All Better (now with pics)

"Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness" (long-voyager-2nd-edition)
05/07/2019 at 10:08 • Filed to: wrenching, weekend wrenching

Got home Friday to find my car filled with goodies ( the wife and kids thought it’s be funny to sneak them to the car because they knew I’d been waiting for them ):

So I got it up on stands and set to work:

Got the faulty side apart:

The shoe material had separated and would wedge into the rear shoe in reverse, which was causing my issue. Tearing the brakes apart notified me of my rear wheel bearings that were also on their last legs, so I ordered them as well from the local parts store.

I then set into putting the new rear parts on, but decided I needed more color behind my wheels. I had my oldest daughter pick a new color for the brakes:

While she was painting the brake drums/calipers, I put the new shoes in:

Got the new brakes done and reinstalled the wheels:

Then I set into the fuel system. I had spliced it over winter to get it through winter and the tank was bad enough it would “weep” around the pump:

Out came the tank and lines. Ran all new lines from the engine bay back and installed the new tank/pump/sending unit:

It’s not the most perfect line job, but it’s functional. All in all everything went off without a hitch.

Also managed to clean the house from top to bottom Saturday to prepare for the oldest daughter’s Bday party, took 2 van loads of kids bowling for her Bday, and went and chilled out on my friends’ 120 acres while the kids “got lost” in the woods. Dropped everyone off yesterday morning, got groceries, then went back to work. My oldest daughter was out there most of the afternoon helping out.

DISCUSSION (34)

random001 > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/06/2019 at 07:26

Which car? THE car?

We cleaned the entire house this weekend, too. Spring Deep clean, two days of grueling labor. But the house looks great!

pip bip - choose Corrour > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/06/2019 at 07:28

clean the house?

with me it’s a case of hire a skip..

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > random001
05/06/2019 at 07:37

THE CAR!

Ended up finding tires cheap at Jefferson and finding out it was the sway bar bushings making noise not the struts, so I ordered the parts to fix it.

We usually keep the house pretty clean so it was just vacuum/mop/clean bathroom/dishes/etc so it looks presentable. Honestly our house “dirty” is cleaner than a lot of people’s houses “clean”.

random001 > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/06/2019 at 07:51

Same here, but after pollen season is nearly over here, we do the deep clean, which includes moving all the furniture, not something we usually do, and pulling all the rugs, cleaning under them, vacuuming the bottoms, scrubbing the baseboards, fixing wall paint, etc.

My wife will complain that the house is dirty because today’s laundry is sitting in a pile waiting for the iron later in the evening. sigh....

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > random001
05/06/2019 at 07:54

Thanks to having a dog that sheds year round, we do that weekly, except scrubbing baseboards and painting.

The wife watches kids during the day, so keeping a tidy house with kids around is important.

random001 > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/06/2019 at 07:57

Yeah, I hear you! We haven’t had a dog in a couple years, thankfully, but I well remember those days...

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > random001
05/06/2019 at 10:05

He’s 14, so he’s getting up there. We almost lost him when he developed diabetes, thankfully a couple shots of insulin a day have brought him back to normal. Sadly the diabetes also took his sight, but he’s been with us long enough that he knows the house/yard, so he still does fine.

It’s going to be a bad day when he finally goes. We will all miss him.

Chariotoflove > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/06/2019 at 10:18

You were a productive boi. That’s quite a list.

I made cannoli cupcakes.

random001 > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/06/2019 at 10:33

That is always tough. I lost my cat that I’d had for nearly 17 years. She developed a ruptured eyeball, but was otherwise very healthy. She was in pain, though, and there was nothing to be done. I still miss her.

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > random001
05/06/2019 at 12:05

When he gets to the point he’s no longer living comfortably, we’ll have to have him put down. As he is now, he’s just a lazy dog, just like he’s always been, so he’ll hopefully be around for a while yet.

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Chariotoflove
05/06/2019 at 12:06

Cannoli cupcakes sound amazing!

Chariotoflove > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/06/2019 at 21:29

Cannoli cream filling inside and on top. Covered with slivered almonds. I made one my dinner because I’m an adult and no one can stop me.

Kinja'd!!!

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Chariotoflove
05/07/2019 at 06:59

Those look really good! Excellent work!

Under_Score > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 07:41

W hen is the Charger/300/unknown vehicle coming into the picture?

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Under_Score
05/07/2019 at 07:44

Given I was able to fix the car cheap, not until a major failure of something we have. Until then we’re saving money to hopefully be able to just buy something outright. It will definitely be a Charger/300 when it happens.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 08:03

You even painted the springs that no one will ever see...you are an ambitious man

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Chariotoflove
05/07/2019 at 08:06

Do you have a link or something for the recipe? Those sound amazing.

Under_Score > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 10:05

Sorry, but $250+/ month for a reliable vehicle >>> $250+/month repairing a vehicle. The last time any car in my family needed repairs was my sister’s Rogue last summer, and it was $1,000+ doing a big service. It’s also a 2008. Otherwise, it’s been gas, oil changes, tire rotations, and whatever else is recommended at service intervals.

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
05/07/2019 at 10:07

I didn’t paint them ( assuming you’re talking about the springs on the shoes ), they are color coded from factory.

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Under_Score
05/07/2019 at 10:21

It’s not actually $250/month repairing though. I spent $300 in parts and everything is sorted, so it shouldn’t need anything else for quite some time. As it stands I have roughly $1,200 in the car total, and it’s already given us over a year and 30k miles of reliable use, even beating the living hell out of it . With this bout of repair literally everything has been gone through/repaired/replaced on it, so I should be able to get a lot more miles on it before it needs anything else. It’s more like $50/month at worst to keep the car on the road, plus it gets better fuel economy than most new cars (25-30 average, 36+ hwy), and is extremely cheap to insure ($25/month).

My 1994 Voyager has been the most troublesome this year, but it’s given us something like 3 years and almost 100k miles since the last major repair, so even the $700 ish I just stuck in it to get it back on the road only amounts to about $20/month in repairs, and again, everything has been gone through/sorted now.

Even our 1992 only has about $400 tied in it currently including purchase, it’s issues were sorted before putting it on the road, and we’ve already logged 6k trouble free miles on it since we got it.

Realistically we’re maybe spending $100-150 /month on 3 vehicles. Any of which I wouldn’t hesitate to take on a road trip right now.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 10:41

Yea, those are what I was talking about. I can’t say I’ve ever seen those color coded before

Under_Score > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 10:49

That’s actually a lot better than I thought. It sounded like something was going wrong every week with your fleet, but if they should stay reliable, that’s good.

Chariotoflove > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 11:22

Thanks!

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Chariotoflove
05/07/2019 at 12:02

2nd MasterMario, gonna need a recipe on these.

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
05/07/2019 at 12:06

I don’t think I’ve ever got springs that weren’t?!?!?

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Under_Score
05/07/2019 at 12:09

The beginning of this year was rough, so I was working more than usual.

That being said, I waste a lot of time doing unnecessary mods and things too, which make it seem like I’m working on stuff more than I actually am.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 12:09

Weird, I’ve never bought a whole set though. Only individual one’s when needed, maybe that’s why?

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
05/07/2019 at 12:27

Maybe, I’ve always just done the whole set, I figure if one is bad the rest aren’t far behind.

Chariotoflove > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
05/07/2019 at 13:36

My girls found this recipe for a cannoli cake online, and made the cake for my birthday . It includes a cake batter, but when I made my cupcakes, I just used a yellow cake recipe from one of my cookbooks

There are many cannoli cream recipes around, and they can be very different . This one uses both ricotta and mascarpone for filling and frosting in one. It’s very good, but there is one essential step we learned that you must not skip : drain all trace of liquid from your cheeses in the fridge overnight. If you don’t, it will turn out to be too runny. And by runny I mean it will seem fine in the fridge, but as soon as it warms to room temp., it gets too thin to spread or to fill a cannoli shell, if you decide to do that.

I used the filling to both fill the cakes and to frost liberally. The filling blends into the cake while it sits in the fridge and makes the whole thing even better a day or two later.

Another thing I noted, you can see the filling looks a little orange-ish in the pic. That’s partly the lighting and partly because I beat the filling in the mixer a bit longer after I added the chocolate chips. So, the chocolate imparted a bit of its color to the mixture. If you want your cannoli cream to stay a nice creamy white, you might want to mix in the chips at the very end.

Chariotoflove > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness
05/07/2019 at 13:38

Done!

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Chariotoflove
05/07/2019 at 13:39

Thank you!

Chariotoflove > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
05/07/2019 at 13:41

Post your efforts if you make it.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > Chariotoflove
05/07/2019 at 13:44

Will do, but credit will most likely be going to my wife since she’s the baker.

Chariotoflove > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s
05/07/2019 at 13:46

I’m sure she’d love to bask in the approval of a bunch of anonymous gear heads!