Bikerscum - Patrick St. Jean

I got the call I was waiting for this morning, the dealer letting me know that the Jeep was ready. I got a lift over there and picked it up. Turns out that they replaced all 12 lifters, reground the valves, and installed new valve seals. It's running well now, no ticking noises to be heard. The only bummer is that they washed it. I'd worked for years to get that patina on the finish and now it's all nice and shiny, with a coat of wax even! It is good to have it back, clean and shiny or not.

I got a call from the service writer this morning. It looks like it was the lifters and they've got the parts they need on order. It should be completed some time on Friday. That's kind of a bummer because there's things I need to be doing that need a vehicle that has cargo capacity which the Harley lacks.

I dropped it off this morning feeling really frustrated. The engine had been ticking and tapping constantly, until I got about a half of a mile from the dealership. I told them that and they promised to check it out again.

Later on in the evening, I got a call from the service writer. They found the oil leaks. It turns out that both the rear main seal and the oil pan gasket were leaking. And wonder upon wonders, they actually reproduced the noises that I've been hearing. Their engine guy is going to take a look at it tomorrow.

I picked the Jeep up this evening, having gotten all of the regular maintenance work and the fan switch repairs completed. They're still stumped by the oil leak and the engine noise so they've put some dye in the oil and have asked me to drive it around and bring it back on Monday to see if they can tell a little better where it's coming from.

I've been having some bad clatter, sounding like the top-end, but since I'm only marginally qualified to diagnose my Sportster, and then only once I've taken it apart, I decided to bring it to the dealer today since it's still under the 7 years/70,000 miles warranty.

As I was talking to the service writer about it I remembered that I'd seen some oil leaking around the transmission and oil pan and mentioned it to him. He seemed to think that it might be the main seal going, which is a bummer, but hopefully if it's that it's covered under the warranty. They're also going to try to track down that clatter and are going to fix the broken fan switch as well, which was just an annoyance but since it's in the shop already I might as well get it done.

Updates to follow...

After noticing some really bad tire wear, I decided that I've got to figure out what's really wrong. The wear pattern on the front tires indicated a camber problem because the insides of the front tires are worn almost flat while the outsides have plenty of treat left. The problem is that Wranglers have solid front axles so there is no camber adjustment like on independent suspensions. So I took the Jeep to Dallas Frame & Alignment to have them look it over. It turns out that both axle housings were bent, the front worse than the rear, but still both bent. They've been straightened now and all I've got left is to replace the tires a few months earlier than I would have.

I'm thinking that the damage was caused when I took that trip to Clayton because I was doing stuff I really shouldn't have been attempting with a stock Jeep. But what's done is done and I know better now.

Link: http://www.xmradio.com/

Well, I finally bit the bullet and picked up an XM receiver. Specifically the Roady 2. It was cheap and it's got all the features I wanted, especially the built in FM modulator that I need to connect it in to the Jeep's stereo.

This service completely rocks! There are no commercials! None!

Right now I've been listening to Lucy (channel 54) a lot. It's got a great mix of the 80's and 90's alternative that I grew up on.

Now I'm working on wiring it in to the motorcycle so that I can have tunes on the road.

Since the skies were so nasty this morning, I worked on getting the front-end alignment done early. Cowtown Jeeps has a great page that shows exactly how to do this, and it's the method that I used. It worked like a charm and other than the really nasty rain until I got almost to Ellis county, the drive back was uneventful. I'm tired and I've still got to work on school stuff so this is staying short.

After noticing that my alignment was really badly off, with the driver's side tire at a completely different angle than the passenger's side tire when they should have both been straight, I decided to fix it by removing the driver's side tie rod end, screwing it in a little more, then reconnecting it and redoing an alignment. Easy, right?

Wrong.

I messed up the threads on the tie rod end and spent most of the day making three 20 mile trips to the nearest auto parts store to get the right part to replace it. It turns out that my tie rod was put on backwards which threw everyone for a loop.

I started this at 2:00 this afternoon and got to a stopping point with just the alignment left to do at around 8:30 tonight.

At least I'll be able to drive home tomorrow.

Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318649/

And thanks go out to Daimler-Chrysler's marketing department for a fun evening. Last week I got an e-mail offering me free tickets to a sneak preview of Sahara tonight. It was a fun movie, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it wasn't a copy of National Treasure. The story line was interesting and it was fun seeing the multiple sub-plots diverging and coming back together.

I thought it was worth the price of admission, but then again I had free tickets!