed and that I see now as cataclysmic and irreversible. This is not a town I can live in. It is the New England equivalent to Taiwan. We manufacture junk, sustain ourselves off Taco Bell, drive twenty miles to buy cheap electronics and pat ourselves on our backs because we think we're pretty smart. Well, that's a total load of shit. No, most people don't remember 1983 Richards Ave but I can say that the rusted ghetto doors of the JFK racquetball courts didn't cost the city a penny while the ten million dollar brick sidewalks that will buckle with the ice and crumble when roots push them up are a pure money pit...and who the fuck is walking downtown except the piss drunk college students (1 liquor license per 4 people) and the goofy merchants of expensive clothes and trinkets. Fuck all of you. Go home to your Rye mansion and get off my street!

So, you know who you are, thanks for laying down like a paid-off undercard fighter when push came to shove. Thank you for allowing my home town to become a faceless sprawl of Chinese junk. I thought about buying a mobile home here but I might as well throw a dart at a map and pick anywhere on earth because that's what Portsmouth is. Gentrified and fucked up, soulless and empty like a pauper's wallet.

This all leads me to my renewed faith in my decision to DO WHATEVER I WANT. I have heard the advice of others and I have seen where their wisdom led this town and I can confidently say that no one has any idea what they are talking about. You sell out my town for cheap bags of pretzels? Good. Go eat them. Go fill your vapid veins with brewed poison. But take your advice and bury it under the State Street Saloon because this town is a fucked up mess now, the frogs are boiling in the water and you are telling me I've got to change my ways? Seriously? An iceberg the size of Manhattan is floating south from the North Pole and I don't know what I'm doing by living in a van down by the river? Really? You've either got a lot of nerve or you're as stupid as the cell tower disguised as a pine tree. If I told you I was going to get naked and sprint backwards down Congress street singing the Star Spangled Banner that would not be as insane as if you told me in 1978 that I'd have to DRIVE TO A FUCKING CORPORATE TIRE SHOP IN NEWINGTON TO HAVE MY VAN DESTROYED FOR THE LOW PRICE OF $300 in 2010. I would've told you to have your head examined! And if you told me I'd stop at two hundred lights on the way down route 1 to Heritage Ave I would've asked you why you hated me so much. Why did you hate the town the way it was? What was wrong with having a hardware store downtown? Why do I need a car to buy a book? There were lots of questions you didn't ask in 1978. I guess everyone was too busy at the divorce lawyer to give a fuck what was happening to their culture. Well, just remember this rant when you've got some stale advice for me.

You have to earn a good reputation, you have to earn the right to be listened to, you have to earn respect and from what I've seen of this town you've earned my disgust and resentment. Portsmouth is fucked. I'd like to think that the good guys lost to the bad guys but what really happened was there were no good guys. There were just selfish losers and if living in my van at the Park 'N Ride or by the millpond is my way to save money so I can leave this gentrified copper mill then that's what I'm going to do. I will wallpaper my ceiling with parking tickets and dig a latrine at the Central Little League field. Fuck everyone if they think cleaning the mill pond is cleaning up this town. Your preacher is Steve Jobs and your daughters are Britney Spears. Call them up on their birthday because that's the family you bought with your pickled pride.

Day 2: Bearing project

In addition to my grinding cable harness job (The skills I'm learning there will be valuable when it comes time to fight the machines) I've now got a second job trying to remove a pulverized wheel bearing from an axle shaft. Like a guy at work said, "I can do anything." as long as I have the tools. In this case I've got no tools, no vise, no propane torch, no oven, no slide hammer, no work bench. Removing this bearing and installing the new one is a project for a garage...a real garage where there are no fancy fucking marketing posters and company logos and corporate slogans.
The only challenge is if I can do it myself without destroying the axle shaft. I don't want to know the answer to that question. Every part will take days to arrive so it's another slow grind as each bolt takes one day to deal with. I'm like a cranked up pit crew freak when I've got all the tools and I'm like Dr. Frankenstein when I don't. Today I stacked up a pile of circular weights from a bench press set and used them to lift the shaft off the ground enough to slip another set of weights between the bearing flange and the bearing race and then I pounded on the top of the axle with a slide hammer I borrowed. It was a mess but it's exactly what you do without a bearing vise...and it still didn't work. Oh, I want a motorcycle! So simple.
I don't know if the oil seal ruptured but I'm guessing the gear fluid leak was caused by the bearing falling apart and the axle wiggling.
It's so boring. My life is so mechanically devoted right now I shit spools of copper and piss brake fluid.