|
Testdrive: I love your photo list of tools.
I used a ladyfoot bar to stab lots of holes right through the frost plug. I also snapped off my cotter key puller in there.
At the end of the day yesterday, I gave a phone call to my new EV buddy, Rich.
He came over this morning and tapped the frost plug into the block in under a minute. He's done a lot of those before. It took us almost half an hour to figure out how to get it back out.
After that we were going over to the EV build day.
After about 15 minutes on the freeway, my heat stopped working. I instantly looked down at the temperature gauge. Yep - overheating. I pulled over right away.
Lots of coolant leaking out the bottom!
We pushed the block heater back in. It had pushed out after being under pressure on the freeway.
The engine ran fine, idling in my driveway for half and hour, with no leaks or anything. I get on the freeway and BAM! No good.
We parked the truck at my wife's work, which was just the next freeway exit down. We left the truck there and vowed to return later.
After the EV build day, we borrowed a car dolly and hitched up my truck behind Rich's. Towed the truck home. Started snowing, good thing Rich's truck has 4-wheel drive. We actually fishtailed going through a round-a-bout!
My truck is now back in my driveway.
It's cold and dark and I'm tired.
Looks like tomorrow is carpooling, and Tuesday I can work on the truck some more.
We think what happened is:
We put the block heater in and tightened down the screw to snug. The little bar that spreads the "butterfly" got out of the track. So the screw snugged down the way it was supposed to, and felt like everything was tightened up.
Once out on the freeway, the cooling system built up enough pressure to push out the block heater just a bit, and out comes the coolant.
I will not put the truck up on the ramps again, pull the block heater, and check the butterfly. If what I think happened, in fact did, I should just need to reinstall it, making sure the little bar is in the butterfly track, and give it a really good tug when done.
I also have a cooling system pressure tester on loan. It's a device you put on in place of the radiator cap and pump it up to pressurize the system.
Looks like I know enough about what I am doing now.
I think the worst part is trying to do something and not knowing if it is even being done right or not!!!!
Also, yesterday was the end of a long stressful week, and me killing my truck wasn't helping that!!!
Think I'll be good now though.
|