I’ve spent a fair bit of this holiday messing around with the crankshaft on my old landcruiser, trying to get away with a cheap fix rather than the real McCoy.

Its still not fixed right and I am now on plan C. The first timing cover gasket didn’t hold so I had to pull the balancer off to fix it and in doing so discovered that the devcon repair hadn’t worked. (Glad I discovered it then).

The second time round the gasket worked but the devcon failed again. I just pulled it all apart again… It took me 15 minutes rather than the hour it took the first time!

Plan C is to weld the key in place and make it a permanent fixture. Next weekend we’ll have a crack at that. I am tempted to just weld the balancer onto the crankshaft for ever and a day… but that wouldn’t be nice to the poor person who gets it after me and had an oil seal leak…

The danger in all this is that I end up spending more money doing it badly several times than doing it right once.

However that said I have spent $300.00 and am a long way shy of the $1500/2000 price it would cost to do properly.

I hover between being totally frustrated by it and wanting to sell it at any price and becoming more determined to kick its arse. I need to remember not to do anything rash in my frustrated moments!

It’ll be good to take my eyes off it this week as I return to work. It has impacted on the holiday in the sense that it has caused stress and some financial anxiety, but at the same time I have been enjoying learning and the challenge of fixing it. We recieved a very generous gift a few days back which will really help with the cost of all the repairs that we have had to do in the last few weeks.

So… today I am up for another round with this beast. I reckon it can be beaten… Ask me what I think this time next week after we’ve tried welding it up. That will be a do or die effort and if we botch up the crankshaft the only option then will be to do it properly…