Episode: 77
Title: HPR0077: This old Hack Part 7
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0077/hpr0077.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:03:01

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That's a missing part.
Okay, welcome to an unintended episode of this old hack with Adam.
Thank you very much for your time, and I'll see you in the next video, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye-bye, bye
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excuse the background noise I've had a little technical difficulty here with my motor vehicle it seems that in the process of driving to work I blew the
upper radiator hose on the car in in the process I also backed it kind of down an embankment so I'm out here on the side of the road I'm trying to find right now I'm trying to find a spot to hook my tow straps
so first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pull the car out of the ditch with the van and then I'm going to move the car
back and drive it a few feet over to the other side of the road where I've got a little more level to work
this shouldn't be a big deal the car is not that far off of the road it's really good
we've got a block in the road here but it shouldn't be a big deal
okay well I got the car out of the ditch which wasn't very difficult at all and I know it doesn't have any water right but I'm going to check the oil
to make sure it's got oil in it obviously I knew it had oil in it but I wanted to make sure that it didn't get hot enough to blow the head gasket
now the easiest way to tell if you throw that head gasket is if you check the oil instead of being black or brown
it is a milky color foamy kind of grayish bubbles in it maybe
that'll be a sign of the head gasket tomorrow so now I'm going to see the car start
okay we have starting and I'm just going to go turning around
it should run without water in for a minute or two before it gets so incredibly hot
so it seems to be the only problem that I had was it got hot and melted the thermostat
it got hot melted the radiator hose oh there's some underlying issue so I'm just going to pull off to a more level spot
here and since I didn't have to drive it too far I don't have to worry about the engine being too hot to work on
obviously I've brought my tools with me to remove the radiator hose which found my experience with doing color work here
is that it's usually best to take part with you before you go to the auto parts store
just in case they give you the wrong one
it used to be the radiator hose was easier to get to without requiring any special tools
but in this case there's some minor plastic trim that is in the way
I've done a few most of the repairs I think I've done like this abandoned on the road
in a parking lot somewhere at a Walmart gas station truck stop something like that
my wife and I spent a long time traveling around the country a couple years moving in a van
we had a 77 Dodge one tonne tradesman full-sized van and we only paid $400 for it
and we drove it back and forth across the country a few times
I think the most interesting repair I had to do we were in Wyoming
and I'm trying to think of the name of the town not Cheyenne I don't think
but it was some town in Wyoming and the only time I explained a little bit something about the van
the cars you can just open the hood and get at the equipment with mans you have to have a thing called a dog house
so a dog house is actually inside the van it sits between the front seats
and with older vans they're pretty easy to get up so it wasn't a big deal
what happened was just traveling I checked the oil every morning to make sure that it...
to make sure that the oil level was okay but the filler rod that goes into the motor
because you can't just open the hood and check the oil there has to be a long shoot since the motor's between the seats
there has to be a long tube for the dipstick to travel down to get to the motor to check the oil
so it's a longer dipstick because the motor's farther away from the front of the van
and the tube that holds it came loose from the motor which meant that I had to take the dog house off
in order to fix that well when I took the dog house off I noticed that the fuel line going into the carburetor
was broke almost in half and gasoline for some time had been leaking onto the carburetor
which is of course on top of the engine which could cause a large fire and or explosion
well lucky for me that we've noticed that problem before we had an explosion
lucky for us I happen to have a plunging kit normally it's not something you normally fix on the side of the road
pretty much what you do is you make a flare I guess it's called a flare tool
a flare on the metal hose and it fits into a fitting which makes it compressed down on to whatever you're attaching to
brake lines are kind of the same way I had to use it on brake lines and on the fuel line
well since I was at a gas station I didn't really have access to go find a new fuel line
and since we were kind of pan handling or way around anyway it would have been difficult to purchase
anything at the time so luckily for me there was enough extra fuel line there
enough play in the fuel line to where I could use my hacksaw I cut off the offensive section of the fuel line
and I used my flare kit to make a new flare and reattached it there in the parking lot
now this is one of the easiest repairs you can make on a vehicle even on a newer vehicle like this
you could easily just have a leather mount tool and you could have probably used that to remove the belt and install the new one
those clamps are either compression type where you have to pinch a clamp to remove it or they have a screw where they unscrew to loosen
this in this case I've got compression fittings
I've taken the old hose off I went to the park store purchased a new hose
which I am installing
that end in place don't know if I mentioned start with but it's always better to take the old part with you to the park store
you can match it up with the new part before you bring it back to the site especially if you're working on it
this is called a flare tool you make a flare on the metal hose and it fits into a fitting which makes it compress down on to whatever you're attaching to
I had to use it on brake lines and on the fuel line
well since I was at a gas station I didn't really have access to go find a new fuel line and since we were kind of pan handling or way around anyway it would have been difficult to purchase anything at the time
luckily for me there was enough extra fuel line there enough play in the fuel line to where I could use my hacksaw
I used my flare kit to make a new flare and reattached it there in the parking lot
hopefully this will fix the problem I don't know why it was overheating unless it was already low on water
the hose was in pretty bad shape the car got close to 200,000 miles on it's bottom radio hose isn't looking too spry I don't see any other serious issues
I checked the oil so I know it's going to oil it now put these two little things back on here
now we'll be putting water in the radiator well not just water
but you don't know anything about any trees then you might not live somewhere where it freezes but what happens is in the winter time
it gets particularly cold if you've just got straight water in your radiator and able to freeze and at the water freezes we can damage the engine
now also they add special lubricants to lubricate the cooling system in the canning freeze
so it's always best to use the recommended type of any freeze for your vehicle
there's a road coming here so in most places you can use a 50% and freeze 50% water mixture for colder climates I think they'll recommend using a heavier and freeze
there's also environmentally friendly air freeze which doesn't contain ethylene glycoil
ethylene glycoil is highly toxic and it's sweet to most pets so they won't drink it and die very person dead
everything seems pretty good so far temperature seems to be holding steady and we're going to take a little test drive up the road
it seems to be running okay temperature level seems normal
it's kind of affecting the handling
small pressure, chip, battery charging, chip
I'm just going to drive the road here, turn around and go back to where the van is at and see I'm ready
it seems to be running okay temperature level seems normal
it seems to be running okay temperature level seems normal
go back to where the van is at and see I'm ready
I'm ready
I'm ready