Broken Honda Odyssey License Plate Nut

I recently picked up an 06 Odyssey to use for kid hauling and IKEA runs.  I was able to get it for around $2k less than normal, but it has some issues: sliding door alignment, gate struts, needs belts, smacked front bumper cover, VSA/ABS lights, etc.  As an added bonus, I found out that someone in the past had let the license plate nuts rust into place.  One of them may have been barely usable, but one was toast and even had an EZ-Out still stuck in it.  The PO had been using the lower plastic piece to keep the plate on.


The rear wiper motor had seized up due to dirt and corrosion (gravel roads), so I needed to take the rear gate trim panel off and decided to kill two birds with this stone.  The rear panel comes off starting with the top panel above the glass.  The side panels are next and will come off pretty easily by lightly prying at the base of the round plastic clips.  The tricky bit is the main portion of the panel - it comes off after loosening the side clips and then popping the clips at the top and pulling/moving the trim panel down.

For parts, if your rear wiper motor just clicks and gets warm to the touch, you'll need a reman wiper motor assy from AutoZone or some place similar.  I looked at Rock, but there was no $$ advantage that I saw to going with one where I couldn't just hand in the core.  It's pretty simple, so I won't get into that here except to say that it rests at 3 o'clock.

For the rusty license plate nuts, you'll need a pair of vice grips and one of those multi-size drill bits (if you want to make it pretty).  I chose the ugly route since this van is no prom queen.  By rocking back and forth with the vice grips, you'll be able to break them loose and you'll be left with a hole like this one.  If you wiggle the nuts too far back and forth, you may have to hammer/dolly the panel back flat, but you'd really have to work to mess it up too much.

 For the studs that I used a 6mmx35 or 40mm and two fender washers.  If your hardware store is like mine, you'll have standard sized fender washers.  This is a good thing though, because they thread onto the bolts and will act to hold the bolt while you're putting sealer on them.  I used some black that I had left over after an engine rebuild and held the outside washer down with a 6mm flange nut.  I think that it's best to stack two nuts on there because it brings the plate out to the point where it was with the OE nut.  The head of the bolt can be reached pretty easily from the inside of the panel and you can really put some pressure on pulling those washers together.

School's Out - 2017

School let out last week and we made it to Worlds of Fun twice.  The first go 'round was a good season opener once we made it through the line for a new pass.  One of the gang has an older brother who pilfers his stuff with alarming regularity, so we all had to wait in line to get this done and get moving.  The kids had a good day even though all of the rides weren't open and there were yellow school buses lined up outside the gates.  It cooled off in the afternoon and once the buses left, the kids were able to loop back around and immediately ride again or just stay on the ride.  It was magic for an hour before the rain started.

The 2nd time was a 10hr day at the park and we added a new person to the gang for the day that upset the dynamic a bit.  The kids will get accustomed to it and we'll hit the wave pool next time since it's open now.

FLL Team Startup IV

If you're a new coach, things will start coming at you fast after the FSK and mission models are all set up.  This for me was where it began to hit the fan and scatter a bit.

The one piece of low hanging fruit on the Animal Allies 2016 board for us seemed to be the Shark Shipment, so we began with that.  I had a basic working knowledge of the EV3 programming blocks and the team had very little so we began with pseudo code based on a Mission-Task-Movement format.

Ex:  Shark Shipment

• Move Forward to 1st black line
• Move Forward to 2nd black line
• Turn XX degrees to right (compass helped)

After this was lined out a bit, we filled in the spaces with what types of sensor inputs we would look for, what type of motor command blocks we would use, what types of turns we should use and other strategy issues.  Since this is a first year team of 5th graders I'm trying to help them stay on board with the KISS principle.  They've watched youtube videos of behemoth bots cleaning the table in 2-3 runs, but I've assured them that those teams have quite a bit more experience with the bots, design, and programming options.

In the time that I've been able to watch other teams this season, I've seen other teams chasing these style bots and multiple missions on one program meet with gigantic piles of frustration and penalty points.  The first experience watching other teams was at the CowTown Throwdown earlier this season.  It's a great event and the kids had a blast.  They were able to see what other teams were able to accomplish as well as see some FTC competition.  It was free this year for FLL teams, but with 16 slots, I heard it was hard to get in.  I was a bit shocked at the advanced stuff that some of the other teams were trying to do.  Sometimes the programs worked and most times they didn't, but man, they were learning a lot and crashing the field models.  As a coach who wasn't on duty, I tried to help other teams by asking them why they were trying what they were trying and even found myself having to referee a skirmish between two teammates over who got to hold the robot.

My next experience was helping out at another qualifier in my area.  This was a huge eye opener.  The Friday before the qualifier I was able to attend a referee meeting and get to see the area and a lot of the hard work that goes in to setting it up.  Nothing really prepared me for the event though.  It was like being in a busy train station with 500+ kids going every direction....and twice as loud.  I didn't really have a volunteer assignment, so I floated a bit near the practice table signup until I was asked to assist with the queueing area in the school's gym; the spot where your team checks in to wait on their time at the table for practice and competition rounds.  It's absolute chaos.

When you and your team queue up, be a few minutes early, have at least one person who knows the team name and number with the group, keep the team together, bring the bot in a box (not open carrying), and be prepared to hang out for a minute while the person gets you to the right queue spot.  The person you meet will be a volunteer who probably has no more information about the venue than you do and they'll have a schedule roster with cross-outs and substitutions on it from where a few teams backed out at the last minute (tossing a wrench into the works).  In a gym, this takes place in the middle of the basketball court in front of the spectators, so it's guaranteed to be a mess.  Bring some binoculars and get up high in the stands.

If you're a coach or a mentor, get out and volunteer at other qualifiers.  You'll have a better idea of what you're in for and your team will benefit from your knowledge of how things work....and it helps the organizers.

FLL Team Startup III

The FSK and EV3 robot arrived over a week ago and we're moving into the challenge and the FSK build phase.  The team is still trying to move out of book-report-on-my-favorite-animal mode and on to an animal interaction/solution that can be researched. It's slow going on that front, but not unexpected for a group of 5th grade students.

The FSK build is really fun for the team and we reserve it for the 2nd segment of the two hour meetings.  Once the pieces come out of the bag, the team is full throttle and works really well to get things done.

NOTE:  I thought that we'd be able to save a few dozen trees and not print out the instructions for the field kit build.  I couldn't have been more wrong on this.  Print out the instructions front and back in segments (like a book) so that there are no pages that crossover from bag #1 to bag #2.  It'll save you a good bit of time and frustration.

FLL Team Startup II

As the coach of a new team in the 3rd week of the FLL challenge and still without their FSK or their robot, I think the first thing that I'd tell another new coach is to REGISTER AND ORDER EARLY.    Especially before school starts.  If you're setting up your team to be affiliated with a 501c3, just plan on doubling that time and then check your order status every day after it's completed.  You have to email the document for the 501c3 to Lego and then someone has to go into the ordering system and the email system and link the two.  I learned this lesson the hard way after 3 wasted weeks and an hour or so on hold on two separate phone calls to Lego.

This year Lego decided to move their Education HQ from Pittsburgh, KS to Boston and it doesn't seem like things are ironed out just yet.  Having all of the schools and FLL teams ordering at roughly the same time shouldn't be a problem for the Kristiansens and I hope that they'll smooth the process a bit.

Some members of the team are headed to a workshop put on by Ms. Kidwell of the Learning Math & Science Club this weekend.  Her work is well organized and presented and we look forward to it being helpful.

FLL Team Startup

The LW and I are coaching a First Lego League (FLL) team this fall.  We're affiliating the team with our daughter's Girl Scout Troop and will be combining the two at meetings.  Last week, this year's challenge was released and since we are newly formed, we're behind.  A bit of luck fell in our lap though when we realized that our daughter's middle school Industrial Arts class fields two teams of 7th/8th graders.  The class instructor is great and will be a solid mentor for the new team.

There are tons of information about FLL on their website and others, but that seems to be the one of the biggest problems as a new coach.  Finding information is really simple.  Finding useful information is rather time consuming.

Here's the link to the 2016 FLL Animal Allies Challenge.  First thing for new people:  Open each one of the links on that page in a new tab in your browser and save the Challenge Guide as a PDF on the computer that you'll use for organizing stuff.  By the third or fourth time you run in circles trying to find something, you may just break down and create a master link list like I did.

The team has their Animal Allies homework to do for this week.  They are to work on the questions in the Challenge Guide that begin on page 6.  They'll identify 1-3 animal interactions and we'll discuss problems with each during the next meeting.

My homework is trying to get funds together to get the challenge board designed/built, registration paid, EV3 kit purchased, a toolbox/organizer purchased, and begin fundraising grant work that'll keep the team outfitted and humming along.

The Switch to Google Fi

Not Google Fiber, which we would like to come to our little town, but Google Fi as in a WiFi capable cell phone.  We were with Republic for years and liked the service.  It ran on whatever WiFi you were on at the time and the calls, after the first one of the day, worked well.  If you went out of range of a signal, it would switch over to a Sprint tower and you'd be off and running...most of the time.  We switched to Republic from Sprint PCS after having them for over a decade and it saved us over $100/mo on our bill.  That $1200/year has been nice to have around.

Basic service from Republic was around $25 and with Google Fi it jumped to $35.  The phone we picked from Google Fi is a 32G Nexus 5X.  It functions just like the phones from Republic, but instead of just dumping onto Sprint, it checks to see whether a TMobile signal is stronger at your location and choses the stronger signal.

The thing that killed us with Republic was the limited phone offerings.  We had the 1st gen Motorola MotoX.  It was a pretty good phone a few years ago, but it came with so much bloatware that you didn't have much room for apps.  The DefyXT that we stared with was even worse.  These phones are aging and have suffered normal wear.  Mine even hit the ground a few times and the screen finally shattered.  To replace the screen/digitizer on my MotoX would cost as much as a new phone, but there are only two Motorola phones offered and neither of them are setting the world on fire.  Republic has been chirping about "new phones are coming" for a long while and only yesterday did they announce an official list of phones.  It contains some of the same units used on Google Fi, but the pricing seems about 20% higher and there's still not a hard date on when they'll arrive, just a sign-up for notifications.

We're pleased with the Google Fi service and the 5X, even though it does have that USBC cord that nobody else seems to use, but that's easily remedied with adapters.  I've already picked up a case for it so that I can hopefully guard against my own clumsiness.

It's a good service for kiddos who are earning their first phone.  CP does the dishes and cleans catboxes for her $25 phone payment every month and is looking forward to her latest hand-me-down phone.

Subaru EJ25 EGR Plug

I scrounged all over for some specific info on the size plug that I'd need since I'm putting some EGR heads on a non-egr car.  Some said 16.5x1.5 on one and 19x1.5 on another.  Well, after ordering the 16x1.5 from Fastenal and seeing that they were way too small, I decided to just use an old EGR tube to make a couple of plugs.

I cut the tube ends with a sawzall and put one in the vice.  I chose a 5/8-18 thread since I couldn't really find a pipe tap that would work easily.  I'm guessing that a 3/8 NPT tap might have worked, but I can't confirm that.  I picked up a 9/16 drill bit to go with the tap.  It calls for something like a 37/64 drill bit, but good luck finding that.  I picked a 9/16 since it was close.

I started some threads after drilling and added pipe dope to the inner most threads on the plug and blue loctite on the outermost threads.  It doesn't look to bad and it's solid.

Since I'm using EJ25 EGR heads on a non-egr car, I didn't have to worry about a cover plate for the intake.

Subaru and the Plastic AC Idler Pulley

"That's odd, the ac just stopped working.."

This may be something you run into if you own a 2.5L powered Subaru.  For a number of years, Fuji Heavy Industries decided to use a plastic idler pulley for the ac belt.  This will seem all nice and fine for a good while, but the minute is begins to emit the tiniest chirp you'd better be shopping for a replacement part.  I didn't know about this little gem of a part and it's propensity for failing in spectacular fashion, so I just oiled it and let it ride.  Don't do that!

A replacement pulley that is actually made of metal can be purchased at just about any parts store.  If you have a Saab 9-2x Linear though, it won't show that it fits, so just search as if you own a 2004 Forester with the 2.5L.  The pulley from AutoZone is Duralast #231029 for $39, and the belt is Duralast #353K4 for about $9.  

If you put this off long enough and the pulley fails like mine did, you will also need the Dorman #917-124 Idler Pulley Adjuster Bolt Kit for under $30 with shipping.  Order this part from Amazon as soon as you see that it has failed/melted to everything.  Most parts stores won't have it and won't know how to order it.  The plastic melts to the parts in the kit and just generally makes a mess of things.  In my case, the belt ate into other parts after the pulley failed.  I consider myself lucky though, because sometimes this pulley fails and pushes back into the timing belt cover, clips the belt, and ruins the engine.

Connect a Canon 6D to your Macbook Pro

I figured out a fun thing today with the newer workhorse camera.  I'm taking a year long photography course and I need to be able to tether my 6D to the wife's laptop.  I went around a bit on how to do this and finally figured out that if I:

Click on the wifi icon
Click "Create Network"
Name it something.
Hit "Create"


Then, the Macbook will create a little Ad-Hoc network that I can then connect to with my camera.  Well, damn.  That was pretty slick and will allow me to tether without having a wifi router somewhere nearby.

I'm using the clunky, but correctly priced, EOS Utility 3 software from Canon that comes with the camera.  It'll download a little bit funky on the Macbook, so you have to:

Go into the Applications folder
Click on the Canon Utilities folder
Click on the EOS Utilities folder
Click on the EOS Utilities App (for pairing)
Click on the EOS3 App

It'll then start pairing if you're doing it the first time.  After that, just select the network and you should be rolling.  Configure where you want the photos to be stored and whether or not you want to save them to the computer and the camera and the rest kinda sorts itself out.  One obvious thing I noticed is that the preview speed is slow, but can be speeded up a bit by lowering the capture file size.  I usually shoot MRaw, but switched to MJpeg and it worked pretty well.

Ener-G Brownies or The Brown Sugary Goo of Doom.

Tonight I was jonesin' for some chocolate, so I threw together a bowl of brownie mix out of the box.  We have a vegan in the house, so I figured that I'd just use Ener-G to replace the 2 eggs needed for the recipe.  2/3C of oil, the Ener-G egg stuff, and 1/4C of water were called for and the mix looked a little slippery batter, but I threw it in anyway.  Well, after the required time, I looked in to see the oil bubbling on the surface and when they came out, they were the consistency of bubble gum that was left in a hot car too long.

I was a little bent.

I searched the web and quickly came across stories on baby's mama sites about how this happens all the time and I should follow such & such recipe instead.  Screw that.  I'm not quitting.  They were already ruined and couldn't get any worse, so I went into improvised repair mode.

Add a rounded 1/4C AP flour, 1 teaspoon Backing Powder, stir until the ball of what appears to be molasses and sawdust soaks up the flour.  Add 1/4C milk and stir.  (2% is what I had)  It'll start to break down the ball a bit and once that's soaked up, add another 1/4C of milk and stir it in.  By this point, your hand will be pretty damned tired.  Now get the blender out or prep the Kitchen Aid mixer.    Toss this slurry in and hit it with the mixer.  If it's not wet enough to be compliant, add more milk.  Beat the crap out of it with the mixer and add more milk (a splash at a time) until the batter starts to look like cake batter.  It will have lightened up some and most of the chunks of 'prior screwup brownie' will have broken down.

Pour it in a pan and put it in the hotbox.  Mine was 15mins @ 350 for a 13x9.  The original recipe called for 24 minutes, but this stuff was thinner so I cut the time.  The toothpick trick won't work too well because of the prior screwup, so make sure that the top has a good crust before you yank 'em or they'll be gooey on the bottom.

Hope this helps.

Cooler than PDX

This week has been full of literal, and not any figurative, headaches with the lovely wife in Portland for work.  There has been a rise in barometric pressure over the last few days and my head has been ringing since.  Hours long headaches that make my left eye feel like it's being squeezed in a vice have become regular.  On a happy note, it's 53 degrees outside.  The wife is enjoying being in a different place and I hope that she gets away from work and does some exploring.

CP has been enjoying her freedom to eat lunch in the cafeteria with mom gone and dad seemingly incapable of handling anything involving light, noise, or sandwiches in the mornings.  Yesterday was pizza at school and we had a discussion about why she doesn't regularly get to eat as school.  Evidently, things in her class would go much more smoothly if there weren't 7 rambunctious boys involved.  We discussed how her uncle and I were the same way when we were that age and that we probably just needed to go outside and run around the building about 5 times between classes.

Work on the Saabaru is going ok, but has come to a halt after getting the heads mostly reassembled.  It'll go soon, but the van is also still having problems.  I gambled on used lifters and lost.  One of them is clanking and I may end up pulling the intake and head to replace an entire bank of lifters....and that's a bummer when working in a small space.

CP wasn't able to repeat last year's performance at the fishing derby this year.  There weren't too many fish biting at the lake that day since it had rained the night before.  The big winner this year was the guy in the pro fishing shirt who took his two daughters around the lake in his boat and caught 16 fish each.  Many parents in the crowd thought that was kinda shitty since the idea is that everyone fishes from the bank with their kid.

2005 GM Van with Castech Heads 4.8L

It seems that for a half dozen years, GM was getting some cylinder heads with casting problems.  It's a shame that it took them that long to figure it out.  Sadly, folks who buy these trucks and vans are still figuring it out....the hard way.

When I first purchased the van from a cabinet maker who was selling it and closing his business to start his "ministry" I noticed that it was a little low on coolant.  A month or so after buying it, the same condition reared its head again.  Now, at first mention of starting a ministry, I should have run away, but the van was an extended version and it fit my needs at the time.

The first symptom of this head problem is a mysterious loss of coolant.  I don't have a paved parking space, so I just figured it was leaking somewhere or there was an intake leak and re-filled it.  Well, after about 6 months, I started investigating further and looking for other folks with this problem.  It seems, the coolant loss is just the tip of this iceberg.

The 2nd, 3rd, and 4th symptoms are odd oil pressure fluctuation, white puffs of smoke on cold start, and lifter noise.  These may switch places and, if you're really lucky, may all happen at the same time.  The coolant loss is happening because there are cracks in the head near the machined land where the head bolts cinch down on the head.  The coolant seeps into the oil from up near the rockers, then circulates through the engine.  The water in the coolant boils off, then the leftover stuff is held in the oil.  The oil can only hold so much of it though and that is when you get the oil pressure fluctuations and lifter noise.  The oil with waaayyy too much glycol in it becomes a gelatinous sludge.  This sludge clogs the pick up screen in the pan and the oil filter, so you'll get odd oil pressure gauge readings that come and go.  Given the reliability issues with GM clusters, you might think, as I did, that the gauge is going bad.  Don't be fooled by this though, this is the final bell that tells you that you're about to be in for some real trouble.

About this time, you'll notice some lifter noises that don't sound like ticks any longer....it can be a full blown clanking noise.  That's what happens when the sludge hits the oil gallery that feeds the lifters and the rest of the upper part of the valve train.  I got out my stethoscope and found that the right bank of my engine was making the most noise, so I popped the valve cover off to confirm what I feared.  Yup, sludge in the valve cover, most of the push rods and rockers were shot, several lifters had begun to come apart, and there was a puddle of dex-cool near one of the bolts.  Shit.

Next thing to do was to pull the other side to confirm that it was both sides puking... and it was.  I did some more web searching and was able to find a company called Cylinder Heads International.  The reman heads are $175 each and you need to have the 3 digit code that's stamped onto a flat ear on the heads just outside the valve cover surface on one end.  Mine were 862. The heads arrived just in time for me to realize that I'd forgotten to remind myself to take out the dowels like I said that I would - see Summit parts list.

For the other parts, I found a set of used rockers, lifters, and push rods on eBay and Summit Racing was good for the rest of the stuff.  Normally I try to buy locally, but Summit had all of the parts and wasn't charging two prices for the head gaskets like the local Blue &Yellow, Irish, and the Zone were.  Below is the list of stuff that I'm in for on this deal.  I added plugs and wires since the van hasn't had them done in a while.
Now, to stuff it all together and see what I've missed.

$390 Cylinder Heads  http://www.headsonly.com/
$310 Summit Racing (free shipping)  http://www.summitracing.com/
$120 eBay (Rockers, Pushrods, Lifters)

Items Shipped: Item Qty. Track: Box(Ships From)* Carrier Est. Arrival NAL-12570326 Cylinder Head Dowel Pin, Chevy, Small Block, LS Engines, Each (Mfr. #: 12570326) 4 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days FEL-26191PT Head Gasket (Mfr. #: 26191PT) 2 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days RNB-56390 Coolant Bypass Seals, Rubber/Steel, Buick, Cadillac, Chevy, GMC, Hummer, Pontiac, Set of 4 (Mfr. #: 56390) 1 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days FEL-MS92467 Exh. Manifold Gasket Set (Mfr. #: MS92467) 1 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days RNB-03413B Exhaust Manifold Bolts, Steel, Zinc Plated, Cadillac, Chevy, GMC, Chrysler, Dodge, Isuzu, Jeep, Set of 12 (Mfr. #: 03413B) 1 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days FEL-MS92211 Gaskets, Manifold, Intake, Chevy, Small Block, Set (Mfr. #: MS92211) 1 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days SUM-910211 Head Bolts, Zinc Plated, Steel, Hex, Torque To Yield, Chevy, Small Block, LS, Kit (Mfr. #: SUM-910211) 1 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days ARP-100-9904 Sealant, ARP Thread Sealer, 1.69 fluid oz., Each (Mfr. #: 100-9904) 1 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days ADO-41-110 Spark Plug, Iridium Tip, Tapered Seat, 14mm Thread, Resistor, Each (Mfr. #: 12621258) 8 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days CRN-255-2420 Spark Plug Wires, FireWire, Reactive Core, 8mm, Black, Stock Boots, Chevy, GMC, 4.8/5.3/6.0L, Set (Mfr. #: 255-2420) 1 Box A (Georgia Warehouse) UPS 3-4 bus. days