Skip to main content

Getting to Know More About Cars

I've written before on everything I know about cars which is a lot more than some but no trained mechanics will be shaking in their boots any time soon. In fact quite a few backyard mechanics kick sand in my face too (metaphorically speaking of course).

My vehicle, known as the frog van, recently renamed the old boiler in this Barossa Festival post, has finally succumbed to its overheating problems to the point where I had to do something about it.

I tried to fix it the day before we went to see the Vintage Festival Parade at the town of Nuriootpa. I was thinking it may be a thermostat issue. After much research and consideration about where the thermostat actually was on my van I pulled things apart and did the 'boiling water' test to see if the thermostat would open. It did. Crap!

Essentially that meant I'd wasted a bottle of coolant (which had only been in the engine less than a week), had to replace a perfectly fine thermostat gasket and not found the overheating problem. Still, I now know more about car thermostats and how they work.

That was my last best guess at the problem because the cooling system wasn't leaking or losing water (except to evaporation and the overflow pipe as a result of it overheating). After that I figured it might be a water pump issue but I'm definitely not up for pulling that out. As well I couldn't help feeling that if the water is boiling in the radiator then the water pump must be working because the radiator removes heat from the engine it doesn't actually heat anything up its self.

So I bit the bullet and went in to see a proper mechanic. Described the problem - van overheats at 60kmph or greater but the temperature remains relatively stable at lower speeds during shorter drives.

The mechanic said it sounds like a blocked radiator. Of course! Well I believed him anyway because that sounds cheaper and easier to fix than a water pump. It seems mechanics in my home town are all backed up with work no matter where you go. This guy was no different but suggested I take the van to a specialist radiator mechanic on the other side of town (not that far when you live in a small country town).

When I got to the radiator guy he seemed to concur with the mechanic after I told him the van wasn't leaking. Seemed promising. I asked him when he could take a look at it - he said Thursday (3 days time). Then he asked "Are you able to take the radiator out?"

"Err... well no because I have to drive it here."

"Well we can't look at it unless you take the radiator out yourself because we don't like working on vans. Too fiddly and you have to crawl all around and underneath them - plus it'll save you some money."

You know I might have gone somewhere else if he hadn't of said "plus it'll save you some money".

You might think his attitude to vans is a crock but if you've ever worked on a van engine... I don't blame him.

The frog van's engine is right under the passenger seat. To get the radiator out you have to pull out the drivers seat, remove a panel so you can see more of the engine then crawl under the front to remove the four bolts that hold the radiator in place. See the photo of the van parked in my studio - drivers seat and radiator removed.

It is pretty tricky and I've never taken out a radiator before so I know how to do that now.

Visually, you can't really tell if a radiator is blocked. You can look in from where the radiator cap goes at the top to see a few of the pipes but that doesn't really tell you much. Externally it's got a bit of mud caked into the core but it's all old mud that was there long before the van started overheating (we're talking previous owner old because I've not really driven on anything except sealed roads).

At the moment the frog van is out of action. At the time of writing this there's still two days to go before I can take the radiator in to get it fixed, cleaned and unblocked (or re-cored even). I just hope this will solve the problem.

Over the next few days I suspect I'm going to be learning even more about cars. The van has a fairly serious 'running on' problem. For the uninitiated that's where you turn the engine off via the key and the car keeps running until it runs out of fuel in the cylinder heads.

It's not so bad most of the time but again, after a long drive, it can run on for quite some time requiring me to put the car in gear to 'stall' the engine.

Should you be reading this and you know how to fix that kind of problem please let me know in the comments. You'll be doing me a great favor and who knows, I may just write about you in this continuing saga of the frog van.

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

Skateboard Trick Tips: Two Ways to Ollie North (Ollie One foot)

You have to be quick to see my Ollie Norths! Ollie One Foots, otherwise known as the Ollie North, is one of those skateboard tricks you learn and then tend not to do very much as more interesting trick challenges grab your attention. However it does look really cool if you learn how to kick your front foot well past the nose of your skateboard. Still shot from Braille Skateboarding's Ollie North tutorial. I was inspired to make my video below, showing two different techniques to achieve a successful Ollie One Foot, when I not only saw that Braille Skateboarding's Tutorial used a different method to the one I had learned but also, when I looked at various other video tutorials, I discovered yet another technique, with no one using the method I had originally learned. Braille's method is to simply Ollie and drag your front foot past the front of your board. The second method I came across in several video tutorials is to Ollie, drag your front foot and tap your

How to Transfer Any Line Art to Your Griptape - Easy Skateboard Griptape Art Tutorial

Dog Star Griptape Art by TET Griptape art is once again gaining popularity amongst modern skateboarders. For those of us who have tried to create our own griptape art, using paint pens, you'll know reproducing your design onto the grip, without making any mistakes is incredibly challenging. Mostly because you just have to go for it and draw the design freehand, with paint pens, directly onto the griptape. You can make the odd mistake here or there but if you get the proportions of the design completely wrong, it can be very difficult to fix. Often you just have to live with the mistake. To address the problem I've come up with an easy way anyone can transfer a line art design to their griptape, removing almost all the anxiety of getting the proportions wrong. In fact, you could do this with any line art design, even if you have no drawing skill at all. Watch the video below to see my technique in action and/or skip past the video where I highlight the basic steps to get your de

Review: FP Footwear FINO Skate Shoes

FP Footwear FINO Skate Shoes I first saw FP's FINO skate shoes in a video by YouTube channel, Braille Skateboarding, titled, THE FIRST EVER NON NEWTONIAN FLUID SKATE SHOES!? As someone whose feet hurt and bruise relatively easily just from the basic tricks of skateboarding (Ollies, Pop Shuv-its etc.) the 90% absorption of impact energy selling point seemed like an ideal solution for minimizing my injuries. A day later I placed an order through FP's website . ​​ Ordinarily I wouldn't mention Customer Service but I can't let the lack of communication on my order slide. FP's website says to expect delivery within 7-14 days of your order. After close to two weeks, my order was still marked as being processed. I sent an email asking for any kind of update, to no response. A day or two later my order was marked as completed but still no signs of shoes in my mail? About two weeks later (just over a full month of placing my order) the shoes arrived. I'm sur

Can You Learn Skateboarding Basics on a Cheap Skateboard?

$20, Mambo 31" x 8", Department Store Skateboard. Over the years I've watched many high profile YouTube skateboarders repeatedly create videos where they purchase a cheap, department store skateboard, ride it like they would their regular professional skateboard, until it breaks (usually within an hour or so), and claim that as a reason for steering clear of these products. ​Inadvertently what they're doing is creating less demand for cheap skateboards, meaning it's less likely department stores will stock them, resulting in no easy way for first time skaters to 'test the waters' to see if skating is really for them. Even worse, parents looking to get their children into a new sport, may not even see skateboarding as an option as they browse through the department store sports section. At the time of writing, Australian department stores have shelves filled with many different brands of scooters, alongside a small shelf or two of skateboards (and

Movie Review: Air (2023) Amazon Prime *No Spoilers*

I imagine the general story of how the world's greatest basketballer, Michael Jordan, was signed to Nike doesn't sound all that compelling on a surface level. From his point of view it was a few meetings and making the right choice of which shoe company to sign with. However Air fleshes the story out by finding the key players at Nike and showing the behind the scenes drama that enabled them to take a risk on, what was then an exciting, up and coming rookie, who already had a choice of two leading shoe companies to sign with. Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, the visionary at Nike who saw the future potential of Michael Jordan as a sure thing. He knew Michael wasn't just a great basket ball player but had to find a way to convince his CEO, Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), to make a winning pitch to the Jordan family, and particularly Jordan's mother (Viola Davis), that Nike had their son's best interests at heart. From what I understand both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon did

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (2023) *No Spoilers*

If you've enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1 and Volume 2 then  Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3  will not disappoint. I would almost go so far as to call it the best in the series... except seeing the first movie for the first time is still one of my best memories of the MCU. While it's not essential to the story if you didn't see the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special on Disney+ it does kind of lead into and set up where the Guardians are at in Volume 3 quite nicely. In this installment Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is still not coping with the loss of his timeline's Gamora (Zoe Saldada) when suddenly the team is attacked leaving Rocket (Bradley Cooper) in a very bad way. From then on it's a race to save Rocket as we learn quite a bit about his origin in the process. This movie is slightly darker than the first two and, if you're concerned about the animal cruelty that is causing some people to not want to see the film again, keep in mind, it's j

How I Lost Rock-to-Fakies (and Tried to Get Them Back) - A Skateboard Story

TET, Rock-to-Fakie attempt No# 43 (maybe?) Rock-to-Fakies, the act of riding your skateboard up a ramp, hanging half your board over the lip, then lifting your board back into the ramp, and riding out backwards, is one of the most basic ramp tricks. Bored Monkey Classic Popsicle Skateboard . See more deck shapes . Yet I can't do them anymore. At one time I could, without giving it any thought - even on my home 5' high mini ramp with an extra foot of vert extension added to the top of the transition. But as my skating got less, and skateboard spots with ramps diminished through the mid to late 1990s, I got out of practice. I did have a two foot tall, driveway mini, quarter pipe (with coping) I used to practice my mini ramp tricks on. Then one fateful day (I say that because this is scarred into my brain) I tried a rock-to-fakie and the tail of my skateboard dug into the pave stones at the base of the ramp as I came down, throwing me, hard, back into the ground