1995 Toyota 4Runner blowing fuses and A/C Clutch Replacement

During a recent trip, the A/C fuse blew.  This fuse  is in relay box #3, behind the dashboard on the passenger side, near the door...  accessible only when the dash is taken apart - nice!  The A/C was making air before there was a nasty burning plastic smell and the fuse blew.

I put in a new fuse - it blew right away.  I tried a 20A fuse (2x the original 10A) and it held for a bit; the compressor ran very intermittently and again released some horrible smell.  I cut it off right away.

Because the compressor still turned, both then and later by hand, I assumed it wasn't shot, but that the A/C clutch had burned up.  The shop I took the truck to said it took so much labor to replace, it wasn't worth it - just replace the compressor and essentially rebuild the A/C system (new dryer, expansion, o-rings etc.).  Just under $1000 total.  Yuck-O.

A survey of the internet yielded this link:
http://www.yotatech.com/f2/c-blowing-fuses-what-could-214151/
I found just enough good ideas there to believe replacing the clutch was something I could manage.  I found a replacement clutch on ebay for just less than $70.  If this worked...pretty big savings.

So I started taking things off the car.  Loosened all the belts first, then took off the shroud and fan/fan-clutch to make space.  Also dropped the steering damper to make some space below, and removed a little cover in the front passenger wheel-well to get access to the compressor bolts.  Space is super tight, but between using wrenches and a u-joint adapter with some creative extensions, all the bolts came loose.  The compressor could be moved around quite a bit, enough for access, even still connected to the refrigerant lines.

The clutch is supposed to come apart like this:

(Note that clicking on an image should yield a bigger version.)

The bolt at the front was the first pain - the compressor wanted to turn.  I was finally able to hold the middle bit (88403 in the diagram) with some pliers and a wrap of nylon cord and get the bolt loose - it loosens the normal way (at first I was worried it might be reverse thread - it isn't).  The front piece came off easily.

The pulley is held in by a snap ring, which wasn't easy to get out in tight quarters, but I eventually pried it free.  The pulley, however, was still totally German-stuck (gutenstuk).  I needed a close-quarters pulley-puller.

I rolled my own from a 3/4" section of square aluminum channel, a T-nut, bolt with some normal nuts, and a couple c-clamps as shown:

I drilled a hole through the channel and hot-glued the T-nut in place in the hole.  The bolt was a 5/16"-18, and the two nuts tightened against each other at the end of the bolt made something flat to push up against the shaft of the compressor with.

The puller worked like a charm.  Here it is in place to start:

Soon the pulley was sliding free...note the gap forming behind the pulley:

As seen in the exploded diagram, there is another pain-in-the-ass snap ring to remove after the pulley is off; the coil then pulls easily off the shaft.  Below are the A/C clutch parts, removed; on the right is the guilty fellow - yeah, I think that coil is shot...

Next: replacement with the new parts!

The parable of the store owner

Once there was a gang of children tormenting the owner of a convenience store. The gang leader ridiculed the owner for years while his gang allegedly lifted candybars; tales of their accomplishments abounded on every street corner and playground, and children widely regarded the gang and it's leader among the "greatest of all time".  Naturally everyone assumed the leader must have also taken some candy too, and says so, but he claims he never ever did.  There was no security system to prove the leader took anything, the only proof ever offered are the boasts to one another among a gang of children.  That, and over time, many other members of the gang are actually caught red-handed lying and stealing candy at stores around the area.

So, many years later, the former gang leader has grown up - he's rich, successful, and a benevolent supporter of many laudable causes.  Members of the gang have scattered - some never amounted to anything, but many went on to become successful in their own rights, a few even own their own stores now.  No one in the gang has lifted anything for quite awhile.

But that old store owner has not forgotten the old days.  He looks at the success of the former gang leader, and the nice stores owned by a few former gang members, and thinks everyday, "That guy made fun of me, they stole from me!" and won't let it lie.  So after years of chasing windmills, he finally "convinces" some of the down-and-out former gang members to say, on record, that they KNOW the leader took some candy too back-in-the-day.  Many law enforcement agencies look at the case and decide pursuit of the old gang is not worth their time, but finally a regulatory agency in charge limiting widespread shoplifting takes up the case, and it's decided that a small (and possibly biased) jury will arbitrarily decide, based solely on hearsay and innuendo from these former gang members, if any candy was ever taken by the gang leader.  The panel has no substantial legal or enforcement power, but their ruling might at least highly embarrass the former gang leader.

The store owner spends a LOT of money convincing the public to listen to known thieves and liars to begin with, and unearths boxes of evidence; some that may be summed up simply as circumstantial, and some quite serious.  Nevertheless, in the end, the amount of money spent by the owner could have bought multiple security systems for his and others stores, and effectively prevented any further shoplifting.  Instead, the owner used the money to endlessly pursue the defamation of the gang leader.

Finally, the jury releases their decision - they found that the gang leader had indeed taken some candy bars.  He was fined the value of a handful of candybars and told he could never publicly claim to be the "greatest of all time" again.  No matter the ruling, the leader continued to claim his innocence since there was no legally binding concrete proof of any wrongdoing.  His wealth and fame declined a little, but he maintained his public good deeds as before and continued to enjoy much public support.  The ruling meant little, as many of the public privately felt all along he must have taken some candybars along the way, so at this point the public essentially let it go, and most continued to believe he was among the greatest of all time.  He obviously had not always taken candy, and he must not have taken very much, or he would have been caught like his accusers.  After all, he was the leader!  Everyone was watching him like a hawk the moment he entered any store...it just was not possible that he could have snatched much candy, no matter what those other guys were saying.  They must just be jealous.

Many new gangs have come and gone, and the store owner, on the other hand, lost candybars furiously for decades, and continues to do so.  Still, he smiles and foolishly claims victory and believes that by disparaging one alleged shoplifter from 20 years past, no one is currently shoplifting.

Can't outsmart stupid.

Exhibit A, with special thanks to Mythbusters:

Bomb Range Engineer #1: We need to blow some stuff up.
Bomb Range Engineer #2: I have no idea what we're doing.
Bomb Range Engineer #1: Anything could happen. It's probably dangerous.
Bomb Range Engineer #2: Very dangerous. Let's do it out in the middle of nowhere.
Bomb Range Engineer #1: Yes.
Bomb Range Engineer #2: We're smart!
Bomb Range Engineer #1: Yep!
Sometime later...
Developer #1: We need to buy some cheap land and get people to build houses there.
Developer #2: Hey, look way out here. Nothing around but something called a "Bomb Range", and a good road leads there!
Developer #1: Sounds like it might be dangerous?
Developer #2: Naw, they have smart engineers. They will do things safely.
Developer #1: Let's get building!
Developer #2: We're rich.
Developer #1: Yep!

About that E pluribus unum thing...

It wasn't exactly a surprise, but Congress recently "re-affirmed" our national motto, "In God We Trust."

It wasn't always this way, as the above link and this one points out.

It's pretty clear that what our "new" motto actually re-affirms is:

a) we don't trust ourselves or our own intelligence and goodness,

b) we don't give a crap about citizens that differ from the majority,

c) in fact instead of "uniting" anyone we are deliberately divisive,

d) we obviously completely misunderstand the constitution, which while written by very religious men STILL contained wording deliberately constructed to prevent the government support of any particular god or religion,

e) we give a clear signal to every religious nutjob around the world that we ARE waging a crusade against them, i.e, if well-armed men screaming "In Allah we Trust" landed on OUR shores I'm pretty sure we'd take it personally...

It's worth noting that nothing about "e pluribus unum" says you shouldn't put faith in God. It graciously says those that do and do not will ALL stand firm, together, for our common good. What's wrong with that?

Why can't we just be united for our own good, strong against enemies, foreign and domestic?

Any gods most likely want no part of it.

The lifespan of technology

I have a BMW K75. Many reading this probably don't know
what an interesting motorcycle this. The model I have was built in
1992, yet has computer controlled port fuel injection and independent
front and rear ABS. The motor sits on it's side, longitudinally, and
has three cylinders. The rear wheel is a mono-lever, single shock
shaft drive. While none of those are by themselves groundbreaking,
finding them all on a motorcycle from this era is rare. In fact, even
by 2011 standards, all those features are quite uncommon to find on
the same machine.

So, the bike came to me in 2002 when I bought it used from a guy in
NOVA. Almost everything on the machine worked in top
form, but I got a "steal", probably a few thousand under blue book,
because the ABS computer was dead and a replacement cost well over
$1000. But I gambled, bought the machine, and within a month I'd
found a BMW moto graveyard part for $250 and suddenly had a fully
functional ABS system, and pretty much flawless moto.

So imagine my sadness when about a month ago, the ABS computer croaked again. Nine years later, with this bike now being nearly 20 years old, the used part market was barren. The few used ABS brains I saw were in the $450-600 range. New ones now list for $1600, if you find someone that has any in stock. Turns out, this part is the Achilles heel of the BMW ABS systems from this generation, and they are tough to get. I had probably been lucky even in 2002 to get one as cheaply as I did.

Trying to keep the story short, I found a japanese guy mentioned in an
older BMW moto list serve as being able to repair the ABS computers,
and a few modified googles later located him online. Of course I was
concerned he might be offline (or worse) due to the tsunami, but
luckily that was not the case.

This initial email was sent June 5, and he wrote me back within 24
hours. He lives in a more southern part of the country (sort of near
Hiroshima) and said he still did such repairs, just send it over!

I used one of the fixed-rate USPS international boxes and off it went
to Japan.

Four days later, he wrote that he had the ABS. (How this is possible for $14 I don't understand, but it's good). He claimed to have quickly
found a loose thru-hole connection on the circuit board that was
causing the failure. He repaired this, took the computer for a test
spin in his K100, and reported all to be well. He asked for 14,500
yen and said he'd send it back when he got the $$.

That was about $180US the day I paypal-ed it over, and he wrote back a day later that he'd shipped it.

It arrived this morning, ten days after I originally shipped it, and is already installed (and working fine) back in my K75. He says he tested "everything" on it and if anything goes bad within a year, he fixes it again for shipping only.

Anyway, like I said, probably only interesting to a few people. But I
thought it was cool. And also rare - how many high-tech things, as
they age, must be discarded simply because no one knows how to fix
them? Even a simple problem, such as this thru-hole connection
breaking, or a bad cap, or a million other little repairable things
can go wrong...but "it isn't worth it" to fix them. I'm smiling
because my bike is fixed, I saved a bunch of $$, but mostly because I
know there's someone out there that still cares to understand and fix
things instead of just junking them.

On top of it all, it was possible to do all this in less than two
weeks? It's easy to think about tsunami's and nuclear meltdowns being
on the other side of the planet. How does that effect me? Well, the
other side of the planet is, really, right around the corner.