Renegade's Patrol Log

JEEP LINKS including vendor sites for parts and tools as well as sites for jeep organizations

PATROL LOG includes log entries of minor repairs and and adventures between time of purchase and the present.

RENEGADE MAINTENANCE Ever changing detailing, oil change, lube, etc. maintenance routines developed for Renegade based on the BillyBob routines, including required tools, materials and procedures.

1. Y2K Resolution

For the past few months I've been working on BillyBob, my 1955 Chevy 1^st Series pickup truck (a big-lipped, fat-fendered, double-nickel, bowtie, Toontown truck!) on the weekends at the Krash Lab while waiting for the computers I'm tasked with maintaining to run through their backup routines inside.

At the same time I've been totally neglecting my daily driver "Renegade". He hasn't been detailed in a year, one headlight and one driving lamp are burned out, his interior rear view mirror has fallen off, and the canvas and vinyl door "skins" have become so foggy I can barely see through them. In addition, I've been having clutch problems since summer, and he's in bad need of a session at my new garage "Mizner Park Citgo" (the replacement for the Chevron station that closed some time back).

Maintenance has been put off time and again. I've been lazy in part because I live so close to work (less than five miles) and therefore haven't been overly concerned about breaking down. I had been planning to spend Christmas 1999 on the sofa in front of the boob tube when a few days before the Holiday I was invited to a friend's house in Stuart, Florida for Christmas dinner. Now, I began to worry about Renegade's condition with a 120 mile round trip in my immediate future, but it was too late to do much about the situation.

The trip to Stuart and back turned out to be uneventful. An excellent meal with longtime friends was great. My friend had gotten one of those Gateway Astro computers for Christmas to replace an old non-Y2K-compliant PC. His very spry and knowlegable octogenarian father-in-law, Bob and I spent all our time (when we weren't eating) trying to install America OnLine v5.0 on it and set up the other applications (we did clean installs of Windows 98 SE four times and failed miserably). We finally got it going with AOL v3.0. I spend most of my time working on PCs as does Bob, and neither one of us are a novice, but this ~!@#$% thing humbled me. This particular model is advertized as Internet ready - You know, It's the one the guy sets up with one hand while eating a donut with the other! Well, the following week my friend called me to report he had called Gateway and they told him he had to download a software patch from their Web site called "FIXAOL5.EXE" to make AOL v5.0 work with the Astro! They told him it was AOL's fault, but I'm not buying into it. I'm no fan of AOL, but you don't advertise on TV to a market of "new" users a ready-to-go Internet machine and not support the newest software of the biggest online service out of the box . . . not if you respect your customers, you don't.

Enuf, I digress! The next morning, when I came out of the apartment to go to the Krash Lab, I was alarmed to see about two quarts of Renegade's coolant on the pavement. I couldn't tell exactly where the leak was but the drips were coming somewhere down the front of the engine and off the oil pan . . . not a good sign. It was Sunday, the day after Christmas . . . I was coming down with what would later turn out to be a mild case of flu . . . I didn't want to risk trying to make it to the Krash Lab not knowing whether the Citgo station would be open or not. I was in bad need of groceries but I could overcome that problem. I spent the day on the couch nibbling away at MREs from my Hurricane/Y2K emergency supplies and nursing my sore throat.

Monday morning I took the risk of driving Renegade to work. His temperature gauge did not register any higher than usual and when I got to the Krash Lab, he wasn't dripping coolant any more. This was turning into a headscratcher. I came out of the office periodically during the day to look under Renegade for coolant . . . dry as a bone every time. Tuesday was the same story. Wot gives here??

Wednesday morning I came out to find Renegade had upchucked again to the tune of another quart or more. I had a couple of quarts of coolant at the apartment so I poured them into Renegade and drove straight to the Citgo station. One of the mechanics, Carl, said he'd check it out and give me a call at the Krash Lab. I walked to the office (about three blocks) and got elbow-deep into the day's tasks. Carl called about forty-five minutes later to tell me as soon as he put pressure on the system, coolant started to gush around the water pump seal. Worse news was that the radiator was crumbling to bits and wouldn't last much longer. This had happened to the first radiator too and it had been replaced under Chrysler 7 yr/70,000 mile warranty. Unfortunately, they replaced it with the same defective "plastic" design. Carl said he could get a metal replacement with a 3 year warranty (I hope it lasts longer than that - that's about the lifespan of the plastic ones). Carl gave me a reasonable price of $565 for radiator and water pump and said he could have it by five PM. I said OK.

I hiked over to Citgo a little after five. Carl was still deep into it. Radiator and pump were in but hoses still not connected. I was also to find out later that Carl had a kid in the hospital that was causing him stress but he didn't mention that. I asked him if I should leave Renegade overnight and he said he didn't want to cause me any more inconvenience . . . He could be done soon, if I could wait. I told Carl to give me a call at the Krash Lab when he was ready (he didn't need me hovering over him while he was trying to work and I always have more than a full plate of work of my own at the office).

Carl was done by six forty-five. He had gotten everything hooked up, but there was a small leak on one of the water pump hose fittings. He had to take the pump off again and put it in the vise to fix the fitting. After he got Renegade back together and pressure-tested again, the leak was gone. I don't have to worry about the coolant system for awhile now.

For the rest of the week I thanked my lucky stars that Renegade didn't blowout his coolant on I-95 on Christmas day between here and Stuart. I didn't have a cell phone with me and that would have been another memorable Holiday experience like the one in '84 when I totaled my '77 Corvette, but that's a story for another time.

I've been thinking all week that I should be maintaining Renegade better, and last night (new year's eve) while I was listening to my police scanner for hints of pending Y2K disaster and remembering my father (who passed away on new year's eve 1994) I formed my resolutions for this year. One of them was to give Renegade more TLC. I started out nice and gentle today with a small improvement - New door skins.