Alfa Spider water pump update

I got started on removal of the faulty Alfa Spider water pump this a.m. In order to make room to get at it, I needed to remove the radiator, fan, fan shroud, drive belt and associated hoses and other bit pieces.

Got started draining the cooling system and then removing parts. Everything actually went pretty smoothly. A couple nuts and bolts were sorta tough to get at but nothing too bad.

I was most worried about removal of the water pump itself, as it is mounted to the motor on studs in the engine block and I had read stories of having to either double-nut and remove a couple of these studs or worse yet pull off the crankshaft pulley, not something I was looking forward to.

Lucky for me though as I got all 9 little nuts/bolts off the water pump I was able to wiggle it and apply very slight pry pressure it came right off! BINGO!

Now I await the new water pump which should arrive from my friends at International Auto on Monday. Who knows she may be back up and running smoothly sometime next week if reassembly goes well!

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Grand Funk Tune o' the Day

Today's Grand Funk tune is "Black Licorice", from the platinum certified (over 1,000,000 copies sold) album "We're an American Band" released in 1973.

This tune is highlighted by a lot of organ playing by keyboardist Craig Frost, who joined the original trio of Farner, Brewer and Schacher in 1973.

Good tune...crank it up and enjoy....

Weekend projects

Looks like a pretty busy weekend ahead.

Saturday I need to start working on the water pump replacement project on the 1986 Alfa Romeo Spider. A couple weeks ago I started hearing some odd noises under the hood of the Spider and traced it to a failing water pump (pic of pump below). So the pump is ordered and on the way but Saturday I will start dis-assembly, which means the cooling system will be drained, drive belt, radiator, fan shroud and fan removed and then I can get at the water pump and try to get it off. Kind of a pain in the rear job on this car compared to some others.

Sunday my friend Scottie the Canuck is coming over and we are gonna rip his Honda Accord dash apart and install some little electronic device so he can have better fidelity from his Sirius satellite radio.

So this stuff and yardwork will keep me busy for the weekend.

Heading home from the desert

For the past few days I have been in Phoenix, AZ working at a client site. This large credit union has purchased Fiserv software and I am here to support a "mock" go-live of these products in preparation for the "real" go live in a couple weeks.

So it has been an interesting and busy few days as we have been spending long hours at the credit union but the mock is now over and it went pretty well :)

Yesterday we were happy to get a lunch break so we paid a visit to the famous "In-n-Out" Burger joint down the road near Arizona State University. It was a good burger and hand cut french fries.

I am on the way back home to Florida soon and am looking forward to being back in good ol' Deland. Here are a few really crummy camera phone pics...

Breva exhaust repair and bloodfest

One of today's projects was to effect a repair on a cracked exhaust pipe/weld on the Moto Guzzi Breva. I noticed this crack about a week ago while doing a periodic inspection of the bike.

So I went about removing the exhaust header pipes, muffler and associated clamps to give me some room to work on the crack. The crack is located where the left side header pipe feeds into mid-pipe located under the bike.

After i gave myself a little room to work I cleaned up the cracked area with a wire brush fitting on the end of a drill. Then I mixed up a batch of a substance called ThermoSteel, a steel cold weld product that can be used to repair cracks and holes and will resist temps up to 2400 degrees fahrenheit. I coated the crack with this substance and let it dry for a few hours and then went about putting the exhaust back together.

This is where the story takes an unfortunate turn. As I was reinstalling a high tension spring (i.e. takes a lot of force to pull it back into place) which assists in holding together the mid-pipe and the rear exhaust pipe, my long handled needle nose pliers slipped off the spring, the spring went shooting across the garage and the needle nose end of the pliers came back into my forehead, leaving a good sized gash that began to bleed copious amount of blood.

Luckily I was wearing one of my white trash t-shirts and I immediately began to sop the blood into that. Eventually I applied a band-aid which it soaked through and am now on band-aid numero dos. Friggin head wounds tend to bleed a lot.

Oh well, the bike is all back together and hopefully this little weld job will hold. Here are a few pics, including one of the dreaded spring. Click pics to enlarge.....

Taking flight

This morning I awoke bright n early, hopped in the Alfa 164 and zoomed down to Champ Pilot Jim's house so we could head to Bob White airport and a flight in Jim's 1946 Aeronca Champ!

It's been months I think since I have had a flight in the Champ and it was great fun. We flew south toward Disney and saw some other small grass airfields along the way. We also saw some para-gliders along the way.

Toward the end we landed at a nearby airport where we refueled and then back to the skies and our final destination of Bob White airfield. 'Twas a great morning of flight!

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Cap'n Jim enjoys the Champ stability with some hands free flying!

Bit o' this and bit o' that

It's been a little while since I posted so here's a bit of what's been going on....

Work has been pretty busy of late. Lot's of client banks upgrading to newer versions of our software and a lot of support needed for them. In fact, it is looking like next weekend and then a couple weeks after that I will be heading to Phoenix, AZ for a few days to support a client out there. So a little travel is on the horizon.

The a/c in my Alfa Romeo 164L sedan stopped blowing cold the other day, which was rather disappointing considering that just 4 weeks ago major surgery had been done to most all the a/c components in the car. Turns out it was just a leak in one of the fittings which was allowing the freon (cooling) chemical to escape. The shop diagnosed this, repaired the leaky fitting, recharged the system with freon and she's blowin' cold again! Nice to see that bill....$0.00 :)

Thursday night I went with some pals to see the Daytona Cubs, the baseball single A farm team for the Chicago Cubs. They played the Brevard Manatees, single A farm club for the Milwaukee Brewers. The Cubs lost to the division leading Manatees, but we had a good time at Jackie Robinson Field, located on the inter coastal waterway in Daytona Beach, FL. Below are a few pics, including good ol' Mikey who, as is is habit, sneaked off into the opposing teams bullpen area and jabbered with the players.