02 Base for my son

[Snowbound]

Maybe I can do this real quick, I have a few things to get done here at work so I might get too busy to do this later.

Monday I slept like sheet. 11am-2pm and then wide awake. Fell back asleep about 4pm and up at 6. Forget it, might as well just stay up. Went out to garage.
I previously jammed everything in my garage over to one side in preparation for my garage addition. Due to the concrete supply that never happened. I need to get my sled in but don’t want to kick my wife out so I spent some time cleaning and moving things back into the attached shed. I wasn’t worried about being organized because this stuff still needs to be gone thru and put away once the garage is built. I just need to access it when I need it but get it out of way so I can work on my sled.
Took everything off the metal racking and stacked it up, cleaned the floor in shed, reattached some wood shelving and bench in shed then moved rack over to shed and threw everything in shed to get out of garage. Hard to believe this was completely empty 2-1/2 hrs prior to this picture. Lol.


I can almost see the outside wall again in the garage! This picture was Tuesday morning.


I’ve been living like this for a year and a half now and it’s driving me absolutely crazy.
Went to work Monday night and crashed in the morning when I got home. Woke up about 2:30 and Jack called and said the intrepid was acting up. Said engine light was on and it was running rough. Had him drop it off but still had clean up the garage and changed the oil in the 02 Caddy so I didn’t get to it until the next day.

As far as those packages go, I need to change the front end on my truck, do the shocks, rear backing plates and parking brake shoes. So I ordered these parts.
Rear calipers
Backing plates
Shoes
Hardware kit
Axle seals
U-joints for rear driveshaft
Front hub bearing
Inner and outer tie rods with sleeve
Idler arm and bracket
Pitman arm
Upper a-arms with alignment bolts
Sway bar end links and bushings
Bilstein 5100 shocks
Lower ball joints
Hub bearing mounting bolts



Next weekend I have to pull a tractor to southern Illinois for a buddy and we have a trip planned to go to Tennessee beginning of October. Any time I get a vehicle I like to replace the front end just for a piece of mind and then I know everything is new and it’ll all be under warranty. That’s just what I like to do. I never really went over the front end of this 2500 when I got it and I don’t wanna be doing it during snowmobile season.

 

[Snowbound]

Wednesday when I got home from work in morning I hooked up scanner to the intrepid and is has miss fire on #3 cylinder. Fuel trims on bank 1 were -99% so that tells me injector is dumping fuel.
Got started on that right away. Had to pull upper plenum and lower intake. Only reason I pulled lower intake was because the bolts that hold the fuel rails are the intake bolts. Once I removed the inner 4 bolts I knew the intake was gonna leak if I didn’t replace the gasket.


Upper radiator hose was soft so I’m gonna replace that as well. Have to pull the right headlight out to get to the hose on radiator.


The lower core support is pushed in so the radiator, condenser and coolers are sitting at an angle.


This sucks but I’m not gonna remove everything and try to straighten it. I couldn’t get the clamp off because the top support is on the hose!

 

[Snowbound]

Time to improvise. I cut out part of the top support just to clear the hose.



Nobody local had the injectors so I had to order them. Parts ordered were injectors, intake gasket set, radiator hoses, fuel filter and knock sensor because it’s under the intake and I’m here.
Got done with that about 11:30am and ready to call it a day when the wife tells me the AC stopped working in the house. Checked that out and it’s the capacitor for the fan and pump. Ordered that so I’ll have to replace that as soon as I get it.

I’ll get everything cleaned up and ready to go back together in morning and then go to bed. Wake up around 5 and see it I can’t get it back together and running again before I have to leave for work.

 

[pwtr02ss]

Man, you sure do get a lot of stuff done! Very nice!

I'm always looking forward to your updates. Great work as always

 

[Snowbound]

That intrepid is done. Haven’t had time to update.
I ended up blasting and painting the lower intake before putting it back on. I even cleaned the fuel rails and painted them as well.


Everything back together.


I ran some coolant flush thru it and went to drain it and couldn’t get to drain on radiator. That bottom core support being pushed back made it hard to get to. Also noticed the trans lines were against the tensioner pulley for ac belt. I couldn’t even get the belt off the pulley they were so close. The pulley wore past the plastic retaining clip that held the trans lines to bottom core support and were just rubbing on the lines themselves. So before I could drain the radiator of the flush I had to try to move that lower crossmember.

Had to use a 1-1/4” PVC pipe to hold a socket to top of bottle jack because I don’t have 3 arms and pushed the support forward.


Now I was able to drain coolant flush but had to do it again because it still was nasty orange color. But I had plenty of room to change belt and get lines off tensioner. I moved that thing 2” probably.


New coolant, both belts and both radiator hoses changed. Good to go again. For now.

 

[Snowbound]

Started working on the sled to get maintenance done for season. That trailer I said I put bed liner on for ski glides, they work great and can’t beat free.


Sled pulled apart for oil change and chain case inspection. This time I removed lower panel on side which made it a lot easier to pull oil tank and chain cover.


Had to drill 9 rivets to get the lower panel off. Instead of riveting it back on I decided to install some 6mm nutserts and grabbed some pan head bolts. This is gonna make it easier every time.


Gonna do a coolant flush this time around too. Hope to be done by the end of month so I can drag it back up when we go to move garage.

 

[Snowbound]

Last couple times I drove the Caddy it threw a check engine light for knock sensor. Figured I may as well change them out instead of resetting the light so I dove in yesterday morning after work.




This explains why I was setting a code.
Front sensor.


Rear

 

[Snowbound]

Valve covers were leaking pretty good so I decided to replace them as well. Got everything apart and started to clean it up but ran out of steam so I called it a day and went to bed.


Brought everything to work with me tonight and cleaned it all up. I’ll start the process of putting back together when I get home.

 

[Snowbound]

May as well fill you in on this past weekend because it just shows how things always go for me.

Buddy of mine wanted me to pull a tractor down to his property in southern Illinois.
Couple key details. I wanted to make sure everything was good on my Duramax so I ordered all those parts. Probably $1400 worth of parts. But I wanted to get it done anyway so that’s not that big of a deal.
My anniversary was Friday the 9th so I figured the wife and I would make the run and we would make the weekend out of it. Leave Saturday morning and come back Sunday afternoon. So she searched for a hotel in the area and found one. Told me she can reserve a king suite with a whirlpool in the room for $135 for Saturday night. But it’s normally $210/night but if we reserve it non refundable we can save that much. I said sure, we’re going so just do it.
The guy that wanted me to drag the tractor down said he knew I was busy as hell all the time so he told me the trailer rental was $135/day and instead of him playing middle man he would pay me $1000 for my trouble but asked if I could handle the trailer rental. No big deal. I figured I would just use my trailer anyway so I’ll save that money. But if you remember, maybe you don’t, when I loaded my K5 on my trailer it bottomed out the suspension. That’s when I found out they sent me 4 leaf spring packs instead of 5. I was past the warranty and they wouldn’t do anything for me even though it was their mistake. I should have found this out sooner is what I was told.
So I ordered another 2 sets of springs that were 5 leaf for $220. Changed the springs at my storage lot in the rain which was a PITA but at least that was done and I had my trailer ready to go.
The weekend before last which was Labor Day weekend we had a wedding to attend on Saturday and a party at my friends on Sunday. Sunday at the party I get a call from tractor guy and he tells me he has good news. His nephew got a trailer from his work and is bringing tractor down for him while he’s down there for that holiday weekend and all week. WTF!?
Told Jess and she said well, I guess you lost the money for the room too. I have $1800 invested plus my time to move this tractor and it’s not happening. But really only the room because truck and trailer needed the new parts anyway but could have waited. I said screw it, let’s ride down on the bike Saturday, take back roads and make a day of it for our anniversary. She liked the idea so that was the plan.
Thursday I find out it’s gonna be storming all weekend so that killed the bike idea. Screw it, we’ll still go and take the truck. So we did. It poured all the way there, but we still got to spend some time together. Went to a fancy steak house and ate like kings and then got our drink on that night and had a good time. Didn’t go to bed until almost 2am.
6am Sunday morning my daughter calls and she’s been up all night puking and wants momma and dadda! Drag my still half buzzed *** out of bed, throw out stuff in truck and haul *** back home thru the pouring rain and thunderstorms again. 90mph still took us 5 hours to get home.
This is my life in a nutshell. Even when I try to get away for some R&R it always backfires on me and I feel like I’m always running.
This coming weekend we are gonna try to head up to Lake Geneva on the bike for her birthday and meet up with some friends but I’m sure it’ll rain again or something will come up to screw it up for me.

 

[Tonyrodz]

YOU ARE A BEAST JIM!! I don't know how you do it.