4/23/12

Lil' Wiggly is working my last nerve.  Here’s what went down Saturday.  I awoke at my usual 0530 h and decided to go ahead and get up.  I headed to the shop at 0700 h in Fifi and hooked up the trailer.  John arrived before I had a chance to get involved with anything so I fingered we’d load the car and head out.  No, he wanted to drill his brake rotors first.  That was fine since I figured he knew something about Steve/John’s muffler place I didn’t… like maybe it didn’t open until 0900 or something.  I was cool with the rotor drilling at that point… in fact I was interested in seeing if it would work.  Oh, see we decided that if we drilled them for slip-fit over the studs, we might make more room for the caliper bracket we’ve been scratching our heads over for a week now.  We farted around with that for probably an hour before finally loading Lil' Wiggly onto the trailer.  We headed across town to the muffler shop to find all bays full and cars waiting.  Oh well, it was early going yet… or so we thought.  I don’t think we got Lil' Wiggly on the lift until noon.  While on the lift, I made the mistake of adjusting the clutch throw out rod.  “We” built the zorst and gave it a test.  It is much better.  I think the car will be drivable now… if the clutch worked.  Yep, when we lowered the lift and I got in to move the car, I could row through the gears with my foot off the clutch.  Somehow loosening the rod locked the thing open.  Now, rather than let me raise the car up again and fix it right quick, Steve/John shoved it off and we had to push the car onto the trailer.  To add to the frustration, John needed to be home in an hour.  We discussed me dropping him off but it was decided that he’d just be late if he had to and we went back to the shop.  We dropped Lil' Wiggly into the main bay again, parked the trailer, and headed out.  Now, here’s my theory on what happened to the clutch.  I think by adjusting it looser, the piston popped out of the clutch slave too far and locked everything in the disengaged position.  I was going to crawl under the car again Sunday to see what I could see, but after eating at the Chinese buffet and taking mom to run some errands, I was pooped and took a nap.  But back to Lil' Wiggly's niggling annoyances, another thing I wanted to do while the car was on the lift was to put some heat wrap around the clutch hose as it was dangerously close to the header.  We bought the wrap but when we saw the way the hose was routed, twisted, and beginning to come apart, we forewent installing it.  This morning I ordered a stainless steel braided clutch hose from e-Bay.  My plan now is to jack the car back onto stands again, remove the slave and hose, fix the piston in the slave, readjust the rod, heat wrap the new hose, and reinstall all of those bits.  Bleeding the clutch isn’t too huge a PITA so I ain’t skeert.  Then we’ll tackle the windshield wipers which suddenly do not work.  Yeah, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.  I'm telling you, the car is pissing me right the hell off.  I'm not going to say, “If one more thing goes wrong…” but I'm thinking it awfully loud.  Damn, I really should have gone to the shop yesterday instead of wasting another day doing nothing.  No, something might have pissed me off again and John wouldn’t have been there to stop me from breaking it.  Feh, I guess we’ll just have to wait until next Saturday to “finish” Lil' Wiggly… or be finished BY Lil' Wiggly as the case may be.