[Vwdiesel] Ready for winter

[lbaird119 at aol.com]

I've been working on a few things lately.  First the 5KTQ.  It's been idle for moths.  As soon as it warms up, it seems to lose spark and dies or won't start until it's cooled off.  Blink code said bad RPM sensor.  I paid a friend to diagnose and fix.  $165 later it now starts instantly instead of a bunch of cranking but it had a massive power drain with the key off.  He'd left the cover off the fuse panel (under the cowl area) and it rained a couple days then snowed.  After I pulled EVERY fuse, relay and some of the connectors on the bottom, the drain was gone.  Apparently the window power-off delay or the dome light delay.  I fixed a few things, put a replacement passenger seat in and finally ran it out of the shop for the next project.  Went to drive it today.  Started it, moved off of the slab and started shoveling the snow off.  Before I was done it dies and won't restart.  Ugh!  Still starts great once cooled off!  Hmmm, wonder why I prefer diesels!
 
  Next project is the Hesston 70-75 (Fiat/New Holland is the same).  I had it in, then it snowed so I poured some hydraulic fluid in it and went to help Dad plow the county road and pull a friend out of the ditch, who had been on his way to bring us a plate of homemade cookies.  :-P  Yes, the county didn't plow OUR road for over 2 days and only did then when the truck saw that my wife couldn't drive over the berm at the intersection!
  Two years ago, I slid down a hill and took out a large pear tree.  It bent the blade cylinder support and it had been rubbing the track.  Then Dad caught one of the hoses in the other track and tore out one tilt hose as well as bending the splitter tube and breaking a pass-through pipe.  I fixed the hose and bent splitter pipe then found the broken pipe.  I just took it to some local guys to straighten and replace that pipe.  Reasonable and I was busy.  
 
  Now, it needed the hydraulic oil filled, a few leaks fixed and electrical attention.  I started with electrical.  Lights would come and go but no headlights.  I pulled all the fuses, cleaned the ends and the contacts and tada!  All the lights worked except low beams, one tail light and back work light.  Lows are burned out and no  need to spend money on that until a high goes out.  Work light was pulled wires so I re-crimped those and it worked!  Tail light traced to a multi connector in front that was partially unplugged.   It would not start without a jump, on cold days.  Had to jump at the starter, not the battery too.  So, a trick I learned from our VW diesels was to replace that small, ground battery wire.  I tested with jumper cables to see if the extra wire helped and it sure did.  + terminal didn't make a difference and it's LONG too so I didn't want to change that one!  Then I checked the air filter and dumped about 3lb of dirt out of that!  It smokes much less and probably starts even better now!  Also ordered a couple bolts missing from a loose track plate and tightened up the tracks a bit.
  Next was all the hydraulic leaks that had now shown up on the floor.  A big one up front was a fitting I hadn't tightened down.  A small one in back was another fitting that just wasn't quite tight enough (a hose we'd replaced a couple years ago.)  The other big one was that pass through cluster where 6 quick couples live.   I put new O-rings in all of them even though it was probably just one that was leaking.  One other small one was under the back.  Hmmm, nothing there!  I moved the draw bar over and there was a drain plug that took just a nudge more.  For the first time, I think it's leak free!  Nice to have something done and all working.  Only thing left is a lot of slop on the bottom of the vertical pivot pin.  That can wait until it's warm enough to use the backhoe to hold the blade wile pulling that pin to inspect and repair.
 
  Now I can use it as a snowmobile so I can spray deer repellent on the young and topworked trees that the deer are nibbling the heck out of!  Not a lot of VW-ing going on.  Too many higher priorities pushing them down the list.