Dear All
Even though the pain has dulled, and the knuckles may have healed. Perhaps to become a repository of what-not-to-do-under-any-circumstances, and who knows, even A Sticky
, anyone want to join me in a cleansing, non-judgmental confession to any stupid/expensive mistakes that you - oh, right, your 'mate' - have made (over and above letting the timing chain tensioner pop out
) while ?fixing? your car?
From a vast repertoir collected over many years of learning the hard way:
1. I lay on my back on knobbly concrete in winter in Canberra until 3am one morning replacing a slipping clutch with another that I ?figured?
was ok. Needless to say I was back on the concrete for another session, after spending a couple of days pissing fellow motorists off as I worked my way through the gears to a terminal velocity of some 30mph at 5000rpm.
I learned always to use a new &%&i"?^%$ clutch and never to bolt the flywheel onto the engine while it is in the car (no, I don't know why the flywheel was off
, but after 30 minutes of arm-numbing torture which reduced me to sobs, I got the %^$? back on). I learned if there happens to be a lump of sh*t directly above your head, and you look at it while you're sobbing and holding a flywheel, it'll fall right in your eye.
2. While experimentally stripping a head I tried to remove the brass? water outlet elbow by 'unscrewing' it with my trusty 12" shifter. Having snapped it off at the base, undeterred and ingenious as ever, I dropped (cycled, I guess
) in to Repco and bought the biggest fu&k-off ezy-out they had. I applied said e-o in conjunction wit' trusty shifter*? and was rewarded with a satisfying crack as the elbow stub gave way. Well I was hoping that it was the elbow stub that had given way. But no, it was the head. Better get another one of them then, I thought.
* No, I can't remember if I used WD40, applied heat, tapped it with a hammer or if I did, indeed, possess a workshop manual.
? My natural instinct to resort to undue force was not tempered then by many years of bitter, forehead-slapping experience.
3. My mate Duncan dropped round one w/e to our place, where I was working on my nonamebrand XJ6, in order to do a 'service' on his nonamebrand Golf GTI. He had bought a whole lot of parts from Halfords (Ok, this is a UK story - couldn't have been about Datsuns). Now Duncan was no mechanic, even by my modest standards, so it was unsurprising that, amongst the assembled purchases - Dizzy cap, spark plugs, leads, filters, oil etc. the only thing that would fit was the oil/filter. And yes, he had a nasty suspicion that his was a
Bosch injection system (It did say so, after all, in fairly large writing on the Bosch Injection System under the bonnet).
Anyway, Duncan consoles himself with the possibility that he may be able to
adapt the spark plug leads(:!:). After he has F&cked them up he gets busy draining the oil into a 5 litre container and changing the filter. At least the oil is top quality and should be good for the car, eh Neil? Not a total loss, he says. A while later he comes over, having just poured all five litres into the engine; a dry dipstick in his hand and a slightly anxious edge to his voice ........ 'You did put the drain plug back in, didn't you Duncan?', I say, even as the first viscous trickle of nonamebrand Magnatec impinges on my peripheral vision. 'Aaaaaaargh', says Duncan looking at his car. 'Aaaaraaagh', says me, looking at 'my' (rented) bitumen driveway.
I learned how completely hopeless Duncan was. I learned never to let anyone called Duncan remotely near your car. I learned that attempting to burn an oil slick off a bitumen driveway produces a scorch mark that would do justice to a Titan III
.
Yep. Thats much better. Thanks Father. Amen.
Cheers, Neil.