Arts and crafts: Transfer Case Chain

The vehicle:  2015 Mercedes Benz ML-250 Bluetec diesel. The car has symptoms of grating clicking sound when the car accelerates or is going uphill. Additional symptom is leaking oil. Many of the online sources for this are very good on YouTube. The problem is that there are very few videos about the ML-250. Most are about the ML-350. No problem, these in fact turned out to be nearly identical. As usual, I won’t rehash what is already in the videos.

• Remove front and mid undercarriage covers (plastic skid plates)
  • Mark the front and rear drive shafts so that you can re-assemble them easier.
  • Remove or loosen some of the heat shields covering the rear drive shaft so you can get at and remove the stabilizer that holds the drive shaft. You need to do this to get enough slack to get the shaft off of the transfer case.
  • On mine, the drive shaft bolts were easy to remove. No lock-tite was present.
  • Then there is a wide aluminum brace that holds up the transfer case. Before you can remove it, you should support the transmission on another jack. The ML-350 videos show that as a steel crossmember, but mine is a flat piece of welded Aluminum. That bell-shaped gizmo with the two bolts sticking out is one of the mounting points. It is more like an engine mount in that it have rubber components inside to isolate vibrations.

The picture below shows a rectangular weep hole, pointed at the screwdriver tip along the seem in the case, that is the source of the oil leak. The point of that weep hole is to let leaking oil escape when the interior seal fails. When that happens, you must remove the transfer case from the transmission to get at that seal.

Then to remove the transfer case, there are 8 special star-hex bolts. These are a number 12. I had one that had a mildly rounded off head and a number 14 was a better fit. The two bolts at the top of the case are pretty much inaccessible. To get to them, you need a wrench that turns back onto itself. I tried using a crows foot. of course, they don’t make those in star-point sockets. The 10 mm crow’s foot has a close fit, but couldn’t really grip the bolt and only served to round it over. Internet guys recommended this doohicky from China Freight.

Total fail. Then I remembered that I had a welder and could create tools at a whim.

A very cheap set of crows foot wrenches from China Freight sacrificed themselves for the cause of science.

First three attempts failed, but the fourth attempt resulted in the device below, which when hooked to 2 long extensions and a regular ratchet wrench got the job done. I cannot emphasize enough that all 8 of these bolts were EASY to remove. If they have been over-torqued, lock-tited, or corroded, they would not have been possible to remove without dropping the whole transmission.

Opening up the case as we can clearly see the chain is very loose and has stretched over time. That is the cause of those clicking sounds. Under tension, the chain slips over the top of those gears. You will also note that the remaining oil in that case is brown. It should be red. This transfer case is supposed to be filled with ATF fluid. What is in there smells like 30 wt motor oil.

The new chain fit in there very snuggly with no drooping at all. When I put this in, I was careful to ensure the white marks on the case were still lined up. The upper half of the case has a magnet that need to be cleaned and put back in. I used a smidge of RTV to keep it from falling out when I re-assembled the case.

Then, as the instruction said, put everything back together, using RTV (silicone sealant). Follow the instruction on the package. Then torque the case bolts back on at 22FT-lbs. While this was on my bench, I also filled it with about 1/2 L of ATF fluid.

Now I need to remove and replace that leaky seal. In the picture below, you can see the leaky oil inside the case. That is confirmation that this seal is what was leaking. You can also see the snap ring with the blue and green marks on it. Normal sized snap ring pliers or needle nose will not work. Just do like I did and run back to China Freight for the big wall of pliers and grab the big-ass snap ring pliers. I bought the last one, but they will likely restock at some point.

Here you can see the difference in flexibility of old and new chains. (new on is on top).

Then after some lifting toting and grunting on my back, the resealed and rebuilt transfer case gets put back in where it belongs and all is well. Once installed, I removed the fill plug to check the proper level of fluid was present. 1/2 L was just the right amount. The parts I skipped over were not very important and the YouTube videos covered them very well. It is also worth noting that having the rear wheels off the ground will assist you in re-aligning the drive shaft bolts. If they are off by just a little bit, they will not go back together.

Total cost of parts and special tools was about $100. The MB dealership will not do this work. It doesn’t price out enough labor to make it worth their effort. Their repair is to replace the entire transfer case for estimated cost of about $10,000. They won’t replace that $20 seal or that $60 chain. Their motto is: If you can’t afford it, you shouldn’t have bought a luxury automobile. Go back to Chevrolet, Peasant.

Solutions to East Coast Longshoraman’s strike

Solution to East Coast strike:

1. ILA concedes to allow automation in any port where there is a backlog of freight.
2. Ports concede to a one time pay adjustment to match total inflation over the past 5 years.
3. ILA agrees to a breakup so that no two ports are represented by the same union. (Anti-Trust authority)
4. Port authorities agree that no two ports in the USA are owned/operated by the same company. (anti-trust authority). This every collective labor agreement is between one port and the people who work that port.

Why would they agree with demands that are so obviously not in their favor?

Because if they don’t, the government should break the union AND the port authorities. The Biden/Harris/Democrat to be named later administration has already imported a total replacement workforce who will be happy to do those jobs for half what the current people are getting paid. This is inevitable. The shipping companies KNOW those workers exist in the USA and are just waiting for a pretext to hire them. The deal above just gives the current workforce a few extra years of high pay to prepare for the future. By breaking up the union into smaller representation blocs, they improve the chances that some of them will survive while others are eventually dissolved. This spreads the risk of the entire union being dissolved and all their employees being replaced. And the port authorities will go along with it because if they don’t, the government should seize the port facilities and operate them as a public utility. This is a terrible idea since government run operations are inherently less efficient and more prone to corruption and mismanagement. So the port authorities have an incentive to avoid this alternative.

It is unconscionable that any labor union has the power to bring the United States to the point of economic collapse in order to further their own narrow financial gains. That union needs to be punished for this, but they also need to be thanked for showing us their hand and that they are willing to do this. Organized labor exists so that the workers of one company can hold one company at financial risk. No one in America signed up for allowing them more power than the whole government and the ability to hold the entire national economy at risk. This needs to be stopped, hard.

Of course, those solutions will not be proposed by anyone since this is an election year. The Democrats will never threaten to break up a union into smaller representation blocks, let alone break the union entirely. Republicans are too spineless to come anywhere near something this bold, important, and risky.

ILA are already some of the best paid union employees on the planet so it is hard to muster much sympathy for them. Likewise the faceless corporations that run international shipping through all their subsidiaries and shell companies have enormous profits and it is hard to be sympathetic for foreign billionaires. Neither one of those entities deserves to crush the United States just so they can make a few more dollars at the expense of the other. Both need to be punished for attempting it.

What if Pedophilia were MUCH more common than we think

I was watching Youtube yesterday and a comment caught me off guard. What if pedophilia were much more common than we think. How much of what is going on starts to makes sense then? The lack of prosecutions surrounding the Espstein cliet list. The absolute ability of big tech companies to control political speech yet claiming to be powerless to stop child porn. The insane level of exploitation of migrant children with the total collaboration of the US Government and federal immigration policy that is designed to flood the borders with more unaccompanied minors, not less.

Everyone potentially reading this grew up in an America where pedophilia was considered the lowest of the low crimes where no one would defend you. The accusation alone was ruinous and unrecoverable. it became the #1 thing to accuse an ex spouse of to get favorable divorce decisions, no evidence required.

Rumours have always swirreled around Disney princesses, child stars and hollywood celebrities and the infamous “casting couches” as well as the role of hollywood parents. Everyone knew what Michael Jackson was doing, but parents still willingly sent their kids to spend the night with him.

So what if, instead of a few perverts here and there, the prevelence of this is really enough people to donimate a whole political party… or two?

What if the real reason the establishment hates Donald Trump is that he is not a member of more than one club. What if what they really fear about him is not border policies, foreign policies, or economic policies… all of which look just like Bill Clinton’s. What if what they really fear is him spilling the beans about just how many people in government, media, entertainment, sports, judges, and public school teachers are all in the “club”.

Chilling.

Further thought experiment. If you were the leader of the Democratic party, and you and all your friends were “in the club”, how would you run the country differently than they are right now?

Arts and crafts: differential fluid change.

It’s time to do the 30K maintenance on the 2022 4Runner. Among other things, the the job includes changing the gear oil in the front and rear differentials and in the transfer case. I won’t bore you all with the details since there are already 50 YouTube videos on each of those things you can watch on how to do it.

I will mention that the YouTubers all favor squeezing the new oil into the fill holes directly from the bottles. I find this to be cumbersome and messy. So instead I created a pump device from an old DEF bottle, poured my gear oil into that and pumped away.

As it turns out, that pump is not ideal solution. It takes about 100 pumps per quart of fluid.

So then I decided to used this old China Freight pump sprayer with the spray nozzle removed and a plastic hose attached. These are cheap enough to buy one just to experiment with so this one is brand new.

This has the added advantage of seeing how much fluid I am adding.

Next time I will see if I can add an Air valve to it and see if I can add air from my compressor without it exploding.

Changing the fluids was a good call. Some people argue that the differentials never need fluid replacement. The rear differential was a gray color and a bit opaque from all the metal shavings in it. Some metal shavings are not a problem, but the microscopic shavings can themselves become abrasive and over time create more of themselves. The transfer case old fluid was a caramel brown color and totally transparent.

A few words about Tim Walz

1. I will not play the game of comparing service records as if only those who served the right amount of time, in the right locations, with the right amount of danger are qualified to comment. Every voter in the USA has a stake in this discussion. That doesn’t mean every opinion is valid or valuable. Most are just trivial. My own service record is better than many, not as good as some.

2. A “career” national guardsman versus an enlisted public affairs private? Seriously? This is a pretty low bar for anyone to be arguing over. For those who don’t understand how this works, A typical national guard “career” is at best a part time job on one weekend per month and 2 weeks each summer. Add in the time it takes for certain types of basic training and a 20 year career in the National guard only amounts to about 3 years actually serving in uniform. Whoopdi-freaking-do. The glaring exception to this is deployments. Mr. Walz “missed” a deployment by his unit that amounted to 22 months of continuous active duty in an armpit called Iraq. Even if no one was getting shot, and in 2005 LOTS of people were indeed getting shot, it would have been hardship duty. Mr. Walz obviously ordered his own affairs to avoid hardship and that makes him less of a man. It is more derisible because for 24 years he took the money for “being in the Army” and the one time the Army called for a payback, he suddenly became too busy. Not exactly cowardice, but nothing he should put in his resume either. Any Marine who spent 4 years in uniform would have had more actual military service than Mr. Walz after 24 years. In Mr. Vance’s case, that service in Iraq was a hardship. No Italian hotels. No private air conditioned offices and private rooms like a CSM gets. Vance would have been sleeping in an open bay with 50 of his closest friends. There is no comparison between the service of those two men. One was selfless. The other was self-serving.

3. The party that supported Bill Clinton for President despite his open draft dodging has no high ground on this issue when it comes to Trump’s military service. As a mere technicality, Trump did serve 4 years as commander in chief of the military. During that time, he demonstrated more military virtue than his generals and admirals who wanted to send a missile strike into Iran and kill 40-50 Iranian soldiers who didn’t do anything wrong but get out of bed that morning. Trump refused to take the bait of the Military security state. Bush/Cheney/Powell weren’t as bright and fell for it when the CIA told them there were MWD in Iraq. Clinton wasn’t that smart when the same people told him chems were being made in a baby milk factory. It takes a strong president to willfully choose to refuse the advice of “professional intelligence agencies” and not send men to their deaths over make-believe intelligence data that is designed to manipulate world events. The intelligence community never forgave him for that and went all in on their “Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation” story right before the 2020 election. The news media carried that story instead of carrying the story of decades of Biden family corruption in Ukraine, China, and Russia plus evidence of about 200 other actual felony crimes. Hunter was quite the collector of evidence. Good thing teh FBI is also all in on protecting the Bidens. They have had that laptop since the beginning and have buried it.

4. Military service is not the only path to virtuous service. All those jobs that involve hardship for the sake of others qualify in this regard. The example I like to use is that in the Normandy invasion of WW2, the men who stormed the beach were no doubt heroes. But they could never have gotten to the beach if Andrew Jackson Higgins in Louisiana didn’t build a boat company and manufacture Higgin’s boats to carry them to shore. All those liberty ships, air craft carriers, battleships and destroyers were built by people who never left the USA to go to fight the JAPS or Nazis. None of those ships would have been built if not for tens of thousands of men (no ladies there) working in deep coal mines and iron ore mines. Military effort is a team sport. For every navy SEAL kicking in a door to shoot OBL in the face, there are 100,000 other people making it possible for him to be there.

5. Walz is certainly not the first Democrat to lie about his resume. It’s pretty much expected at this point. The lies will come out and the opposition will carry the message about the lies and the leftist legacy media as well as the new media will cover for the democrats and make sure no one hears about it. If Democrats were not lying, they wouldn’t have anything at all to campaign on. What is far more important and what should be the focus of rational campaigning is a comparison of how each party will govern. VPs do not govern. The position itself is so useless it should just be abolished.

6. In the end. This is still a race between Trump and Obama. Americans need to decide which America they want to live in. After Trump wins, Republicans need to start holding Trump accountable for his failings. Not the make-believe failings that Democrats claim, but his actual failings.

7. Walz was certainly not the only Guardsman or reservist who failed to deploy when called. In 2007 for example, only about 30% of the IRR reservists who were called showed up. Between 2005 and 2007 the Military needed a very large volume of units going to Iraq and Afghanistan and all the supporting bases around the world. LOTS of national guard units failed to deploy on time. The 22 month deployment for Walz’s unit was atypical. A few months of that would have been preparing to go but it was common for units in theater to be involuntarily extended because their replacement units were not ready. Unready units were VERY common in the National guard and the most common reason for lack of readiness was lack of personal in key positions. The lack of a CSM in the unit, could cause the whole battalion to fail to deploy on time while another is found. Meanwhile, there is another unit in Iraq waiting longer before they can come home because some key personnel at the last minute declined. It was also a typical National guard practice to only send volunteers and they would strip down some units of the unwilling and refill them with volunteers from other units. Thus, a Guardsman could find himself on back to back deployments when returning and then joining another unit going straight back. The Guard members who deployed carried back enough honorable service to cover for all the ones who were “too busy running for congress” to do their part.

8. I recall at the time knowing of all the people who had taken the king’s coin for so many years and failing to go when called and thinking, those people really have some severe character problems. It would have been better if they had never put on a uniform at all.

9. Put this into context at the time. The Democratic party had chosen to use the war in Iraq as a campaign issue, even though they had voted to support it. Walz was a democratic party activist even then and sided with those groups that protested the war. His choice to decline service when called may very likely be attributable to political motivations rather than just ambition or cowardice. Of course, his political views didn’t stop him from taking a paycheck for being “in the Army”, when it was just easy duty.

YouTube Taken over by Moslems

I can’t say why, but my YouTube selections this morning seem to be about 1/2 pro Islamic messages.

The “shorts” are running 5 out of 7 pro Islamic. Stark contrast to yesterday with zero. What has happened at teh Google/YouTube board of sdirectors meeting that decided to tweek the algorythm and push this particular message? Perhaps to counter the message from Sunday that Hizbollaha killed a baunch of kids playing soccer.

This is my work account that I “refresh” the history on every week.

In other “news”, plenty of videos from legacy media outlets saying various things about Trump and Vance. At this point they may just as well use the same headline every day for the next 90 days: In a stunning turn of events, Democratic voters intend to vote for teh Democratic party candidate, whoever that might be. Every “news feature aboout Vance was written by a democratic party loyal activists who is crafting a message to make Vance look bad. Same for all the stories about Trump. Problem with Trump is that they already tried every possible mix of stories in the past 8 years and nothign is sticking.

The legacy media is even dragging out the Russian collusion story again, but saying it is happening this time for sure.

Secret Service Director Quits

I did not see that coming. I’ll need to read her non-apology resignation later to see what her reasons are. Just yesterday she was saying, Hell no, I won’t go. But it seems the Biden team is really making lots of big moves with no warning. Whoever is really in charge of the government must have called her to tell her to get out and go some other highly rewarding place. Maybe a think tank or university staff.

None of the other total failure cabinet officers or high level political appointments have resigned despite congress demanding it.

It is well established that Democrats feel no shame about their actions or failures so that isn’t the reason.

Is Biden Dead?

He hasn’t been seen in over a week. When asked for “proof of life” yesterday, the Biden team put together an unconvincing group phone call that could have been AI generated Biden clips.

Why can’t a guy who travels everywhere with a press corps get his face on camera in front of witnesses?

The foreign press is reporting this morning that Biden suffered a stroke and is in a Delaware hospital. He is even more incapacitated than usual. President-in-waiting Harris is establishing the conditions of a transfer of power even though the Democrats are not admitting that Biden is unfit to stand on his own feet any longer, let along continue holding office.

Biden dropped out of the race only 2 days ago, but didn’t say why. His letter, not written on White House stationary and signed wierdly and with no public address seems like the sort of thing a shadow government would do to cover up for Biden in a coma. Then Biden Tweeted/X’ed his unconditional support for Team Harris. But of course, Biden doesn’t use Twitter/X, so actually the 25 year old woman named Megan at the White House communications office Tweeted/X’ed her support for Harris. That’s all I was waiting for. If an annonymous staffer who recently got her student loans paid off supports Harris as the new sock puppet in chief, that’s good enouogh for me.

But why would the Democrats do this? Harris is the VP already. She could take office and run as the incumbent and reap a huge electoral bump.

I suspect it is because the democrats are just so used to lying aboout everything that they cannot tell the truth about anything until they have tried everything else first. I suspect the Democrats are waiting for just the right time to announce things to get teh best political bump. Telling the truth never occured to them.

This could be cleared up easily by Team Biden holding a press conference. Why don’t they? It might have something to do with wearing out the autopen signing executive orders and pardons that Biden will get blame/credit for, despite being more brain-dead than usual. I’m sure Team Harris is consulting lawyers who specialize in this to make sure her access to campaign resources is uninterrupted and anything that Biden needs to “sign” gets “signed” before any announcement of Biden’s death.

A Few Notes About the Trump Assassination Attempt

Yesterday, someone tried to kill Donald Trump. Trump is one of the most heavily guarded people in America, guarded by the most competent guardians on the planet.

They were defeated by a 20 year old kid with emotional stability issues.

1. This was a bad day for Trump. This was a terrible day for American politics. There are not words to describe how bad this was for the Secret Service. Every agent present knows that they let a bullet get through to within an inch of offing their protectee. Every single agent present bears that shame and they will forever. You can tell when they dogpiled Trump and surrounded him with their bodies as if to say, “the next bullet better go through me first”… once the danger had already passed and anyone could see there were no more bullets coming. Shame. Unendurable, unending shame.

2. Once again, Leftists in the gun control circles pointed out that an AR-15 was used by the assassin. But they never pointed out that most of the protection detail also were armed with AR-15s. The same gun used to harm, also used to protect. It is inevitable that more people will be killed by AR-15-type rifles in America. Not because the AR-15 is inherently dangerous, but because it is so freaking popular. American citizens own tens of millions of them. It is inevitable that some of them will be used by crazy unbalanced people and some will be used by criminals.

3. I do not buy into any explanation of events other than a 20 year old man-child thought to either make a name for himself or go out “gloriously” because his own life pretty much sucked. He had no prospects and the people in his life gave him nothing to live for. His face says it all. No women will ever want him to fertilize their eggs. This was not part of a grand conspiracy run by intelligence agencies. Ukrainian Army people are tweeting that it was the work of their own special forces and that next time they will get him. This is absurd. This is not a case of the Secret Service intentionally letting one get through. I have no doubt that they all feel collective shame at their total failure. They got lucky and they know it. A 20 year old INCEL beat them. This is not the fault of the news media and Democratic party calling Trump “Hitler” for 8 years. It’s just one stupid young man craving attention and selecting a very bad way to get it.

Something different

Pterodactyl has to wait for Blue Jay to finish so he has a drink while he patiently waits.