Mid-West Mini-Fest Friday - Day

Well, being road weary, the 5 hour energy from earlier, the PeeBeers, and Atomic didn't really sit all that well. I might never live that down.


The key's to Di's FXR were back in Iowa, but we got it hot wired.


Here's a shot of Deacon's Jockey set-up.


We barely made it in time for breakfast at the Blue Bay Restaurant. This place is awesome.


Cheesehead(Randy) and I reworked the sticking clutch in the mini-bike and Andy tested it out.


Then he tested bourbon from "the Jewel's". It wasn't bad, and should be included in my other blog.


"Hey, whose got the dumbest phone here?"

Mid-West Mini-Fest Thursday - Arrival and Party

I finally made it to the party. I had to put my rain gear on about 40 miles out, but about 5 miles later the roads were dry. I managed to do two laps of East Troy before I found the place, but I made it.





KentR samples the Atomic which is basically Fireball from Iowa.


PeeBeeR's of course.


Testing out my tripod and camera timer.


The set-up works well.




Di and Deacon.


I'm not sure why our host makes obscene gestures all the time.


I'm not sure this picture was on purpose.


Deacon stole the camera at some point.

Chris and Kris.(I think I spelled those correctly.)


"Hang loose" Kevin and Wendy.




Don't start that yawning nonsense, Di.


We're just resting our eyes.

Mid-West Mini-Fest Thursday - Trip out

The way to my aunt's house is easy. I needed some help to take an alternate route through Missouri and into Illinois and Wisconsin. The elastic in my arm band is very tired, but the J.P.S. Nav system still works.


Off to O'Reilly's to get the breather sorted out. 15/32 hose is perfect fit for the tube; it's even marked as crankcase vent hose.


A zip tie to the stock key tab and I'm good to go. I'll get a breather with a bolt tab as soon as I see one.


Unfortunate results of Missouri's road naming conventions.(I stole this from Google Street View.)


I got to Louisiana, Missouri. It's right on the border of Missouri and Illinois, between Hannibal and St. Louis on the river. I even saw a river otter running around on the street, that was pretty cool.

I was looking for gas and lunch. I asked a local at the gas station if there was any place around to get a hot lunch.

"My grandma owns a restaurant down the road and it's Bar-B-Que day. It's across from a car lot"

So I go to find this place and I see the car lot and the smoker, but I can't find the restaurant. Then I circle back around and find it. Izola's Place. This place has five tables and only one has four chairs, because the other tables are against a wall.


This is $11 worth of chicken dinner. I thought it was a shame that I wouldn't be able to take leftovers with me on my bike, so finished it all. I'm so going back to try everything else on the menu.

Mid-West Mini-Fest Wednesday - First Leg Out

The first leg of the trip was mostly uneventful. Just burnt up the interstate after work to my aunt's house in Springfield, MO.

This is how you get the most out of a 4.2 gallon tank. I'm always a bit braver with my spare quart of gas on my frame rail, but I was drafting a bit to make it to the end of the tollway.


So here's my hot weather tip of the day courtesy of Scott "Hotsauce" Sprankle. Drink a V8 instead of a Gatorade to get electrolytes back.


Here's the breakdown.
32oz Gatorade has 400mg Sodium, 113mg Potassium, 200 Calories, 0g Fiber, 0g Protein.
12oz V8 Spicy has 980mg Sodium, 700mg Potassium, 70 Calories, 3g Fiber, 3g Protein.



The V8 was not as awful to drink as I was expecting either. It's still about like drinking tomato soup, more than good salsa, but by the end of the trip, I had developed a taste for the stuff. The Gatorade might hydrate you more, but running my camel pack full of water between stops should work just fine.

I noticed a light film of oil all down the left side of my bike. Somewhere along the way, I lost my crankcase breather. Had used the stock(filmsier) bit of hose to hold my filter, because I couldn't get the stiffer 3/8 inch hose I had to fit over the tube. It didn't quite work out for me.

Swapmeet Goodies

It was a pretty good swap today.

A gave an okay price for the 92 vanity plate. Timing cover bolts, timing plug, and hand control bolts(2X) from Colony, rocker bolt lock nuts. popsicle kicker rubber, one head stud, one base stud, and 3 single pegs. The holey is a genuine Drag Specialty.

08 Dodge Grand Caravan Radiator Replacement

Well, I'm back to a faint smell of antifreeze in my garage and topping the recovery tank off regularly. A pressure check of the system clearly showed the radiator spewing under pressure. Amazingly, the book rate to remove and replace the radiator is close to 3 hours. Why? Well, depending on the manual you read, you may need to take the grill and bumper cover completely off to do the job. The Clymer manual doesn't say to do so, but the pictures in it show the grill and bumper cover off.

So, what is the truth?

Do this job with the engine cold. I only ran it long enough to get it up onto the ramps.


The little red bucket fits under the radiator drain.


The drain is directly above a frame member so I used a form-a-funnel to try and make as little mess as possible.


Up under there. Open the drain.


Now open the radiator cap so that it will really flow out


Pull the recovery tank. It just has tabs that fit into key holes.


Pull the hose for the recovery tank.


Pull the two electrical plug to the fans.


The red part slides back.


Then push in the tab in the middle in order to get these plugs off.


Here's the second plug.


Pull all the "christmas trees" that hold the wires in place.






Disconnect the upper radiator hose.


I'm going to replace the upper and lower radiator hoses, too. This is a good time to verify that the hose I have is correct and will fit okay.


Remove the upper hose at the engine.


There is just clips that hold the radiator fan assembly in place. Carefully pop those loose.


Pull the fan assembly straight out.


This one bolt on the right side of the radiator holds the radiator to some AC lines. Take it out.


Put a catch bucket under the lower radiator hose


Pull the lower radiator hose.


The other end of the lower hose is way under there.


I'll go ahead and connect the new lower hose to the engine side while I'm down here.


Back to the top side. Two little pop fasteners hold the top of the grill in place.


So here's where the "how deep do you have to go" comes into question. The top radiator support goes basically from headlight to headlight and had to come out the top to let the radiator out the top.

Let's find and count the bolts holding things together.

1 ... 2 ...


3 ... 4 ...


5 ... 6 ...


7 ... 8 ...


Removing this bolt lets you...


Get at this bolt.


Oh wow, there's a 9th and 10th bolt holding the upper radiator support in place, too.


Up and almost out. Leave the hood latch and cable attached and lay it to the side.




These little clips are what the bolts go into.


The AC condenser is attached to clips on the front of the radiator.


Carefully pull things apart.


We had to look at the new radiator to figure out where every clip was for sure.





Here's the last hold up. The condenser lines in front of the condenser right side need to be unclipped from the radiator before the right side of the condenser itself may be unclipped.


Finally the radiator is unclipped.


And comes straight out.


Put the side air dams on the new radiator.


Route the clips correctly.


Put the radiator in place and reclip the condenser and its lines back into place. This would be a good time to install the top air dam.(Instead of later like we did.)


Radiator top support goes on.


Bolts go in.




The odd ball bolt goes in.


Lower radiator hose goes on.


Fan assembly drops in and clips in.


Wires get plugged in and routed.


Wash the recovery tank out.


Install recover tank.




Connect recovery. (We have to put a hose clamp on this after we ran it.)


Then we realized that the top air dam wasn't in place.


Surely we can fish this in.


Why does that fit?


This notch...


should fit with this knotch, but it's off by about a quarter inch.


So we fixed it and it fit.


Connect upper radiator hose.


Fill the system and run it and make sure it's full.


The whole job took about 2 hours with the help of my friend Pat. It actually went a heck of a lot smoother than most of our projects.