Tomorrow morning will be day ten of the Nellybelle oil pump restoration project. This has been a rather stressful ten days, abated somewhat by the fact that I'm doing the repairs in the garage at a friend's house and there's no real time pressure on getting it completed (one of the reasons why it's taken ten days). It looks like we're almost ready to call it a wrap, which is kinda worrisome since there are several bolts and an odd bracket we can't seem to find a place to mount!
The engine starts but I've got some SERIOUS belt squealing issues. Looks like the harmonic balancer is wanked out of alignment. It was a major bitch to get it off so there's a fair chance that we did terminal damage removing it. Add one harmonic balancer to the growing list of parts. If it doesn't go oblong on me really quick the good news is that I replaced the water pump, oil pump, oil sending unit, timing gears and chain, and..soon...the harmonic balancer. Now all I have left to do up front is everything to do with suspension and steering. Probably nothing another five hundred dollars in parts won't address. Argh.
I don't really have a choice on the suspension repairs. I was hoping to do those at this juncture but my oil pressure was dropping to zero at idle and I didn't want to seize up my engine. Nellybelle only has 205,000 miles on her so there's probably another 300,000 miles left to go before I wear out the rings. If she'd been run in a wintry environment she'd have long ago rusted out, but seeing as how she spent all but the last couple years in the sunny south there's no rust on her at all, a REAL rarity for a 93 Dodge minivan. Matter of fact, her otherwise pristine condition is the only reason I'm sticking with her in lieu of a newer vehicle. No matter what I'd buy to replace her with I'm sure I'd end up having to dump a bunch of money getting her replacement back in top condition. These days it's very rare to get a vehicle of this caliber that's been properly maintained so I'm going with the old adage "It's cheaper to keep her". If she runs long enough for me to collect up another five hundred dollars in suspension parts before imploding, that'll be on the plate next. I have to have her ready to run in the spring so I can do the recon involved with finding a good spot of ground for my tiny home. I expect a fair bit of intrastate travel this spring/summer as I bounce around the front range and that's not gonna happen with the current suspension issues.
I'm blessed to have a vehicle to fix at all, so I'm not going to let a flurry of major repairs harsh my mellow.
Enjoy.
