Bathroom Faucet

After years of perfect service the 2 nd floor bathroom faucet started leaking into the cabinet below! Fortunately we had a large plastic tub holding all the stuff that goes under a skink which also caught and held the dripping water. Finally determined the water leaks rapidly whenever either the hot or cold water is on at the faucet. Found the faucet was leaking at the base of the water spout. There were two screws holding the spout to the main assembly and an 0-ring there trying to seal the joint. This o-ring must have shrunk over the years as it was just too skinny.

I just happened to have two o-rings of similar size and installed the biggest and all is sealed up tight. (The removed o-ring measured approximately 0.581 inches ID and 0.737 OD. The replacement was 0.562 ID and 0.764 OD.) The replacement had just a little friction when installing the stem which means it will seal much better.) Now no leak! Maybe good for 10 more years.

The spider and the housefly

Oh the retired life! It happened this way, rather normal really. I was busy doing some housework, yes believe me. I saw a housefly buzzing around but instead of stopping what I was doing, I finished the project and then found my electronic bug zapper and looked for the culprit. It couldn’t have been over ½ hour later. I heard some muffled buzzing and find this fellow trapped in a spiders web.

I have been watching this spider web over a couple of days thinking maybe I should wipe it away but since it is my computer room there was really no rush, no rush at all. So with the close up macro function on our camera I clicked the above picture. Two hours later this poor housefly was pulled almost out of site down through the water weep hole in the window frame. I suppose now the spider will double in size. Maybe he/she will be too fat to come back out of the weep hole? I cropped the picture but noticed the spiders legs were sure long so I clipped two legs off in the cropping. Kind of interesting looking creatures don’t you think?

Dad’s Smoke’n Metro -

The boys gave me another nickname. Hopefully only temporarily and they don’t keep it for long. I can’t quote it as I forgot the quote exactly. It’s something like Smoke’n Jim, or Smoke’n Dad or the Dad’s Smoke’n car. The reason obviously is due to the Metro and the large cloud of smoke it has been trailing.

The smoke problem kind of gets ahead of me or behind me, oh I get so confused. For awhile it just had a cloud out the exhaust pipe at startup but recently the cloud is slightly bigger, or maybe we should say huge. Then it began smoking whenever the engine was running.

So looking under the hood I saw oil leaking high up on the engine. I removed the valve cover and cleaned the oil seal groove real well and this time used gasket cement in the groove to seat the rubber gasket into the groove. That still enables me to remove the valve cover without damage to the rather new gasket.

I also suspected the Camshaft Sensor Housing o-ring seal was leaking. It is located at the top of the engine opposite the timing belt. This area has rather easy access with 3 bolts holding the housing in place. This seal groove centered at 2.3 inches in diameter. The o-ring that was installed after some stretching is now 2.218 inches and 0.070 inches thick. I had to stretch the o-ring over a can prior to installation which if greased enough would hold in the groove long enough to assemble the housing without the o-ring moving out of place.

Knowing the o-ring groove was 2.3 inches I thought I could just order up an o-ring that would better fit the situation. Turns out o-rings are measured not in there nominal thickness but in the inside diameter (ID) and outside diameter (OD) along with the thickness. So when I went to Napa I got a little confused along with the clerk as the o-ring table he was using was in metric and it wasn’t for the nominal diameter I had brought in. Eventually I went up to Belfair Hose and Hydraulics in the business park up the street where we crunched the numbers for 15 minutes and came up with an o-ring which he had picked up that afternoon and delivered to his home that evening. He brought it to work and I picked it up that morning for $1 for two o-rings. He had both o-ring charts for metric and English. If I had the right measurements it would have been easier of coarse.

It turns out this o-ring was no too large.


So I cut 3/8 inch off and super glued it together, which apparently is an ok practice. Now instead of the 0.070 inch the new o-ring is 0.092 inches thick. Well it now lays in the groove just fine. Maybe slightly thick but it ought to seal tight as the groove will fill up with o-ring when the housing is tightened.


There appeared to be one other possible reason for the leak and that is the seam on the engine side of the o-ring seal. So I dabbed on a little gasket sealer across these two seams and after assembly I suspect the oil leak is repaired.

By the way, two auto parts stores do not list this o-ring for the Metro and the Chevrolet dealer says it is a discontinued part. I wish I would have asked what size o-ring should I order as Chevrolet uses standard o-rings I am quite sure.

I suspect the oil leaked out of this o-ring and dribbled 2 inches down the head into the corner of the exhaust manifold. The manifold shows signs of erosion at this point. With the engine running maybe the positive exhaust pressure kept the oil from burning but with the engine stopped remaining oil leaked into the exhaust system which caused a cloud of smoke out the exhaust mostly at startup. I think the leak was so bad oil eventually did make it into the exhaust manifold all the time. I never did see any smoke from the engine compartment.

I don’t drive this car enough to see the level to change on the dipstick.

The o-ring groove measures 2.209 to 2.403 inches and about 0.050 inches deep. If I need another o-ring I suspect I could order a perfect fit as there is quite a selection.

It is now September of 2010 and the Metro no longer smokes, ever!!!

Repair clothes washing machine

I repaired clothes washing machine today. Water was just dribbling into tub. Found plenty of water at the hose where it enters washing machine. With hose off and glasses on, extra light, and a magnifying lens I was able to see the water filter screen where the hose connects to the machine was plugged.



I was able to clean most of the contaminant out using a small screwdriver and an old tooth brush.



Now plenty of water flows into the washer tub in a beautiful proportional waterfall.

Installing New Vinyl Windows

I helped Jeremy and his father in law replace all the aluminum frame windows on the main floor of Jeremy and Jacie's house. Nate and family came over for the last couple of windows. All 8 windows done in 7 hours. (Whew did we work fast and hard. And I am tiered for sure.)

The dinning room and kitchen window had water vapor between the glass panels. The bedroom windows were single pane still. Should make quite a difference in the comfort of the house next winter. And to be able to see clearly out the fogged up windows will be extra special this spring and summer. The baby coming will have even a nicer, warmer, little nursery.

He had a real deal as Lowe’s had 20% off and the government will allow a 30% rebate at income tax time. (Low ‘E’ and argon filled windows.) Lifetime warranted.

Parking brake weak on Caravan 2000

The parking brake foot pedal hits the floor and the brake does not hold well. I found there is no brake cable adjustment as in many of my previous cars. The footbrake pedal assembly is suppose to automatically take up cable slack and also take up any brake pad wear. I pulled the rear wheel hubs and found a reasonable amount of brake pad like a little over 0.100 inch over the rivets of the pads. But it did not look like the pad automatic slack adjuster was not working. After blowing the dust off and removing the brake assembly parts I found all seemed to be in great shape. Even the adjustment screw turned very easily. Not sure why it is not working. Even with the hub off the adjusters did not take up slack with the brake pedal depressed. So I installed new wheel cylinders, (brake cylinders), $10.50 each. The originals would have been easy to rebuild as there was no pitting. It looked like the pistons were gummed up a little. Linda helped with bleeding the brakes. She is an expert at this and it works out easily as we can work together well. Now let time pass a little and see if the adjusters will now take up the slack. The brakes are working great except for the parking brake is still too slack.

Basement water leak is resolved. I found the 3/4 inch water line had a pinhole leak as it came through the 8 inch basement concrete wall. The hole was 1 inch from the outside and 7 inches from the inside and the 90 degree fitting. The pipe through the wall from the fitting and out into the earth 3 feet was flexible copper that was installed in 1975. The picture shows a slight kink 2 inches from the leak. The leak was where you can see the slit on the left side of the picture.

Next is a closer shot of the leak. The leak was small but after I cleaned up the pipe for examination it looks like the leak would be quite a spray now.




You can see in the next picture the leak occurred quite a was from the slight kink. I checked on the internet and leaks in water pipes occur especially in homes built prior to 1970. The reason for the corrosion causing the leak is unknown. The failure occurred in the only chunk of flexible copper that I used in our water line. About 15 years ago I reconfigured the outside line and remember making a new gentle bend in the flexible pipe, but also remember the slight kink. I am not sure if that contributed to the failure. The bad area is repaired now with standard copper pipe.



The last picture above shows the leaking copper pipe removed.