March 18-25, 2013: the oil cooler

This past weekend I accomplished rebuilding my engine oil cooler on my truck. It took me roughly 16 hours, but I did it. As you can see in the photos, I took it out, resealed it and put it back in. Unfortunately, I am still using a lot of engine oil and oil is still showing up in the radiator. I didn't have the time when the cooler was out to pressure test it ( or the correct tooling), but I am quite confident with my job of resealing it. I have deduced that my problem still is either a bad cooler itself or I have a unique head gasket leak that is not affecting anything but, oil in the coolant. I hope to further test this engine soon because as of now I am consuming a lot of oil and flushing my coolant system daily. I learned a lot about how these coolers work through online research and from taking it apart. Furthermore, I have come that much closer to figuring out everything that is going on when I drive away in this truck.

Hours: 25
Hours to date: 355

March 11-18,2013: wiring harnesses and a bad oil cooler.

This past week has been interesting to say the least. I seem to keep running into serious fixes with this truck of mine. To describe it quickly I basically have an engine oil cooler that went bad and is leaking oil into the coolant. On thursday I was driving and my heat just stopped, but I still had air blowing. I lifted the hood to find a oil water milkshake spilling out of my radiator. So I spent a lot of time learning about how to reseal my cooler. There are a few pictures of the engine drains for when I change the coolant. I also got to install new wiring harnesses on a couple light plants. There was a warranty issue with the relays vibrating on the engine and malfunctioning. A good week and ready for the next.

Hours: 30
Hours to date: 330

March 4-11,2013: scissor lifts, skid steers and solenoids

This past week I replaced more hoses on a scissor lift, watched Jesse finish the glow plug/ top end repair of a skid steer and learned about applications of electronic solenoids. I ended up finding and learning about a common spot that hydraulic hoses go bad on small scissor lifts. It is on the front drive and steer tires. The hoses flex a lot and tend to crack or split as you can see in the photos. I also learned a little bit more about how solenoids are used In different applications. As you can see in the photo, one solenoid is used as a choke actuator and the other is for spring tension on the throttle cable for low and high speed travel. I also watched Jesse do some head work on a skid steer that had a glow plug rust and brake off in the head so he had to take it out. So nice to hear it fire right up when he was finished! Another great week an on to the next one.

Hours: 15
Hours to date: 300

Feb 25- March 4, 2013: glow plug installation and Hydraulic cylinder removal

This past week has been awesome! I finally installed my new 12 glow plugs in my truck and they work great. Just as expected. They can take up to a minute on a cold morning to heat up and start the truck, but I don't have to worry about them swelling because they are self regulating. The get hot and stay hot and don't blow up. I also helped remove one of the lift cylinders on a large scissor lift. It was great to see the insides of this cylinder. It had a good leak so it had to come out for a rebuild. Another great week all in all.

Hours: 25
Hours to date: 285