shake, rattle and roll

so raimi's doors rattle a lot. or...rattlED a lot.  i spent about 3 hours on sunday afternoon fixing that.  the power windows aren't stock...they were installed by one of the last three owners...and whoever installed them did a pretty hack job of it.  they work, they don't leak...but there's a huge cut in the inside frame of the door where they put it in but didn't anchor back down....the window would actually hit the motor when it came down 'cause they didn't adjust the stopper and didn't reinstall the rubber bumper....this all took me a while to figure out.  if you've ever looked inside the door of a car (take off the pretty cover) you'd find a lot of metal and a few cleverly placed holes that were used to isntall everything in the door (window, crank, motor, lock, handle....ac maybe).  this makes getting in there really hard.  so yeah...eventually figured out what was loose and what was wrong....so i adjusted the bumpter reinstalled the bumper on the passenger side, and greased the shit out of everything.  solid as a rock.  anchored the speaker down as well (also installed by an owner...badly) so that sounds a little better.

went over to the drivers side and couldn't find the rubber bumper (the passenger's one was just sitting at the bottom...with a bolt.  rattled loose maybe?  i used lock-tight on it) so i hacked a hose, cut a hole in one side, slipped a bolt in and it worked like a charm.  yay engineering ($160k to come up with that one!).

so now raimi's doors don't rattle and the windows can both be put up at the same time.  before there was so much resistance from over extension, rust and loose parts that the motor couldn't always do it.  my voltmeter in the dash would show my battery going down as low as EIGHT VOLTS (normal 12V) trying to put up just one window.  now they're both workin' fine.  still a lotta resistance....prolly 'cause the motor wasn't made for such a large window.  ehh...one day...

bumps are a lot more fun when you're car doesn't sound like it's gonna rattle apart....

 
and all that for free.  well...some WD-40 and a gash on my finger from a sharp piece of rusty iron.  yay.

i like havin' lotsa tools.

 

thid base

so i finally got to third base with raimi.  well...i kind of just have to assume it's third base.  hmmm...first base....i guess that could be that first burn out?  haha.  some heat, some slipping, some back and forth....yeah.  rain is dangerous.
 
second base...well with real girls...you get two handfuls and you're at second base....i get two handfuls quite often with raimi.
 
so third base?  up under the skirt, dirty, sweaty, slippery....smelly.  of course i went down there protected.  gloves, safety goggles and a long sleeve shirt.  i ain't takin' any chances, i don't really know where she's been.  i mean shit, she's already been with three other guys....granted it's been 26 years.  that's not bad....
 
so i jacked her up...she's quite a lotta woman.  propped her up with some stirrups (rated at 3 tons each) under her rigid frame, and slid under her grimy skirt to get a closer look.  took a shoplight and a ratchet with me....and an oily rag.  fun shit.
 
poked and prodded and twisted and pried...and finally got her juices flowing.  burning hot and slick as hell, i burnt my hand on her oils through my fuckin' glove.  ouch.  unscrewed her filter and burnt my hand again.  finally got her all drianed out.  replaced the replaceables, and cleaned her up to a presentable stage once again.  then we went out for a victory ride.
 
 
so, my first oil change...wasn't all that bad.  pretty easy, actually.  i switched over to synthetic oil which is supposed to be far superior to conventional petroleum oils.  we'll see.  so far (i dunno if it's just me fuckin' with myself) it actually FEELS smoother.  like the gears are just swimming in the engine....unimpeded by stagnant, gritty, burnt petroleum.  could be just me, though.
 
refilled the power steering fluid as well...that one's leaking like a motherfucker.  got an additive that's supposed to help with it as well....we'll see how far a two dollar bottle goes.  that shit STINKS like hell.  give you a headache in a minute flat, i swear.  just really, really strong...petroleum smelling.  i dunno how else to describe it.
 
well, off to eat...and drink...and hopefully sleep.
 
 
mmm....slick.
 
 

feelin' my girl's curves

so bodywork has turned out to be a lot more difficult to learn than i thought. once i figure it out, it shouldn't be too hard (time consuming, perhaps)...but by that time i should have just about all the work done. i've been workin' on three patches on the driver's side on and off for the past couple days...about four hours on monday and about three hours so far tonight (i'm waiting for primer to dry). one reason it's takin' so long is 'cause...well...i'm learning. every time i do something and think it's my last coat of primer (before the lacquer coat), i discover something to make it just a little better...everytime i find sopmething new it inevitably involves a lotta sanding...which sucks. i did go and et some discs for the drill, though, which makes the crude work (grinding) MUCH faster. the finer work, though, has to be done mostly by hand.

that's aight, she's got nice curves....

oh, so in deciding between misty and raimi, i googled raimi. there's a sam raimi and a ted raimi that get hit a lot. but if you minus those out of the search...i get a long list of PORN! perfect.

i hereby bequeath upon my love the name Raimi :)

aight, gotta go stroke raimi s'more. she's ready for more.



slick

heh

just found my high beams a couple days ago...a clicker foot switch off to the left of the firewall...weird. found it by accident...good thing nobody was comin' towards me at the time...

TOOLS

went to the swap meet today to start stocking up on tools i'll need. left with a 1/2" ratchet driver and a set of american sized sockets for $40 (saved about ten, craftsman..it'll never break). THEN went by sears...they had a sale. so of course i get suckered into getting a sears charge card (yay, a THIRD credit card) for 10% more off the sale and bought a hydraulic lift, safety stands (aka jack stands), wheel chucks, jumper cables, oil matt, and a creeper seat (whatever the fuck that is) in a set for about $100. i can now lift anything under 3 tons (6000 lbs.) :) i feel powerful (my girl weighs 3420 lbs. according to my title). first on the list is lubing the bushings, changing the oil/oil filter, and locating/fixing an oil leak.

i just spent two hours cleaning the garage so i'd have enough room to work.

yesterday i also stopped by napa and bought some primer, paint and sand paper ($20, total) to start workin' on scratches. dropped by my uncle's place as well to borrow their 'ding king'...one'a those dent removers from an infomercial, haha. they said it worked wonders :) so i'm gonna get started on that when i manage to get off my ass again...i'm takin' a break for now.

oh, and a torque wrench costs about $75...that's next on the list...



love

joys of google.

so that squeak in my front end hasn't gone away. gotten quieter since i sealed the hole in my kick panel...but that's just to me.

did some research on google...had to do quite a few searches. it's a rather odd symptom, really. the squeaking/chirping is totally dependant on wheel speed, and completely independant of acceleration, engagement (transmission), breaks, or even terrain. originally i thought it was too infrequent to be in sync with wheel rotation...but reconsidering, i have no idea how fast a wheel spins. by 'infrequent' i mean i thought the frequency was too slow (chirp, chirp, chirp). finally found a few articles (mostly of webboards) that had the same symptoms...but none of them had been answered very well. most people told about how they had that problem, replaced their suspension, lubed everything, and it still sucked...so they got bigger speakers.

FINALLY found two agreeing sources that blame wheel bearings. http://www.aa1car.com/library/2003/bf70348.htm if your'e interested. interesting thought...3000 pound car, four wheels, that's 750 pounds/wheel. my car weighs 3420. now try and support 750 pounds and make it spin. that's quite a bearing, but not perfect, obviously.

soooooo i think i have to replace my bearings. unfortunately they're really jammed the hell in there and i think they require special tools (like a hydraulic ram was suggested) to just remove it, muchless install new ones. haven't decided whether or not i wanna attack this one on my own yet. well...that and i have no money :)

toodles.

free fixins

so i ducked under the dashboard to check the fuses. shoulda' taken 10 minutes and a trip to radio shack/napa...but instead i ended up spending about four hours under there. of course at some point i wasn't "under the dashboard" under anymore 'cause i'd taken the entire thing apart :)

my a/c kicked out yesterday in traffic. in the rain. that was painful 'cause i couldn't open the windows too much so i just cooked. i knew it was an electrical problem 'cause the heater/fan wouldn't work either. so i checked the fuse today...and it was busted. even more, i found a lot of busted fuses that had been lost under the carpet, all the same rating so they were probably all a/c fuses. i'll try and find out the exact problem later, but i just replaced the fuse for now.

in fixing that, i noticed the a/c head unit wasn't really...secured. it was kind of being held up by the knobs and therefore was really hard to use...sometimes really hard to just TURN OFF. so i yanked that out and fought a mess of wires to find that two of the screw sockets (plastic) had cracked open so the screws had nothing to grab. so i got two larger wood screws and jammed them the hell up in there to secure it, then put glue all over them to give the treads something to hold on to. should hold for quite a while.

then i found that the cable going from the transmission to the spedometer was just stuck through a hole in the metal to the engine compartment. this meant two things...1) i'd discovered why my feet always got so goddamn hot (that engine gets HOT...and with a hole open to the engine, all the heat comes into the cockpit) and 2) the wire would eventually be frayed and fail. soooo i drilled a hole into the plastic floor cover...because the hole that was made for the cable was too small...which is probably why whoever installed the thing just went straight into the metal hole...cut my hand unplugging the cable from the speedometer...threaded it through the new hole, reconnected it, and made a plug around the length of cable that went through the hole to both seal it and protect it from getting cut on the metal. sounds easy, but try doing it almost upside down, contorted in a pretzel and having your hands cramped in a space cluttered with three pedals and a mess of wires...

yeah. fun.

oh...then i had to fix my horn 'cause it shorted. and if you don't know what shorting a horn does...it does this:

*bbbbbbbbbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*

which only stopped after i pounded the shit out of it, ripped the cover off and pounded more....and something sparked and it stopped. i opened it up and the insulators are all cracked, so i hacked it with some electrical tape and it's unposessed now :) goddamn that was irritating...prolly pissed off all my neighbors, too.

oh, and the front right still squeaks. wasn't a belt. must be suspension.

but that cost 239 bucks to get all the parts for (complete front end overhaul)...another 40 bucks for jack stands...which i'll need eventually anyway...and 80 or so for a hydraulic lift...which i'll also always use.

heh, i need to start gettin' PAID.

whew. that was my four hours.