Moving Wood, Measuring the Valley Water Level and Working on the Van’s Engine Idling Problem

Saturday October 22, 2016 Guerneville CA.

Yard chores

Being a weekend, I decided to stay home and do some yard chores and just take it easy.

I started with the hard stuff and moved several loads of firewood to the woodpile.

I picked up the cut wood here where this big Chinese elm tree fell down last summer. There’s not too much wood left to move, but there is still a lot of brush.wood2

 

What’s the cat after

While I was getting the wood in the wheel barrel, I noticed my neighbors cat chasing something up in an apple tree. By the time I got the camera, kitty was sitting under the tree looking innocent enough.kitty

 

She knew she had a little pine squirrel up in the tree. I spotted the little critter clinging tightly to the tree and not making any moves. It sat still like this for quite some time.pine

 

The cat hung around for about a half hour doing some preening before wondering off. The squirrel took off sometime later as when I checked it had gone.

Woodpile

I moved five or six loads of wood before I got tuckered out and had to quit. This is most of the wood from the tree which I will now cover up so it doesn’t get rained on too much.woodpile

 

Valley water level

I wanted to measure the depth of the valley water level so I dropped a line down this unused well to see. The water level is down to about twenty three feet, three more feet than about a week ago when I measured it. I’d like to see it down to about thirty feet before we drill the next well so I know any water we get is not coming from the valley water supply.

Here’s the string and tape I used to measure the old well’s water level which is also the level of the water in the valley at this location.well

 

Of course I took some breaks and puttered around a bit.

Working on the engines rough idle problem

I’ve been having some rough idle problems with the new V8 engine I just installed in my van and did some work looking into that.engine

 

Something to do with the MAP sensor

Steve identified a problem with the map sensor while I was up visiting with him at Gold Lake. I found some gas in the  line then and cleaned the sensor out and tried it while on my last trip. It worked ok for a bit then started running rough again.

This time when I looked in the line that the Map sensor plugs into, I found it full of gas which should not be.

Changed ports

I cleaned the gas out of the the sensor and installed the proper vacuum line on the unit. I also moved the vacuum tap from the back of he unit to a new port in the front of the unit as there just should not of been that much gas in the rear port, so I plugged that port up for the front port.

I started the engine and found it operated a lot different. I had to increase the idle screw a lot to keep the engine going, but then it seemed to work better.

More pep

I took the van for a little test drive down the road and it seemed to have a lot more pep so I think I’m on the right track.

Tomorrow I will reset the computer’s memory and set the idle as the service manual specifies and see how things look. It’s no longer idling rough, but I think it needs to be calibrated.

By then it was evening and I just sat around and chair hopped mostly. I did move one more load of little pieces of wood to the woodpile and that was it for my day.

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One Response to Moving Wood, Measuring the Valley Water Level and Working on the Van’s Engine Idling Problem

  1. I’m all caught up on reading your blogs about the trip and on the river. I’m glad you had a good time and your van gave you minimal problems. I’ll send you an email to discuss other issues.

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