It's been a fun week with my shiny blue car, which has been acting more like a red-headed step child lately...
It started last Wednesday- I drove the car to work, and just as I pulled into the parking lot at my office, I started smelling gas. I parked and took a look under the hood, and the fancy little glass filter with the plastic insert (you know- the ones you can get from JCWhitney for 10 bucks, and then you never buy a replacement element for it ever again for the rest of your life) had broken in half, leaving a puddle of fuel on the ground....Who knows where the glass tube and the little plastic filter piece went... Vanished.
So, I left it there and went to work for the day, thinking it will be easy to splice the fuel line back together when it's time to go home.
When I went back out later that afternoon to actually pull off my little McGuyver maneuver, I realized that both bolts holding the fuel pump to the block had backed almost totally out
, and naturally they were large Allen heads in a size that I didn't have in my tool kit. So I did the old "wedge the closest size Allen key in there diagonally, and get them as snug as possible" trick, spliced up the fuel line, and made the 22 mile trip home (stopping twice along the way to make sure my fuel pump was staying attached.)
I got home and ordered up some braided fuel line, new fuel filters (No, not the fancy glass ones- This time I just got plain old fashioned, el-cheapo one piece canister filters), etc...
As usual, the delivery guy shows up Friday afternoon with my parts (Like or hate SummitRacing, their delivery times are amazing)
Come Saturday morning, my new parts in hand, I pulled all the small sections of rubber fuel hose off the car, replaced both fuel filters, clamped in my fancy new braided line sections, and replaced the fuel pump mounting bolts with a pair of more sensible hex-heads... Short test drive went great- no leaks, everything nice and snug.
Saturday evening rolls around, and I run out to pick up my younger daughter to bring her home, and we decide to make a quick stop for tacos. As I pull off the freeway the car is running pretty rough - sputtering, misfiring, not wanting to hold an idle, but it seems to get a little better as we pull into the parking lot. After we're done eating, we go out to head home, aaaaannnnnnd..... No start. Normal cranking, plenty of gas shooting from the squirters, but no "vroom".
Part of me was relieved that it wasn't anything related to my earlier fuel system repair, but the other side of my brain (the side that manages the creative collections of curse-words that I'm occasionally known for) was more than just a little bit annoyed...
So Saturday night closed out with me calling my wife to come and get our kid, then calling Hagerty road side assistance, waiting another hour (during which I get to endure the normal Saturday night assortment of "Dude- Nice Car" comments, which I am
usually highly appreciative of,
when the car is actually serving its primary purpose as a fully functioning automobile), and then getting a ride home from these guys...:
This time it's the ignition system. The frustrating part is that on Sunday morning, it fired right up, leaving me no "red X' on any bad component(s), but even with a short drive up the street and back, it's still not running right. The coil ohm-tested out of spec, and one of my plug wires was also suspicious, so those will get swapped out, and I'm going to go over everything else in the ignition system, while I'm in there. I just hope it's not the built in ignition controller in this fancy MSD distributor.
So, over the past 4 weeks, I've overhauled the clutch hydraulics, the fuel system, and now the ignition system... Just about every system that makes the car actually
go....
I WANNA DRIVE....
But first:
I GOTTA REPAIR....
Eh, Wrenching on the car is fun, too, I guess.... Just not as much fun
I think the car is rebelling. It spent its first 15 years of life racking up a leisurely 2400 miles, and I've already put over 500 miles on it in just 6 weeks.
It's like a stable-bound horse that suddenly has a rider with some spurs sitting on its back.
Sure, it's gonna buck, snort, and stomp around... But in the end, who's gonna win...? Who
always wins?
ME...
I win.