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Posted by Howard Etkind on Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 09:01:49 :
Most designers have certain conventions, righty tightly, lefty loosey, gear boxes take gear oil, lock nuts lock and so forth.
I got caught twice in the last week with things not working as convention says they should, one was hand packing the grease in the rear axle bearings of the M-37, my experience is that full floaters are splash lubed, while semi-floaters are usually hand packed. (GM likes to splash lube their semifloating however). So I put them in lightly oiled after cleaning and new seals. Didn't find any grease on them to start!
One we see sometimes are idle adjustment screws that screw in to richen and out to lean, vs the other way, or the gear shifts on old british bikes and HD sportsters being on the wrong side. I once put in the wrong year shift selector plate on my 68 sportster, so instead of being one down and three up, it was one up and three down!
One that is common now is ATF in gear boxes and transfer cases, my 07 Ram uses AFT in the six speed gear box when I am SURE 80w-90 SHOULD go in there. Better is that some of the new hydraulic clutches are using mineral oil and not brake fluid.
My other gotcha this week was the external float adjustment on a holley 2300/4150/4160 carb. I use a 350 cfm 2300 style carb on my 62 Town Wagon and 68 Utiline, and the "adjusting screw" on top was the locking device with the "locking nut" being the adjustment. I was having trouble with the float sticking open and running rich and after finding a yucking looking float, I installed a new one after fuel kept running out of the breather on top.
Finally pulled the needle valve assembly and found an "extra" oring stuck in it. Took me a good hour to figure out the right adjustment procedure even with the book sitting open next to me, just because it went the other way from convention.
Do we have some other gotcha's on the Power Wagons, I know we ALL know to look for the L on the left side wheel studs, and use DOT 5 silicone in the M-37 brakes and use 24 volts not 6 or 12.
So, what are the hidden gotcha's...
Howard
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