I Think. I Can’t.

For an experiment (and because I really didn’t know what was wrong and had exhausted my resources), I’d made a little video which I posted at CarCrazyCentral.com in hopes that someone might know what my car was suffering from. Here it is again…

And their advice worked! I felt confident about diving in and dropping the tranny even though I’d never done it before. I knew it’d be a lot of work, but as long as it needed being done in order to fix the problem, I was completely willing to do it. And here’s what happened…

Never again will I trust Jason with a torque wrench. I love him dearly, but unless he’s willing to go through what I did in order to fix the car (he’s not), he is no longer allowed to use a torque wrench on my car. I let him do stuff that isn’t as critical or is easy to get at, but nothing that involves dropping a tranny or pulling a motor. I’ve learned my lesson!!!!

Beyond that, here’s a funny little story that happened during the flexplate fiasco:

I was under the car, trying to line up the tranny on the jack to the engine and I was really having a hard time. I only weigh a hundred pounds, so I don’t have a lot of leverage unless I’m grabbing onto something under the car. Yoga has made me immensely stronger, but come on, I’m too little to effective all the time.

So, there I am, under the car. The tranny pan had been leaking forever and the whole underside was not just grimy, it was slippery, too. Every time I tried to grab something while fighting with the tranny, my hand–or foot–would slip. I sighed in defeat and crawled out from under the car. I was so pissed, I didn’t pay attention to how well I wiped off my shoes or my hands as I went inside to ask for Jason’s help in getting the tranny lined up so I could put a few bolts in.

Well, during that expedition, I made a nice little footprint path from the garage to the living room–on our white carpet. Needless to say, he wasn’t thrilled. At the moment, getting my car back together was way more important than dirt on the carpet, so I mollified him with, “I’ll clean the carpet tomorrow if you help me get the tranny lined up.” He was still pissed, but we got the tranny in and he even stuck around to help bolt up the exhaust and get the starter back in.

Later that day, I called Eddie. He’s got miracle cures for stuff like dirty carpets. He told me to use some OxyClean with a little laundry detergent in order to get the the carpet to come clean…maybe.

The next day, I set about doing that. It worked great! So great, in fact, it left clean spots! Grrrrr…

While Jason wasn’t thrilled about that, either, it did prompt us to go out and buy a carpet cleaner. Ignoring the ‘use only our brand cleaner’ bullshit warning in the owner’s manual, he used Eddie’s recipe of OxyClean and laundry detergent and did the whole house!

We’d been considering getting tile or at least replacing the carpet, but thanks to Eddie, my mishap and Jason, our carpet has never been whiter…

This is one of the many reasons I love cars. That little tranny foray saved us probably ten grand in unnecessary home improvement money!

All’s well that ends…well…

Since my last post, I’ve pulled apart my car and found that it wasn’t a cracked crankshaft, it was a loose flexplate.

A little bit of loc-tite and a whole lot of wrenching later, I got the car back together and started her up. Perfect.

Except that when I dinked with the tranny pan to get it to stop leaking, it was the end of a very long day and I goofed when I put the filter on and now I gotta take off the pan again and redo what I’d goofed.

The good news is that’ll take about a half hour tops. The bad news is I can’t seem to find 30 minutes of non-sleep time. Oh well. Perhaps by the end of the week.

I didn’t take as many pics as I’d hoped. I also haven’t looked at what I took. If there’s any worth posting, I’ll of course post them!

It is, after all, Valentine’s Day today, so I’m just gonna toss out a little something related to romance– Ashleigh Raine is going to have some news in a few months. Some really, really good news. I can’t talk about it yet, but oh how I want to.

When I can talk about it, I soooooooo will!!!

Spinning Wheels

This was before all the fun started. I like the array of cars and sportbike in the background. I felt like I was definitely in for loads of fun.

I’ll be posting more videos at CarCrazyCentral, but for now, notice my big grin…? I was sitting in the backseat while my Buddy Jim Wilkey from Wagon Train Productions drifted the car every which way and then some.

What a New Year!

We’re into the new year by only a couple weeks and I’m already smokin’ busy. I’ve been editing video like it’s going out of style. Wineass.com is still my primary editing gig. I’m lovin’ it.

I don’t have much more to report just yet.

I think I might have a broken crankshaft in my Mustang Fastback. I’ll be tearing her open shortly to see if that really is the case. I both hope it is and hope it isn’t. I hope it is because that’s what it sounds like and I hope that opening it up will show me that’s all that’s wrong. I hope it isn’t because…well…who wants a busted crankshaft in their engine?

I’ll be snapping pics of the whole ordeal, of course.

Just found this pic from 1998

While sifting through a file of non-car pics, I found one that is totally car-related. One of my favorites from this time period.

I like to think of it as a true portrait of the real me. It says just about everything anyone needs to know about me. (Well, except that I don’t normally wear pink. I just happened to be wearing pink on the day this pic was taken. Just imagine the shirt is blue or something.)

This also demonstrates what I mentioned a few posts earlier… Hand a guy a camera and ask him to get a few shots of me working on my car and there’s always a butt shot in there. And this was taken before I got a digital camera, so you can imagine my surprise when I got the pics back from the developer! Ah well.

Like I said, it’s all me. I’ll work on my car any time, anywhere, while wearing anything.

Hell, when my car caught on fire the first time, I was wearing a skirt. Yeah, on the side of the road, there I was using my fire extinguisher while trying to keep my skirt from flying up and giving even more of a show than my car.

Got the fire out.

Told all the tow truck drivers to get lost. They tried to take advantage of me, thinking that I’m just a dumb girl and I don’t know anything about cars. HA! Once the flames were doused, I was back on the road in ten minutes. No tow required.

IT’S INEVITABLE…

Why did I title this entry “It’s Inevitable”?

Here’s exactly why:

Whenever I hand a camera to a guy and say, “Could ya snap a couple of shots of me workin’ on the car?” there’s always at least one of my ass!!!! Oh well… All in good fun, I suppose.

I dunno what it is about me and working on my car, but I really enjoy sitting in the engine compartment while I work. It also seems to cut down on the back strain somehow.

This is my least favorite thing to do. I dunno why, but I hate scraping gaskets off and cleaning the surface. It’s not that I suck at it or anything. And I have lots of patience for it, but I’m thinkin’ maybe I just like to have a tool in my hand rather than a rag.

I figured that while I was there, I might as well retorque the heads. Sadly, I’ve only got a hundred pounds to put behind a torque wrench. Leverage is my best friend.

The next couple shots are the struggle to get the intake back in. Yeah, it’s easier to pull the distributor so it’s out of the way, but as of late, it has been easier to work around the distributor than have to re-stab it. So, here I go, getting the manifold back in without smearing the silicone.

Not too shabby. I’m leaving out the oddyssey of the bolt hole that needed tapping in the head, the metal shavings everywhere, the second oil change and the initial silicone mess during my first failed attempt at getting the intake on. Those aren’t important…*cough, cough* (Yeah, they’re just what working on cars is really all about: adventure!)

The next shot was from when everything went smoothly…

Okay, smoothly except when I accidentally sprayed carb clean on the Band-Aid over my busted knuckle from the day before. Yeah, I hit it so squarely that the pad soaked up the carb clean and transmitted it to my open wound before I could get the darn thing off and quit being grumpy about it. (Hey…it stung…a lot…)

After a few more grumpy faces and a whole lot more cussing, I got back to torquing down the manifold.

And at the end of the adventure, I was one seriously happy little chick. I love my car. I love my car. I love my car!

Imtake Manifold Off. 20 Minutes. Done

Jason didn’t think I could pull my intake in 20 minutes. Well, here’s proof. (We didn’t have a stopwatch running, though. It might’ve taken me closer to 25 minutes because I wasn’t actully in a hurry to proove anything. I mostly just wanted to show Jason that I could do it and it really wasn’t that big of a deal.)

There’s really not much involved… I started with the fuel line so that I could get the carburetor out of the way.

I don’t recall how, but I’d already busted a knuckle. Can you believe it? (Okay, yeah, so it’s not hard to bust a knuckle while working on car. At least it wasn’t bad enough to drip blood everywhere… I just kept on workin’.) And it’s not like I’d be sticking my middle finger in puddles of gasoline or carb cleaner or just about every other automotive fluid–’cause they all hurt!

The car was still kind of warm… Luckily I had a few shop rags close by to use as…uh…potholders.

I was trying to beat the clock while not actually rushing. The first socket I’d found happened to be quarter inch, so I ran with that instead of digging out my three-eighths set up. I’m an equal opportunity tool wench.

And here you have it… Me climbin’ in to get better leverage and yanking out my intake manifold. Yippee!!

Putting it back together took more than 20 minutes, but after cleaning everything up, I could’ve easily done it…had my engine been a little more cooperative, that is…

Otherness: Rift is now available!

In celebration of my first solo novel being released from Samhain Publishing, I’m posting a somewhat cancan-Leeloo-related pic.

This was the day that my best friend Eddie went with me to Hollywood to get an orange wig. Leeloo’s hair isn’t traffic cone orange and this was the only non-traffic-cone-orange wig on the Boulevard it seemed. No, I didn’t wear the peacock outfit to Hollywood, I bought it there, though. I love vintage shops…

Yeah, in this pic, the wig is too long to be Leeloo from the Fifth Element. My hairdresser did an awesome job hacking the wig into shape, but you’ll see her masterful handywork when I get the Leeloo pics up.

I’ve already got a set of sleeves lined up to put onto the peacock jumpsuit. Now, if I could just find the time to do it…

This last weekend was spent working on my car. Jason made the mistake of not believing me when I said, “Shit, I can take that intake off in about twenty minutes.” He didn’t challenge me to do it, but I still felt the need to prove that I could. I’ll be posting those pics as soon as I choose the better ones. And, yes, I did it in about twenty minutes. Neither of us had looked at the clock because it hadn’t been a real challenge, so I don’t know down to the second how long it took me.

Getting it done

And here we have the final post about the engine swap experience. I only wish I could’ve done an mp3 of starting up the car. 1) I didn’t even think of it. 2) If I had, it would’ve prolonged turning the key. I was so jazzed that my car was finally back together that I simply couldn’t wait a moment longer than necessary.

That final day, Jason and I were putting the last bits on the engine and buttoning everything up. As you can see in the following pic, I was glad that yoga is such a big part of my life now. Not only am I even more impossibly flexible, I’m also a lot stronger and both of those qualities come in handy while working on cars… Well at least they do for me!

The following is Jason’s favorite pic of the adventure. The car is together and we’re just about to start it. Right after this shot, we opened the garage door and I turned the key…and gas promptly leaked out of the fuel rail. Arrrrrrrrrgh! We didn’t get to officially start the car until the next day after I made a parts run. And wouldn’t ya know it? The darn thing started as though I’d just parked the car an hour ago. What an awesome sound that is, too–a new engine starting up. Yeah, there’s smoke and weirdness, but there’s also nothing like the satisfaction of a job well done.

Actually, I think that previous pic might’ve been just after I’d put in the starter. With headers on the car, it’s impossible to get the starter in without cranking the steering wheel. Jason had taken the starter out but then couldn’t figure out how to get it back in. He cranked the wheel while I went under while the car was still jacked up…And discovered that because starters are so heavy and my arms are so wimpy, the only way I’ve been able to wrestle with and install them is because my forearm happens to be the perfect length to tilt my hand back, cradling the starter while shoving it into place. We had to set the car back onto the ground because my arm got too tired holding up the damn starter! I’ve learned the funniest things about myself and how I work on cars…

Anyhow, this last shot (sorry it’s dark, my flash didn’t go off when I needed it), is after the test drive. My valve covers didn’t have baffles in them and too much oil was coming out of the breathers. We used Eddie’s method of tying red shop rags around the bases. Worked brilliantly! (And it’d be months before I solved this problem more permanently!)

There you have it!!!!! I’m a chick who works on cars and you’ve seen the photographic proof!

Getting it together

This post is a little weak on pictures. I have no idea why, but I only snapped a shot before I started working and then one later when I was done…but of myself, not the engine. Whatever.

Everything needed to be put on the front, everything needed to be hooked up. Everything, everything, everything except installing the headers…because Jason promised he’d help with that. I dunno why, but I wasn’t gonna turn down free help, either!

The following picture is an example of what I was always hated for. I used to work in a theatrical scene shop. I own grubby clothes and even coveralls, but rarely wear them unless I know without a doubt there’s a significant chance of getting dirty. Back in the day, I’d paint set pieces, backdrops, build stuff and somehow by the time I left the shop, my clothes would still be clean. Maybe a little dusty, but nothing I couldn’t brush off. I’ve done the same while working on cars, too. Yeah, it’s messy business, but a lot can be done without having to get dirty. Jason marvels at how my clothes remain clean even when there’s motor oil and grease gooping about.

And here I am, displaying my filthy hands and white shirt with only to two tiny dots of dirt after spending several hours getting the car back together. Granted, I stayed topside–anything on my back would’ve required either getting dirty or laying down on a towel, so I refrained–but there you have it… Only two little spots–one of which, the camera didn’t even pick up.

This post reminds me of one of my very first automotive expeditions. I was in my first year of college and had owned this car for about two months when I embarked on my first real project. I’d diagnosed the problem (car was overheating despite being full of coolant. Upon further inspection, I noticed that the coolant wasn’t circulating. Diagnosis=stuck/bad thermostat), opened my still-white-paged Chilton manual and read up on what to do while cross-referencing with my autoshop textbooks. (Good golly, that was sooooooo long ago!) At the time, my car was still as I’d gotten it from the previous owner…never been cleaned under the hood. It didn’t have any leaks, but it certainly had 20 years+ of road grime under there.

I sighed…I didn’t have coveralls yet, so I was going to have to make a few decisions. I went into my room and ever-so-carefully chose a t-shirt and jeans that I could get dirty–maybe even ruin–and be okay with that. This was very difficult for me. I loved my clothes very much and would never intentionally ruin them.

A few hours, a lot of new knowledge, and some impressive cussing later, I not only had a car that didn’t overheat, I had an absolutely filthy set of grubbies–properly seasoned as working-on-the-car clothes. Obviously, my mom wasn’t going to let me put those in with the regular laundry for fear of ruining other clothes, so they were set aside.

To this day, I have no idea how, but my mom got those filthy clothes completely free of stains! And suddenly, I was so pissed! I’d spent so long agonizing over which clothes to ruin and she’d gone and cleaned away my medals of honor. I laughed and thanked her, but darnit! all my proof of being a chick who worked on cars was gone. Oh, the horror!

I still chuckle whenever I think about it. Obviously, Mom and I are from two different worlds when it comes to dirt and it’s a damn good thing because otherwise, I doubt I would’ve learned how to stay so miraculously clean while I work!