I hate cutting my truck... I cut my truck tonight. Pisses me off every time.
So that citrus based cleaner doesn't play nicely with plastic. So, I didn't use it, and used simple green instead. Took the I/c out, poured a concoction of heavily mixed simple green and water... Heated it over a burner and in my shrimp boil pot, which is about 20ga.. it needed cleaning too, so... There...
Used a clean plastic bin to catch waste, after using a three inch black rubber pipe cover on the bottom, that came with a three inch band clamp, which plays a vital role later in this tale.
Poured it in to the top, shook it like a Polaroid picture for a while, poured it out... Repeated until no hot simple green and water left, which is to say four times... Looked in bin and thought "not too bad" because the barely dirty bubbles... When I was done rinsing with hose water, which entailed plugging it back up and filling it about a dozen times and finishing with a steady pour while bracing hose in fence picket and twirling the I/c this way and that for about ten minutes, I figured it to be clear. Hooked the leaf blower to the outlet and blasted air for about another ten minutes solid... Let me tell you, those things hold a lot of water, and just when you think they are dry, another spray will come out.
While all this was happening, those bubbles settled, and I could see the mess of crap that came out. It was fugly... Black as could be, and separated with a almost clear first half inch, and getting steadily darker the deeper it went. So... Simple green worked it's magic. I/c innards clean. Good stuff.
Now the saga of cac pipe begins. I sawzawed the divit, and it come out as good as can be expected when a man uses a sawzaw deep under the influence of wild turkey. The pipe I bought was not a good fit... It was angled poorly, though construction was impeccable.. I wrapped about four layers of electrical tape around the passage of the radiator brace, and found with this pipe the cut wasn't the problem, but the radiator, instead..
After trying to boot up forever, and almost getting it once, I realized my lil battery powered impact was just twirling and not engaging. Pulled it off and realized I'd lost the spring and nut for the clamp onto the throttle body. Sonofeffmylife... I spent the next two drunken hours looking for those effers, and found the spring but no nut... Durnit. Then, the issue of alignment came to bear... It was just a bad fit.
Then I realized in my drunken despair that I could lose the bolts attaching the top of the I/c and make some wiggle room. I also realized that rubber pipe cover happened to have a three in band clamp on it, so... I sat staring at the thing trying to determine where the strongest clamps needed to be, and where I could slip past with a band clamp.. I put the band clamp on the I/c outlet, and it will hold until I get another bolt 1/4" nylon lock w/fine machine threads.
Blasted the innards with the leaf blower one more time, and sealed the upper boots. Then tightened the I/c top bolts after hooking that lil exchange that hangs off the drivers side back up to it... Crawled under the rig and put lower boot and clamps on.
I fired her up, and let her idle while I cleaned and put tools away, and pissed no less than three times... Hey, when you tap that keg, right?
Took her for a brief spin against the advice of the angel on my left shoulder, but that devil on my right was dancing the jig. It's hard to say if anything has changed.. what it felt like according to my finely calibrated levis, was a fresh tune. Crisper. Responsive to both throttle, and dropping off throttle. We'll see how it goes tomorrow, or more likely Sunday or Monday. The wife's birthday is tomorrow, so, I'll tow the boat to the ramp and launch (like a quarter mile from house, in the neighborhood and in a straight line)... Boat weighs 7k# or so, but even the ramp is a low grade, so I won't even reach temp or stress it any way.
That gadam nut that joined either Bigfoot, Hoffa, or maybe a school of mermaids given my proximity to the ocean has driven me crazy tonight.