The Hobo Camp Fire Is going well #VII.. Stop In!!!

[Running Bear]

Good evening. It's really nice here with 79° outside. There's 72% humidity so it's right over the edge on wetness. No rain tonight, in fact not a mention of rain until Monday.

Well other than going into town for gas I didn't go anywhere today. This morning I worked on the van. I moved the fuel filter away from the lower radiator hose then wrapped it in a few layers of aluminum foil. The metal fuel line was touching the engine in several places so I moved it away and wrapped several layers of the foil around every bit of the line that I could reach. However this all proved pointless as it didn't prevent a vapor lock and fuel boil-off. A friend on another forum pointed me to a site that described exactly the problem I'm having and how folks there overcame it. So far what I've read is very interesting. Seems this problem is very prevalent to Mopar vehicles of the general era mine is from. This afternoon I tried the engine after returning from town and it was no dice. After a while I shot a bunch of carburetor cleaner down the carburetor until the boiling sounds ceased then floored it and cranked the engine. There was a series of pops, a clatter, a boom then a deafening roar as the engine fired to life. That boom shook my teeth and made my eyes and ears hurt. There was also a big grayish-black (descried by a neighbor) cloud of smoke shooting from the tailpipes. Must've been all that carburetor cleaner burning off. My ears were ringing for a while after that. My neighbor across the road said his windows rattled. Well, except for a blown out glass pack it's pretty much straight pipes tipped with echo chambers. I hope I can find a good cheap way to stop this vapor locking. The van isn't much as vehicles go but it's all I have. No heat, no a/c, no radio, no vent blower, door seals and windows are drafty as an old castle. It's just very basic transportation.

In other news I got an Apple A9M0107 Platinum disk drive that had good electronics but bad mechanics. I just happened to have one of the same model that had good mechanics and fried electronics. I tore them both down then used the good pieces from each to build one that works 100%. I keep this up I may be able to cure a rainy day! I have the drive connected to my //e now and a Mitac Disk II clone drive is plugged into the A9M0107's daisy-chain port. They work great together. Some may think that combination shouldn't work. If so they don't know me very well.

It's time to call it a night. See y'all tomorrow.