Sometimes, it’s the little things

The day my new coveralls arrived, I was thrilled beyond words. Being a whole lot smaller than man-sized, coveralls are a pain in the ass to find in my size. Even the ones I found online were too big, but they were close enough. Plus, my name is Toolwench, I have the tools to make a pair of coveralls smaller. I haven’t yet, but sheesh, they’re coveralls, not a slinky evening gown. They can be a little baggy.

Anyway, here’s a shot of my new coveralls…

I finally had a chance to use them when I needed to drop my tranny. This was the first time in about 13 years that I’d opened my Haynes manual because I didn’t know how to do something. I was suspicious of either a cracked flexplate or busted torque converter. Turns out, the flexplate was just loose. And it was my husband’s fault!!!!! If you scroll all the way down to when we did the engine swap, that’s him with the torque wrench.

Oh well…At least it wasn’t a busted crankshaft.

I didn’t take a whole lot of pics during this endeavor. It was one of those times when I didn’t really know what I was doing so I needed all my brainwaves focused on the task at hand. I’m little. The tranny’s big…and a big job for me to do. But I did it. Virtually without any help, either. The only things my husband did were because he was kinda bored and I wasn’t goin to turn down free help even if I could do it myself.

But I definitely made sure that *I* was the one torquing the flexplate and re-connecting anything that’d be a pain if he’d accidentally screwed it up. This was a project I had zero interest in repeating…at least not for another 13 years!

Naw! Actually, now that I’ve done it once, I know what to expect and the next time I have to do it, it’ll be a lot quicker and even more fun.

This pic just looks nifty to me. You can see my reflection in the oil pan and, I dunno, that’s just artsy or something to me. I dig it.

Notice how dirty I was? That’s nothin’! My tranny had been leaking and getting steadily worse. On the day I got the car buttoned back up, I kept getting pissed off because it seemed no matter where I grabbed under the car, my hand got filthy and slid off. I’ve since solved the cause of that problem, but she still needs a good steam cleaning.

Funny, how I started this post by mentioning my new coveralls and I’ve gotten this far before realizing that in the two pics, I wasn’t wearing them. That day just happened to be a little to warm. Believe me, my new coveralls saved me from puddles of tranny fluid, pounds of scraped-off grime and provided a nice warm layer of protection from the cold concrete on the days that I did wear them.

Let me go look for an action shot…

Yeah… Here’s one from the early troubleshooting days when I thought I had some kind of engine problem rather than the flexplate/tranny problem it turned out to be.

Special thanks again, to all the people at CarCrazyCentral.com who watched my video and then suggested what might be wrong. This would’ve been so much harder without all that help!

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!!!

Third Time’s a Charm

So, I’ve blogged about how hard I sucked at stunt driving, but this time was much different. This time, I was more confident and essentially, I realized that stunt driving is easy. My problem wasn’t the driving. It was me. Apparently, I have difficulty thinking. Yes, thinking. How so? Well, I don’t know how to answer that. All I know is that this time around, my thoughts were crystal clear and everything fell pretty much into place.

Bright and early on that Saturday morning, I showed up for class. I learned the importance of tires and various other bits about stunt driving on a working movie set. Then, it was time to go out on the course.

And I wasn’t nervous this time. Not at all. I knew a lot would be required of me, but for some reason I simply didn’t care. I just wanted to drive and learn.

Boy did I ever!!!!!!

It was raining. For me, I saw that as good luck because that’d mean it’d be easier for wimpy little me to get good lock-up. I knew that this was now or never.

We worked through the slalom and learned how to shuffle steer. I’d been practicing my shuffle steer every time I’d driven since my last class, so that was pretty easy for me. I’d also been practicing using a focal point.

Once the whole class was ready, we moved on to forward 180s. Last time, I had a helluva fight to yank up on the e-brake and get the car to lock up. This time, just as I’d suspected, because of the rain, locking up was hard, but not impossible like it had been last time. My arm started to hurt, but I didn’t care because I was finally able to get lock-up and and throw the car around. I know the teacher wanted us all to finesse these to perfection, but honestly, I didn’t care what he wanted. I just wanted to get the damn car to come around. I’d worry about the finesse later. Any amount of progress was more important than finesse.

The next day, we continued our forward 180s left and right and then went into sliding 90s. Y’know, when you slide into a parallel parking job coming at it from the side.

My arm hurt so bad, it went numb and didn’t always work. But the rain continued and I still got good lock-up. Once again, I know the teacher wanted us all to finesse the car right in the middle of the coned-off box, but I was satisfied with just getting the car fully in the box. Whether I was forward or back or side-to-side didn’t matter. Just getting it in the box was progress enough for me.

And that took awhile. For some reason, the whole class had started having trouble with our forward 180s and that sort of crushed our morale I guess when we went into the 90s.

But eventually I got it. And then the miracle happened… I started to really understand how to ‘feel’ the car. That’s what Jay and Blaina do when they’re driving. I’d been feeling it all along, but hadn’t been able to really understand it. I hadn’t been able to read it well enough to adjust my input to get a perfect run as a result. I’d come flying at the cone gate for the 180 and be so concerned with getting lock up that I’d forget to crank the wheel into the turn, or I’d turn it too far, or too soon. In the 90s, I’d fly toward the cone box too fast or forget to let go of the wheel once I tossed the car into the box.

This was the day that really had me start asking myself, “What would Jay or Blaina do?” I sometimes even dropped into one of their characters, asking them for advice. I like to think it worked, too!

I can’t say that I’m any good at stunt driving. I can’t say I’m consistent. But I can say that I know what I’m trying to do and learning how to read what I feel in order to make the stunt happen correctly.

Once I realized that, I sort of looked back at the day and a half and was so satisfied with my performance that not only did I not care if I never quite got the finesse right, but I also didn’t need to take the test at the end to be satisfied with what I’d learned.

However, the course was wet and slippery enough that I knew I’d be able to get decent lock-up. And that always seemed to make the difference between executing the stunt correctly or failing miserably. If I was going to pass at all, it would be during this class, so I decided to go for it.

After more practice of the slalom, forward 80s and sliding 90s, we moved on to reverse 180s.

Sadly, I never quite mastered them. I learned a new technique–well, order of actions–from one of the instructor’s assistants which I put to good use and excelled way beyond how I’d fared in my last two classes. But more importantly–I thought, anyway– I figured out on my own what I was doing wrong just before the teacher told me. For some stupid reason, I kept forgetting to let go of the wheel and let the car right itself. Oh well. It’s something to work on in the future.

At the end of that second day, it was time to test. We practiced and I knew I was going to pass. I just knew it. I didn’t allow myself to practice into the ground because I wanted to save my poor little arm and I didn’t think I’d be getting any better that day anyway. I had the confidence. I knew I’d pass. I knew I could make it happen.

So, when the moment was upon me–finish the course in 59 seconds or less–I took off on a practice run…

And screwed it up so badly that I was thankful to take a second practice–which was close to perfect, but I didn’t quite get the car all the way into the final box. My time was good, though…50-something seconds. I wasn’t really worried about timing. I was worried about keeping the car between the cones without touching any of them. Well, and just plain surviving the course!

But now it was do or die. I had to do a passing run on that third one or I’d fail again. Well, before I took off, I congratulated myself for actually testing this time. I didn’t even bother testing last time because I knew I’d fail. This time, I knew that even if I didn’t pass, I’d learned so much and had come so far. It didn’t matter anymore, really.

But deep down, I still wanted to pass. I needed to pass.

I slalomed through the cones, grabbed that e-brake with all my might and whipped the car into the 180 to the right. Slamming the brake back down, I took off right through the center of the cone gate, while resetting my focal point and then yanked the e-brake and tossed the car into a 180 to the left. Dropping the brake and smashing the gas, I had to cheat and use a little main brake to slow the car after locking it as I skidded into the box for the 90 to the right. I waited for the “go” once the guys were sure I was in the box without hitting cones. I gritted my teeth and set up for the reverse 180–trying to make myself believe that it wasn’t my weakest maneuver. I stomped the gas, then as I whipped the wheel, looked back for my new focal point and rammed the car into drive. I still forgot to let go of the wheel, but I didn’t care because I didn’t hit any cones. I blasted toward that final box and threw the car into it to the left.

And waited.

Nervously.

To find out if I was in the box all the way.

And if I’d made it in less than 59 seconds.

My heart was beating a mile a minute and I suddenly realised that I’d done it. I’d made it all the way through the course.
…And I had the fastest time in the class: 46 seconds.

Wahoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All I could think of was, “GO ME!!!!!!!!!!” on so many levels, too!