I made progress on the Travelall on Sunday afternoon after I’d knocked out a bunch of other tasks around the house. I’m still working on the inoperable brake and clutch system, so I started by disconnecting the hard lines to the master cylinder and rigging up a bench bleed system so that I could test it out. The system primed itself quickly, and after I knew it was working I had to fight the hard lines to get them reconnected to the cylinder. When that was done, I jumped back in the truck and tried both pedals. Amazingly, the brake pedal now had lots of resistance, but I still wasn’t getting anything out of the clutch pedal.
Leaving the brakes for the time being, I tried multiple methods for bleeding the clutch cylinder with no success. In the middle of all of this, I jumped in the Scout to move it up the driveway and mistakenly drove over the brake fluid bottle, sending brake fluid all over the driveway and on the back of the Accord. I had to spend the next hour and half hosing off the driveway and washing the car to make sure brake fluid didn’t eat away at the paint or asphalt. That sucked.
Monday afternoon I rallied after spending a nice aimless morning sitting on the couch and fighting off the urge to take a nap. I re-read the bleed directions for the slave cylinder, then went out and got it set up for a two-person operation. With Jen’s help on the clutch pedal I was able to bleed all of the air out of the line and the cylinder into a catch bottle, then buttoned everything up in the expectation that I’d be able to put it in gear.
Unfortunately, all I could do was grind gears. There’s a chance the clutch rod isn’t adjusted long enough to throw out the clutch all the way, but beyond that I’m pretty stumped. I’m going to run through some more diagnostics now that the pedal actually works, and see what I can find.
I also attempted to bring the idle mixture down on the carb, with no success. She really wants to idle high for some reason; both screws are pretty much all the way in the bore of the carb, and I brought the curb idle screw in a bunch as well. Spraying starting fluid around the base of the carb revealed no vacuum leaks, and every hose coming off the carb or manifold is either connected or plugged. So I’ve got to sort that out as well. The challenge moving forward is that the weather, which has been remarkably mild and friendly through the first half of June, is about to turn wet and rainy, and I might not be able to do much with this forecast.
Moving to the Scout, a lot of the advice I’m reading on the Binder Planet has me confused; there are some saying my symptoms point to actual rod knock and some that don’t. I only hear it when I get on the gas, so I’m unclear as to whether or not this is knock or could be something to do with the timing or possibly a water pump going bad. The other thought is that the heat riser valve itself is bad, or there’s another exhaust leak somewhere else. I’ve got a cheap Harbor Freight stethoscope so I’m going to pull a tire today and take a listen to see if I can hear anything with that at idle. Then I’ll dig my timing light out of the box and check the timing itself to see where that stands; if it’s retarded or advanced I’ll bring it back to zero and see if that helps. Then I’ll try the next non-invasive diagnosis—one of the accessories going bad, or a hidden exhaust leak.
The next step will be to take the Straight Steer bar off, drain the new oil and drop the oil pan itself to see if there’s any metal at the bottom—if there is indeed a bad bearing or worn cam lobe, something solid should show up at the bottom of the pan; if there is and it doesn’t stick to a magnet it’ll be bearings.