With great amounts of trepidation I dropped my car off at the local inspection station and with a sinking feeling in my gut headed to the office. There were various reasons that I was nervous, but I’d poured a decent amount of time and effort (and blood, sweat, tears & anger) into her this past year and hoped for the best.

When my phone rang around 9:15 am I was shocked thrilled to hear the voice on the other end say, “Your car’s ready.” Stunned (I’ve always been stunned in this particular situation) I made some non-committal “Uh…um…er…ok. I’ll get her on my way home”  proclamation, figuring that blurting out, “Seriously? She passed?” was not good form.

One Down, One to Go

One inspection taken care of I waited impatiently for my 2:45 pm check up. You would think by this time I’d be brilliant not stupid smart enough to schedule my own inspection early in the day.  Clearly lacking the foresight to do so, I spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of semi-barfiness.

I arrived at the doctor’s office at promptly 2:30 which was just absolutely brilliant….the waiting room was hopping and it was clear that earliness was not going to do me any good on this day. After signing in I sat down with my knitting and waited and tried not to barf. After an eternity I was thrilled to hear my name called for x-rays! Yay! My happiness was soon quashed when, upon exiting the x-ray room I was informed that I’d be waiting back in the lobby since all the exam rooms were full up. So much for a speedy inspection for me.

After more waiting where I manged to entertain myself by both knitting and sending emails, although not at the same time, I was called again. It was as if I’d won the powerball. I could tell the fellow lobby-waiters were totally jealous that I’d been chosen to move on to the next round. Sweet! (After all, I had a newly inspected car to pick up and the sun was shining.) Making a bee line for the exam room and nearly running over a few lallygaggers in my way I hopped up on the exam table, pulled out my knitting and waited. It was a good thing I had a lot of knitting to do.

Eventually a doctor came in to see me. At long last I could ask my questions. I was so excited I was probably vibrating. But first there was the issue of soreness around my tricep near the elbow. I bent my arm at a 90 degree angle so the good doctor could take a look. He was gently prodding the muscle when I said, “You can poke at it all day long, it doesn’t hurt. It only hurts when I use it.”  AHA! Apparently that was all he needed to hear because he then said something like, “hmmm….it appears you have tendonitis. But we can work with that. You’ll be just fine.”  Seriously?  I played tennis for years and never had tennis elbow or any other form of tendonitis in my arm. And now, after 6 weeks of more or less muscle atrophy I get tendonitis?

THE QUESTION

But whatever, at this point I was more concerned about the pressing issues at hand. Such as what was I now, after 6  of weeks of really good behavior, allowed to do. So when the doctor asked, “Do you have any questions?” I blurted out, “CAN I RIDE MY HORSE?” (ok, I didn’t really shout it, but that took a lot of restraint on my part) I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I was clearly crazy (particularly since this entire stupid situation was caused by a horse to begin with).  And that answer was a resounding NO. Not that I was surprised, but you know, a girl can dream can’t she?

So four more weeks of physical therapy although now I am allowed to start some resistance training and do some load bearing stuff. No riding my boy. No doing anything that would cause my arm to be jerked hard and no putting serious weight into the joint (like riding my mountain bike).

Sigh…it’s been a long summer full of supervision. This is getting old. Fast.

And like many other things about my TR4A, the handy shop manual gave copious amounts of directions for all models but my car. For the TR4A (with independent rear suspension) I found the following note, “the TR4A is similar to the other models.” Seriously? What kind of directions are those?

So out I go to purchase a floor jack and 2 more jack stands.  Because I can’t fit under the car unless it is completely off the ground and I had no idea where exactly the adjustment nuts for the emergency brake cables were going to be located.

So up goes the car. I had forgotten what horrible noise that car makes as she leaves the ground. Creek, groan, rattle….and all I kept thinking was “I surely hope I put the jack under something that was structurally sound” (although my words may not have been quite so eloquent as I was muttering under my breath).

Upon up, I scrambled under the car and discovered…..I couldn’t see the brake cables. Which seemed to me rather odd, until I did a further inspection and found they were simply right behind the wheels. Sigh.

Back down she comes because no way was I going to hammer off the spinners with the car up in the air. I mean, I’m not a rocket scientist, but I do have a smidge of common sense.

So after doing the above (ok, true that’s me with the passenger side wheel)

I ended up with this (which is the driver side). Which is when the fun began. Well the fun began after I managed to get the wheel off me and back onto the ground. Note to self, that stuff that makes your tires all shiny…yeah, it’s gross and sticky. Ick.

So, wheels off it was time for my favorite tool – the bottle of PB  Blaster. Oh yeah. (don’t spray it in your eye!) Spray, wait. Spray, wait. Bang on rusted nut with random tool. Spray, wait. Bludgeon rusted nut into submission. Try out emergency brake. Repeat on other side.

In the midst of all this Chad (who is volunteering for Big Brothers Big Sisters) returned with his little brother. Who is seven. And wanted to know what I was doing. Oh yeah. Sometimes I wish I had a nice big garage with proper lighting so I could shut the door and carry on (in secret).

At any rate the emergency brake now works pretty well. I survived with only a few nicks and scratches (mostly due to the wrench slipping in my hand). A fine day’s work. Not to mention I had a legitimate reason to purchase my own floor jack.

[post script: while I was working on the car, the plumber was working on installing a claw foot bathtub in the 2nd floor. At one point the feet fell off the tub. Guess what? A small floor jack works really well on a claw foot bathtub. Yes, yes I did.]

[Show as slideshow]

 

After running errands all over creation. And finding out that the horse had thrown a shoe (a very new shoe, thanks).  And going to a spa in horse / car / caching clothes to pick up some make up [can we say unwelcomed? You're welcome Mom] . I pulled the Toy out of the garage.

Good Friday’s Mission: figure out what is wrong with the window mechanism in the driver side door.

The part I was assuming would cause me irrational levels of anger be troubling was where I tried to unscrew the rusted screws and hammer out the pins holding both the window handle & the door release handle.  BUT I have learned a few lessons along the way so I got out the ol’ PB Blaster and blasted those rusty, nasty, disgusting screws. Take that! I’m prepared! Know what? It worked!

So screws removed and pins hammered (easily) out of the various handles I began to gentle remove the door panel. Suprisingly enough it came off easily. And the reason my window made such horrible rattling noises? It wasn’t on / in / whatever the track of the lifting mechanism. Yes. For 18 years I’ve driven that car around with the window rattling to wake the dead because it was off the track. Ok, so the dampening material around the opening is threadbare too, and some of the padding inside is pretty much all but gone,  but the big problem was the track <more on this fiasco later>.

HOWEVER, that wasn’t the big discovery. The big discovery was that the inside of the driver’s door panel was baby blue. I had a horrid moment when I thought, “Oh dear lord! My car was blue and the previous owner got wild and crazy and changed the color.”  And then I realized that I was sitting in a car that was nearly stripped down to the metal and all the other metal (floor pans, cabin, even the engine compartment) was black. And that meant one thing  – THAT WAS NOT MY DOOR! No wonder my poor car has always had such an attitude. She’s been running around with a salvaged door. Judging by the giant dent in the inside of the door, it must have seen some tough times. So not only is the door a salvage door, it’s a beaten up salvaged door that was never properly painted.

SATURDAY <because these things never take 1 day>

And back to the door panel itself. The MDF that it consisted of was nasty disgusting barf-inducing. While my sense of cleanliness and order isn’t exactly what I’d call highly developed, I was not keen on putting something  that was A) warped B) busted C) covered in black fuzzy stuff back onto my vehicle.  That left me no choice, I had to make a new door panel.

A brief trip to lowe’s to secure some clean MDF board, a mid-way trip to Walmart to secure staples (how can I own 2 staple guns and be completely out of staples?) a few minor distractions caused by general mayhem and confusion and I had a new door panel. The only problem was (at this time) that I didn’t have any extra marine vinyl laying around. Yes, I know you are shocked. Possibly as shocked as I was. So I did what seemed <at the time> sensible and decided to re-use the old stuff.  You know what? After loads of years and exposure to the elements, vinyl gets brittle fragile annoying on my nerves.

So, to recap.

• New MDF panel taken from old MDF panel for template
• New batting
• Old vinyl
• New springs Jury-rigged for handles because there were none in the driver’s side door.

And now for the big moment. You know, the one where I put it all back together and it fits? Yeah….

After installing the 500 door clips onto the new door panel and making sure all was still secured I attempted to put the panel on the door. And it did not fit. Nope. Maybe 1 out of 5 of the clips corresponded with an opening. **&&#@%$^?!$!! How did that happen? I took the template from the old door panel. As I sat there, on the floor of the garage, trying to not rip the door itself from the car retain my dignity I had to admit defeat. I wasn’t sure where I’d gone wrong, although I suspect the warped nature of the old MDF may have had something to do with it, but I’d gone WRONG again.

So I did what I usually did. I had a moment. And then I got that *(*%!$&^%#)!!_I*&*^% panel back on as best I could until I could make it work properly. Tomorrow is a new day.

REFOCUS

Having worn out my interest in the door issues, I went back to something way more important. That’s right, building the box for my new speakers. Because in the grand scheme of things, nicely paneled doors are fine, but what I really need to make the days ahead more pleasant is music. And I had lots of excess lumber sitting down in the workshop area of the basement.

First off, make a template of the shelf leaving room for the differential hump. And nothing in this car is square or plumb so while my template may look wonky, it fits the car.  From there it was time to make the top piece to which the speakers will actually be mounted.  And before anyone asks; No I did not come up with this brilliant plan myself. I found it online. And if I can make it look half as good as the ones in the photos online, it was be awesome! So after cutting out circles with a jigsaw in a cobbled together work area I was ready to put in the bars that protect the speakers from any parcels I may choose to throw behind the seats.  A little elbow grease later (good thing I had a new blade in my hacksaw) and I was nearly ready to mount the speakers. Sweet!

MONDAY: Because I don’t know how to relax

Having kept my mechanical support team in the loop about the window developments I was somewhat hesitant to just leave the window sitting in the rail without actually being secured. Mostly because when it shook loose again I wouldn’t have anyone to complain too.  So I sucked it up and resolved to go ahead and fix it the right way. Unfortunately the remedy required that I pull the regulator out of the door. Which, thanks to a healthy dose of PB Blaster, wasn’t too difficult to unscrew. The difficult part came when I tried to extricate it from the door without getting decades of goo all over me.

And that’s where I stopped. Because scrubbing that thing off with a toothbrush and Simple Green at 10:00 p.m. didn’t sound like much fun.

More to follow. There’s always more to follow.

[Show as slideshow]

 

Time for me to sit back, make my list of repairs, consult the check book, take another look at the repair list and dissolve into tears.  Or better yet, dig out some old photos and remember how this all started.

And so for your amusement, I present…..the Toy in my youth (because even then, she was way over the legal drinking age)!

[Show as slideshow]

 

Highs in the 90′s and no cloud cover in sight….it’s a lot to take even for me

It’s been so bad that even I have been reluctant to head outside…and the thought of putting on jeans and riding Villain…unthinkable

So you know what that means, right? Less clothes is better….

It’s time to go Topless…………………….pass the sunscreen please.

Get your minds out of the gutter….I’m not talking about me

it was time to remove the Toy’s convertible top which had descended into disgustingness and try out the tonneau that had just arrived. And since I was pulling stuff apart I went ahead and yanked off the cover that hides the gas tank so I could replace it. And pulled off more various odds and disgusting ends. One day I’ll reassmble her and she’ll be gorgeous. Right now, it’s all triage.

[Show as slideshow]

 

And with that hurdle managed. It was time (after the weather finally broke…who knew May was going to be so cold and grey) for a little joy ride. So I threw open the garage doors and backed her out.

None-the-less, it’s cathartic to review what led up to here and I wouldn’t want anyone out there thinking we just slapped the clutch back in and 5 seconds later all was well….

Let’s start with problem #1 – the clutch alignment tool that the catalog “highly recommended” I order to prevent costing myself more money later when I damaged the clutch did not fit….I repeat…It DID NOT fit. So at 8:38 p.m. (again with the 8:30 at night) Keith and I piled in the Jeep and ran to Advanced Auto Parts (which will soon just be garnishing my wages so I don’t have to worry about carrying my wallet). I purchased one that was smaller and hoped for the best. Add a little duct tape….and you get a working clutch alignment tool. Perfect. [remind me to lodge my complaint with victoria british]

Ok. So on goes the clutch which again, was easier said than done because the housing is heavy and the flywheel is WAY under the dash and so forth and there are disconnected knobs hanging all over. And while I’m short, I’m not tiny – as demonstrated in the picture of me contorting myself to clean the flywheel. And the garage is cramped. Not to mention I’m a weakling and I couldn’t hold the housing up at arm’s length to get it stabilized on the pins. [fortunately Keith could] With perserverence, we got that bad boy bolted down. Whew.

Next. Well next was the fun part right? This is where we have to face the reality that the transmission has to go back in. It’s just sitting there on the jack, with its newly installed clutch fork and shaft with happy grease fittings just waiting to make our lives hell. And of course we have no choice, because unless we put this back, the car is not going anywhere. Sigh…

Please note that while we are smiling in this picture, it’s only because we’ve just managed to get the transmission into the car. Not attached, just up and in. The smiling will stop shortly. Believe me, because here we face another flaw in the car’s design, the clutch lever sticks out too far to just drop the transmission in. The hole in the floor is perfectly sized for the housing, but you can’t just drop it in there because stuff gets in the way. Lots of stuff….lots and lots of stuff. See, the smiling has stopped and it’s early in the process.

I’ll not bore you with the painful details (including how I nearly lost my maglite to the bell housing…) of man-handling, wrestling and generally wailing on the transmission. The good news is, before it killed us we won. Oh sure, we were battered, bruised and covered in motor oil (and probably some other car stuff as well…not sure, the Toy just keeps oozing) but we had accomplished our mission.

From that point it was mostly just trying to get the car back together, which again, is no mean feat. Half the things are bolted thru something else which doesn’t make a lot of sense or won’t light up and after a while you get this serious desire to just drive the bolts through the holes with the lead mallet (which is supposed to be used to take the wheels off). And then suddenly you find yourself sitting on the floor pans, stretched out across the transmission cover holding epoxy and hoping you can get the gear shift knob to glue on and stay for a change.

I probably should detail the pain and suffering of installing the seats, but since I’m going to have to bring them back out again (barf) I will suffice to share that I put my foot through the transmission cover trying to get the passenger seat to slide on the rail and we are still missing one bolt out of the driver’s seat. Don’t ask….at least they are installed and are fairly sturdy.

So now it’s time to tempt fate. It’s time to take her off the jack stands. Theoretically this could be disastrous. Because who knows, she may decide to crumble in half after all of our hard work. She may decide to reject a front stand after we get the back ones out. In short, the Toy may still have a few tricks that she’s holding onto…But since I’m typing this, I’m clearly not dead or seriously maimed, which means she complied nicely and found herself back on solid ground.

And now it was truly time. Time to see if she would move of her on volition. She started up after a brief hesitation [probably need a new battery after all this time]. Shifted into reverse (which by the way…if you lift UP on the gearshift, and then sideways is a bunch easier than just wailing on it sideways….why did I not know this?) Held my breathe, pressed gently on the gas…..no grinding noise, no shuddering, no bucking, no stalling….She rolled out of the garage as if it was only yesterday that she’d been driven.

SUCCESS….at long last…..

We took a few moments of preventative maintenance – don’t want my brakes to fail or my tire to fall off during the send off. Off comes the center spinner hub for a quick check of the right front brakes and it was time to go for a joy ride. Not too far…just around the neighborhood a few times. A small child noted that “your car is very small.” He’s right, she is. But what she lacks in size, she sure makes up for in style (if I drive fast enough you can’t see the paint chips and dings!).

After the gas spewing incident, the tank was rather low, so Keith suggested that in order to avoid running the car out of gas which would seriously have marred this momentous occasion, we filler her up. So I stopped to grab my wallet, pointed her up the hill, and tested her out around a few curvy turns. I have to remember how to drive her, little different than my regular vehicle. How was it I spent less to fill up on the “good stuff” than I do to fill up my regular vehicle with the “cheap stuff”? Who knows. And at this point, I could have cared less!

And so, here’s where I give my Thank You speech……

• First and foremost to my Dad, who for some reason bought the Toy instead of the MGB that fateful day in 1991. And who, despite his better judgment, decided to not sell her for something a little more reliable and lot less expensive, despite having her title in his name until I was 25!
• To Chad, my very patient husband, who showed much good humor about my second car being a garage hog, a money hog and a time hog. Who kindly ignored the smell of fuel and oil and other car yuckiness seeping into our foyer. I told you I’d get her going!
• To Keith & Bob who got me started on getting her started. Especially Keith who has logged WAY too many hours in my garage with my car and somehow still takes my phone calls.

In the warm early evening sunlight, the Toy rolled out of the garage and onto the road for the first time in many, many years.

More details and photos later!

Well, it had to happen. We tried everything in the book, and despite his earlier belief that Bob was mistaken and we would not have to pull the transmission…we did it.

Typing that makes it sound so easy of course. And it wasn’t. Never is with this little beasty. It seemed simple enough since we’d already pulled the entire inside apart and the transmission was just sitting there, exposed for all the world to see. We put the car up on jack stands and the rest would be easy, right?

All along, we weren’t sure why the shop book kept insisting that the engine be pulled out. First off, you should be able to tell from the photos that we were working with a serious space crunch (one book recommended at least 3 times the size of the car as your work space….oh boy). Second off, while we could have gotten our hands on something to pull the engine [and by we I mean Keith] it would have had to been returned the same day and rather quietly at that.

I think you see where this is going. Despite the manual’s insistence that we remove the engine, it was still in the Toy as we positioned the jack under the transmission and loosened bolts. Ahem…

So there I sat IN the car and there was Keith UNDER the car and we were getting ready to start jacking the transmission up to pull it free [and more about that shortly] when he thought it best to re-check the shop manual. Sure enough….that part about pulling the transmission reared its ugly head. And so, being curious he takes a look under the hood and guess what? There is a REASON that the book wants you to pull the engine. Seriously, an honest to goodness, legitimate reason that has nothing to do with torture or British humor. Nope. The engine is rather dependent on the transmission to stay in place…..read that again….transmission helps keep engine in place. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Uh, huh. We were a few seconds away from dropping the engine to the floor. Boom. Gone. That’s it. So much for the clutch being the big worry. Mere seconds…but fortunately for me, my car-guy noticed this. There was some mad scrambling and something about “Put the bolts back! Put them back, now!” Followed by the 8:38 p.m. run to Sears to purchase another jack to jack up the engine, the other mighty jack being somewhat preoccupied with holding up and yanking out the transmission.

Run home, put new jack under engine. Check. Now let the good times roll. And by this I mean, please begin the next major hurdle in the removal of the stupid, flippin’ transmission. I think the short version will suffice.

• You the can’t jack it up too far because it goes behind the firewall
• You can’t yank it toward you because part of the clutch shaft gets in the way
• You don’t have a lot of room because the car is in a cramped garage
• The starter nearly falls on your head.

Fortunately, we beat the transmission into compliance and it grudgingly gave up.

Upon inspection, the clutch was stuck to the pressure plate. We had to pry it off with a screwdriver. Sigh…Bob was right. No amount of bullying was going to get that thing free. At this point the good news was we assumed we knew that the clutch was the problem. The bad news was that I’d have to order parts and then, well then who the heck knew.

I’m loathe to discuss the next tragedy that occurred because it is still quite painful and fresh. So suffice to say that you would think taking the clutch shaft and the clutch fork off would be easy. It would not be due to a wonderful design flaw where in the taper bolt holding the fork to the shaft has a tendency to shear off. Uhuh, shear off. I can tell you it happened before, because a previous owner had drilled a hole in the clutch shaft to get a bad bolt out. My adventure included breaking a nail punch, two brand new drill bits and wailing on the thing with a hammer. Finally I won.

So I leave you with this (old) update knowing that

1. Transmission is out
2. Taper pin has been beaten out of the clutch fork
3. New parts are on the way!

[Show as slideshow]

 

The first things to go were the seats. And trust me, it sounds easier than it really was.

Problem 1: Seat bolts were not all bolts on driver’s seat. Some genius had used one (yes 1 and only 1 thankfully) screw with a square nut. And guess what? It was all rusty.
End Result 1: Broken screw, but seat removed.

Problem 2: Passenger seat refused to move back on rails. And here all this time I assumed the passenger seat was pushed all the way back, because who moves it up? Come on now.
End Result 1: After PB Blasting the living daylights out of the rail, putting my feet on the dash and shoving with all my might, the seat moved.

Problem 3: Nuts for front screws of passenger seat rails are cleverly hidden under the frame. No, seriously. Kinda hard to see if turning the bolt was moving the nut.
End Result 3: After PB Blasting the underside of the car to death (do you see a trend here) the bolts came out. Whew.

Ok, seats are out. New revelation….carpet is more disgusting than I had earlier realized. I’m not sure how this is a revelation, but it is. And it is revolting. Add that to my list of things to purchase.

With the seats out, it was now time to pull off the “thing” covering the transmission. It appears to be some kind of MDF board which had been beaten to a pulp (possibly kicked I’m thinking) and then taped and tarred back into submission. Removal was not a big deal….until I saw the underside which sent me running for fresh air. The entire underside of that thing was covered with the typical black sludge, the non-tuberculosis causing nastiness that grows on the sludge and some additional unidentifiable yellow fuzzy stuff. I think my car is growing new life forms.

With the “thing” out of the way and perched precariously atop the random assortment of things in my garage it was time to figure out the next step. Mostly this consisted of sitting and staring at the transmission which clearly was not going to remove itself.

[Show as slideshow]