Ever Have a Day Where U Should've Slept ... ALL DAY???

This is what a 2 hour oil change looks like ...

WHY WHY WHY do people install oil filters with a wrench?!?!?!

I just spent 2 hours this morning doing an oil change on a '06 Honda Shadow Aero 750. Brought everything to this party: air chisel, torch, hammers & a gigantic pair of Channelock pliers. One hell of an oil change, let me tell ya! The last one to touch this bike is the areas largest bike dealer .... go figure. Pay triple to have your stuff over-torqued! Nice. Finally the giant Channelocks saved the day.

Finished that one & bring in an '03 Suzuki Volusia 800 for a carb clean. 2 screws have 3 pints of Locktite on them .... each. So I grab my little torch to heat them up & notice a gas leak. So I try to tighten the cylinder & it gets worse! I whack it with my hand & now liquid propane is blasting my hand! So I run outside & toss the thing into the driveway & it launches like a rocket towards the house!! No damage to the house or my skin, surprisingly. I look at where the leak might have been -- turns out the damn bottle broke!! So now I get a new bottle & get back at it. Now the 2 screws are hopelessly stripped. Out comes the dremel & some careful slotting of the heads (they are inside the mouth of the carb holding on a removable bellmouth). I was able to extract them with a flat head screwdriver after that. JEESH!! This day is shot now ...

The first rule of thumb: WHEN YOU DETERMINE YOU ARE IN A HOLE, STOP DIGGING!!! Go sit down with a cool refreshing beverage of choice, leave the tools where they are, and chalk it up to a 'bad day; before you lose skin........ or go downstairs and start cleaning the oil boiler, with no cell phone, a old sawzall with a dull blade, and a hopelessly dull kitchen knife and arms that swell up too fast in tight spaces....................

This is like the day you wander into a Women's prison with a fistfull of Pardons and walk out............................... empty handed........

whistlenut wrote:or go downstairs and start cleaning the oil boiler, with no cell phone, a old sawzall with a dull blade, and a hopelessly dull kitchen knife and arms that swell up too fast in tight spaces....................

I hate when that happens. It happened to me once. I said to myself “what would McGoober do?” I took off my belt and made a tourniquet then sharpened an edge on the buckle by rubbing it on the floor and then proceeded to cut my arm off. It was going well until I hit a major artery and almost bled to death! I then reached into my shirt pocket pulled out my cell phone and called 911 for help.

I like the gigantic pair of Channelock pliers almost as much as my BFH.

whistlenut wrote:The first rule of thumb: WHEN YOU DETERMINE YOU ARE IN A HOLE, STOP DIGGING!!! Go sit down with a cool refreshing beverage of choice, leave the tools where they are, and chalk it up to a 'bad day; before you lose skin........

Actually great advice, I usually find the next day the problem magically goes away.

DVC500 at last wrote:I like the gigantic pair of Channelock pliers almost as much as my BFH.

whistlenut wrote:The first rule of thumb: WHEN YOU DETERMINE YOU ARE IN A HOLE, STOP DIGGING!!! Go sit down with a cool refreshing beverage of choice, leave the tools where they are, and chalk it up to a 'bad day; before you lose skin........

Hah! Usually when I think I've hit rock bottom, someone throws me a shovel.

I've had days like this, where EVERY SINGLE THING I touched or tried to work on went right down the crapper. I end up ranting, cussing, throwing tools, and the last time came REALLY close to rolling our P.O.S. Jeep Liberty out in the driveway with a "Free to a Good Home" sign on it with the hope that someone I know doesn't take it.

What's sad is my wife always tells me to just walk away and come back tomorrow - and she's right. I just never listen.

Calm, cool, collected Chris?? Throwing tools?? Cussing and ranting?? Is this the Chris I know?? LOL..

Well, you are in good company.. do you remember the cartoon character Yosemite Sam?? big 20gallon hat, long mustache, and a pair of six guns?? He'd get mad, jump up and down firing his guns into the air ranting and raving...

Well I get like that sometimes.. Once when I I followed the directions of the previous owner of this farm, as to where the water and electricity were routed into the white barn [workshop]. .. Well I cut the waterline, and the 220v cables with one scoop of the backhoe... water and sparks flying and me, jumping up and down ranting and raving.. throwing shovels, kicking the tractor, etc..
But I got over it.. repaired it all. Still laugh at myself over it.

Greg

Smitty, I had a 1966 Chevy van, with the engine doghouse between the front seats,, well sometime in the past, someone had overtightened the oil filter.. I tried everything, I twisted the outer shell of the filter, and stopped,, it leaked only a little.. I drove it for another week, and got back to the job the next weekend.. this is way before ChannelLock had those 18" pliers, so I used several different wrap-around type filter wrenches, I finally drove a long punch through the filter housing,, and ripped the entire housing and filter element off the base.. now what??? I used a long chisel and hammer and beat the base around counterclockwise till it FINALLY started to move and unscrew... 'ONLY" three hours or so of work..

I have to admit,, I don't trust tightening a spin-on with only my hands.. I usually do give a filter a 'snug' with a strap wrench. But I don't have any problems removing the filters later..

GL

Is that why people call me Yosemite??

I guess everyone has gone through this at one time or another. My buddy just told me about his Volvo that he spent 3 hours on changing the oil .... a similar situation .... only he was the last one to put the filter on!

I have always hand-tightened my filters - - Something grandpa always taught me. It worked for him for 50 years or so, so I adopted that line of thought way back. I've never fought with a filter that I put on. 1 full turn MAX after the gasket contacts the surface lightly - no reason to go any more. And ALWAYS lube the gasket. Skipping that step will require a B.F. pair of Pliers even installing at 3/4 turn!

I usually take opportunities like this to throw back a dozen or so of my favorite beverage(s) ( any or all of them - the list is very long ... ), but I was determined to make it through this slug-fest. And I did - some how, some way. Once I set my mind to a task, I will NOT stop under any circumstances. Bull-headed, is the word for that I suppose ....

I even had time, after all this, to troubleshoot some crazy electrical issues with the RD ... and I actually found the problem amidst 400 wires & connectors! One bad ground wire!

It's amazing the things that the one bad ground will cause: I had the headlight burning very dim ... along with a dimly lit left turn signal indicator , & RIGHT turn signal! (neither are connected - except by ground ...) Then, when I shut the headlight off, BOTH turnsignal indicators were blazing bright! When I turned the left turnsignal on, the right indicator would flash out of synch with the instrument panel lighting! I was scratchin my head for a while on that one. Needed a good nights sleep to figure that one out .... or maybe it was every ounce of blood rushing to my head with every swear in the book, while fixing these other 2 bikes today ....

Now , I'm enjoying a concoction of no less than 5 of my favorite 80-proof-plus liquors.

Mark my words: even with this setback today, there WILL be a video posted of THE RD350 RUNNING by no later than 10PM tomorrow evening.

Self-imposed deadline. No excuses!! One day later than expected ...... I can say, with confidence ..... I GUARANTEE IT!!

Standard Equipment when working the Snow Guns at Killington was the biggest sized ChannelLocks made...
Good for fixing frozen/stuck pipes and hose...
Good also when the wolves were roaming at 3 am...
You had to be careful on some of the standpipes as the main water line was at 750 psi...
And the standpipe connection was tenuous at best...

Holy crapper!! That's some serious put-me-in-the-hospital type pressure!!

I'd imagine you'd be out of work the next day if contacted by that angry water.

It was not the 'angry water' but the 'flyin' metal standpipe' when it separated from the 12" main...
Both going up then when it landed...
If you happened to be attaching a hose to that pipe when it launched...
You would not be coming back to work for a long time...
The pipes would easily clear the tree tops by 40-50 feet...
Quite the sight to be going up the mountain and see one launch...
I was the welder’s helper when the *censored* hit the fan...
He found out I had some welding experience and was smarter than the rest of the crew making snow...
One job was standing in a 5 foot deep hole, 18" of water, trash pumps running, snow falling and 10 below with a gentle breeze...
Because an underground connection failed...
Water from the 18" main blew the crater we were in and 25 feet of 2" pipe was ripped out from 5 feet of mostly frozen soil...
About 6 hours of work start to finish...
Got to go home early on that day and paid for a full 12 hour shift...
They also produced 55,000 cfm of 180 psi air...
Lots of fun bringing 55 gallon drums of Methanol to the top of the mountain on the snow cat...
We would pump the Methanol into a smaller chamber at the top of the mountain on the air lines...
Pressurize the tank and let it run down the pipes so it could blow out the air hoses...
Due to the moisture in the compressed air and the low temps the hoses that ran to the guns would 'rime up'...
The Methanol helped reduce the buildup in the hose...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_rime
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rime