9/30/08

We’re having one of our monthly Marketing Town Hell Meetings today. It doesn’t really affect me because we hire a tech to babysit these things, but I didn’t want to start off with, “So, I promised y'all the tale of Sunday…” today. So, I promised y'all the tale of Sunday today and here it is. I got up and headed to the shop at a decent hour because, for some reason, I was actually kind of excited about working on Shi-Chi. Of course I was also expecting this to be a “bada-bang, bada-bing, bada-boom” slap them in installation. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I stop on the way to the shop and grab a couple McDonald’s Chik-Fil-A (AKA Southern Style Chicken) sandwiches. Oh, I guess it was closer to noon than I remembered a moment ago, sorry. Anyhoo, I ate the sammiches on the way to the shop and got there all full and happy. I rolled up the door behind Shi-Chi and noticed it was going to be an hour or so before I would be in the shade. I pressed on. I removed the support bracket from the right fender and began looking for the plug I knew I had installed to remove the taillights. I had to remove the “ærodynamic” under tray to access the area around the gas tank to do this. No luck. I still couldn’t reach the connector. Apparently, some dumbass zip tied them up around the fuel inlet and vent tubes to keep them up and out of the way. I was going to have to remove the boot liner to get to them. I unsnapped the boot cover and flopped it over the seats into the cockpit. I grabbed the drill and drilled out the rivets holding the boot in and tried to remove it. Of course it wouldn’t come out with the roll hoop in place. I searched out the Allen wrenches to remove the hoop and got it off of there. Now I could get the boot liner out. Yep, there were the wires, all neatly tied to the top of the fuel tank. I remember doing this before I had the boot liner so it made sense at the time. Er, I mean, I can see now why the dumbass tied them up there… oh, never mind. I clipped the ties and removed the taillight. I sat down and test fit the new light. It didn’t fit. The oval hole in the fender was wide enough but not tall enough. I decided I'd burn that bridge later and moved on to wiring. I fingered out which wires did what on both the old and new lights and wired up the plugs accordingly. I plugged them in and set them on top of the seats so I could test my math. I flipped the power on at the master kill and tried the park lights. They worked. I grabbed a stick and tried the brake lights. They worked. I turned on the ignition and tried the turn signals. Left worked, right worked, they worked. I pushed the brakes again and tried the turn signals again. They worked that way as well. I was happy. I shut it down and got cracking on making them actually fit in the car. I marked where it needed to go and grabbed the Dremel Tool. Yeah, I know I have railed against Dremel Tools in the past, I'm comfortable in my hypocrisy. I trimmed the hole in small increments and finally got it to fit, sort of. It is just a tad looser than I'd like it to be but I think it will be all right. I had a long moral struggle with whether or not I wanted to install the passenger side lights right side up or upside down. The wires come out of the housing in such a way that they would have been dangerously close to the tire had I mounted them right side up. I made an Executone decision and mounted it upside down. The only way Juan can tell is if he tries to read the cast-in name and stuff on the lens. If he does that I'll just kick him in the shin and tell him to shut up. The wires still made me nervous around the tire so I zip tied them to the fender using the old mounting hole. I plugged in the wires and moved to the driver’s side. I trimmed that hole, mounted, and wired that light and stood back to have a look. I like them. So now I was at a crossroads. I could put the boot liner back in and call it a day or I could disconnect the parking brake, remove the center console, finger out what was bent in the shifter, and fix it. It was still early enough in the day that I decided to gopher it. I popped the parking brake cable loose and had a look at the console. It wouldn’t budge. It appeared as though the seats were holding it in at the back. I flipped the seats forward and tried again. No luck. I then remembered the beauty panel behind the seats held the console down. I removed the seatbelt upper mount thingies and then the extruded bit for the tonneau cover. With those gone the panel came right out along with the boot cover. I set them aside and got the console out. I unplugged the three connectors in the front of the console and set it aside as well. I could now see the entire shifter mechanism. Sure as shit, the lower support rod under the lever end of the remote shifter was bent. My Forensic Examination leads me to believe someone did indeed “Ham Fist” the lever. What is weird is that it had to be an exuberant shift into either second or fourth to bend the thing in the direction it was bent. I began disassembly. This was a total pain in the ass. First off, I chose to do it from the driver’s seat. Of course I didn’t have all the tools necessary for the job the first time I got in so I had to get out a few times during the process. It is much more difficult getting in and out of that car without the console and roll hoop. More so than even with the top on! Anyhoo, I finally get the bolts out from that bent rod. I put on bolt back in place and see that the second doesn’t line up at all. No wonder the thing was binding. Oh, with the one bolt in place it shifts like butter. I decided against just drilling another hole for the misaligned bolt and start taking the whole thing out. I take it to the vice and bend it all back into proper alignment. It was here that I really should have forced some grease into the pivot, but didn’t. I reinstalled the shifter and bolted it down. It shifts much better now. Not quite as nice as it did with only one loose bolt in there, indicating to me that there is still a tiny hint of bind in the system, but infinitely better than when bent. I stood back and debated calling it a day. I had almost exactly one full week to get the thing back together for the monthly Japanese Old Car Show at the Purple Cow next Sunday. I decided to at least get started on the reassembly. The console plopped into place pretty easily. The wiring hooked up pretty easily. The beauty panel behind the seats went in pretty easily. The boot liner dropped in pretty easily. The roll hoop went back on pretty easily. The Birkini top went on pretty easily. The boot cover snapped down and held the liner in place pretty easily. And before I knew it, I was done reassembling the thing. Ok, so I did have to readjust the fore/aft alignment of the shifter to get the shift boot to line up and allow it to hit all gears, but that was the only real snag of reassembly. As soon as I finished washing up and locking the door, mom calls to ask when I'm coming home. I tell her I'm on my way and head out. Of course I only get about a mile away when I remember my glasses and watch. I turn back and retrieve them. And there you have it. Perhaps I'll tell y'all about Monday morning’s idiot confrontation. Then again, I might not. We’ll see.