SPQ13: Week of April 22, 2013. Welding and Ford suspension

This week I had the opportunity to expand on my practice of welding. As you can see in my photos, I learned how to weld a good bead. I do however need to learn to better setup a welder so as I can get less material on the weld. I also need to learn how to "pool" my weld better so I get more coverage. I also completed what they call the " ford hanger swap" on my truck. I used a torch and cut the stock rivets off and flipped the stock leaf spring hanger so I get an instant 3" lift. Really cool to see it all come together. I included a new app that was discovered in class. It is the parker fitting finder. You simple give it all the measurements and it shows you your fitting. Its a great tool to become familiar with. Overall a lot of new skills learned this week!

Hours: 40
Hours to date: 163

SPQ13, Week of April 15th. Relays and welding

This past week was another great one. I still can't quench my thirst of electricity and probably never will. As you can see in some of my photos I took apart another bad relay. I love learning about all the different types of failures that can occur. This as you can see had some very bad contacts. I also got some great practice with welding and cutting torches too. I got the opportunity to cut some flat bar steel and weld it to the teeth of two dig buckets. Welding to me is a skill I hope to polish into a very useful craft. Towards the end of my second bucket I got the bead looking pretty good for how little practice I have had welding.

Hours: 40
Hours to date: 123

SPQ13: Week of April 8, Quinn

This week I have learning a ton on how alternators work. Just today I had a JCB forklift at work that had a dead battery and after jumping it it had no charging voltage. You can see in my photo some of the specific tests they say to do to diagnosis what is wrong. I can safely say that I have wrapped my head around how an alternator works and what can go wrong. I got some more experience with mechanical injectors from colt's engine he is rebuilding. I got to tinker around with them and get one of them to perform well ( pop pressure, spray and no dribbles), the other however not so much. So we ended up ordering new nozzles for both. Learning how a mechanical injector works by taking one apart is helping me to understand these new fuel systems a lot more.

Hours: 40
Hours to date: 83

SPQ13: Week of April 1, Quinn

This past week was great. Learned a lot. First week back to school and a great repair job on a chipper. So this chipper wasn't putting out any charging power. It turned out to be a bad stator and flywheel. The alternator is part of the engine and flywheel. I learned some very key diagnoses procedures. I learned about checking the continuity of the stator to see if it was good. I also learned about delaminated magnets on the inside of the flywheel. In conclusion, I was able to remember how to find shorts in a circuit at school with a light bulb. Great week!

Hours 42
Hours to date 42

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