Hansen Fest

After the governor gear stipped out when my wife and kids were traveling back home from Park Rapids, MN.  I installed a new gear, and the next trip was a camping weekend with my dad.

Neighbors of his for 30 years put on an annual weekend camping for friends and family at their property up north.  My dad has attended for many years, and since he sold his camper this year, I decided we should go up there with the GMC.

I again borrowed a 4 place snowmobile trailer from a friend, and put my dune buggy and Dad's 4 wheeler in tow:

After leaving home.  It just seemed something was not right.  The GMC seemed to be struggling to get around.  I thought for one moment on a hill, it was going to be time for a tow truck.  But I still kept moving onwards, and it would go down the highway at 65 MPG just fine. 

This was camping in an open meadow, with about 30 other campers.  All dry camping.  It was a new test to see how my solar worked, and if I would still have power after a couple days.  to help, I stopped and put a ice block in the fridge.  That helped tons.  On Sunday afternoon, I still had 85% of my batteries left.

Front Row

Weather was perfect.  this is only 1/2 the field camping.  there is probably 10 campers tucked in the trees as well.  Every type of camper represented, from fish houses, truck campers, to diesel pushers.

Band Saturday Played till 1 am.

Sunday Morning, I decided to check into why the gmc was struggling to get around.  Someone suggested the power valve was not working, and to check by pressing it down, and seeing if it sprung back up.  Well... it didn't spring back up.  and now it just floods the carb.  So time to go home and work on it at home.

I then tried to take the carb apart

It is off to a carb person to put this mess back together!

Now it turns out after more testing.  It is still my governor giving me performance issues. Not the carb.   even though the carb was messed up too.   the GMC is stuck in 3rd gear.  I bent something inside the governor when I changed out the gear.  I will post more on that later.

Black Tank Repair

Found a leak in my black holding tank.  Just under the support on drivers side.

crack in black tank

after plety of reading, and not wanting to spend the money or the labor to replace the tank.  I decided to repair the crack myself.

after cleaning it up, I started by using a map torch, to heat the end of a soldering pen.  and I was able to melt the plastic crack closed. 

I then used an epoxy on the crack.  It was a permatex plastic tank epoxy.  It worked good, with the exception of fighting the gravity.  lots of epoxy ended up on the ground. 

after epoxy cured

Then i was told that 3m 7200 was great stuff, so I put a bunch of that over the epoxy.  But the stuff I bought, cures in a week.  so it was hard to get as much as I liked over the area.  and it took all week for it to harden.  I found out later, they make the same stuff in a "fast cure" that hardens in 24 hours.

this repair so far seems to be good.  I feel it should be fine for a long time.  has survived a few weeks of being partially full with no leaks.  the big test will be next summer.