A special day or everyday is special?

Friday marked international Daughters day, and boy do I have a daughter to celebrate. Smart, stunning, driven, stubborn, loving, compassionate, the list goes on and on. All I can say is I love my little girl to the moon and back, and there was no better way to celebrate her than to watch her kick my ass up a mountain. So many hikes I would be coaxing you up the hill....somewhere you blew past me and now are the one patiently waiting for me to catch up. I love that you do and that you want to.

We are so proud of you , where you are and what you've done, and its just the beginning of your journey.

                                                                        You go girl!

On the Fillmore side of things....a funny thing has happened. I started having electrical issues. Particularly that something is causing my engine battery to drain. I'll have a fully functional, fully charged battery, then a few days later.....nothing. I checked the usual suspects but nothing! I charged my battery and let it sit outside the bus for a number of days and it held it's charge and the electronic battery evaluator says all is well.

Nothing was obvious, I put a multimeter in line on the negative side to see power draw but  I'm not even getting a consistent reading. So far I am still searching but along the way I have found some issues that are not likely associated with the draw, but need to be fixed none the less.

On the engine/chassis battery main shut off, I found one of the ring connectors was ready to fail. 

A simple fix.

The path of power if you will, from the positive terminal of the battery goes from the battery to the starter, then from the same post on the starter a lead to the fuse panel. I decided to follow the path, evaluating connections and connectors along the way. Fillmore has been running so dependably for so long I cant remember when the last time I just laid down underneath the old beast and just looked. So as I was following the electrical cables from the battery I saw something that made me do a double take.

Not really believing what I was seeing I decided to do the wiggle test.....and frankly I wasn't thinking I was going to see anything.....but.....

And that sealed the fate......nothing to do with my electrical issue but now I have uncovered another thing that needs my attention and needs it now.

The starter is mounted to the bell housing by three lonely bolts. One literally turned out of the housing with my fingers(oops), the second was tighter but nothing to write home about.....and then of course....the last one.

These are 12 point bolt heads, you can use a regular hex head socket...unless someone has already tried that and rounded the points on the dodecagon and your sockets are just slipping..... so off to Napa for a socket.

Unfortunately the bolt head was too far gone and I needed to pull out the hail Mary tools to see of it would budge. Some heat, a rap with a big hammer, tighten then loosen and eventually it came out.

Thankfully I don't have to put these ones back in.

Once that starter is out (heavy bugger) and on the bench top, the crack is very obvious. I can honestly say I've never seen one like this....not that I've seen a lot of cracked starter housings.....