Its a foot ball term, if you are a skinny quarter back it is when one big fella keeps the other big fella from creaming your ***. But in a car in wotu body and paint terms it is sanding it out smooth enough for shiney paint, it is how you find all the ripples and low spots. Extremley time consuming and there is not way around it.
I decided to replace the th350 in my mocked up model a, for one with a shorter tail shaft. To make it easier, I pulled the dipstick tube, so that I could pick it up easier. Then in the middle of moving it, I found myself covered in transmission fluid. Needless to say the wood floor where I work on it now has absorved plenty of it, and the place smells like ****** fluid. On the bright side my driveshaft now fits.
I had a huge tin full of old bolts from when I stripped the old Buick down and I thought I'd clean off all the rust from the bolts by letting them soak overnight in some white vinegar. Well, I forgot about them for about a week and when I went back there wasn't much that was recognisable in that old tin.
When I was still in high school I had an old O.T. Mach 1 pulled out the 289 for a rebuild and a bunch of up grades . Installed an old engine we had laying around for a month tops until machine shop finished work . Thermostat decided to act up so i put a piece of card board in front of radiator . It was a cold Ohio morning and I needed my defrosters to get to school and not be late again . After school it had warmed up real nice out forgot about cardboard installed. I got beside a buddy with what he thought was a hot Chevelle we had an Illegal speed contest when I wound out 1st gear heard a horrible noise thought I hurt my temporary engine .After pulling of my buddy stopped also to see what happened.We opened my hood to discover my flex fan tried to pull air through the radiator with cardboard in front of it flexed out and ate whole back side off of my 2 month old radiator.
One night a buddy called me over to figure out what the vibration was on his 69 Ford Highboy. He just rebuilt the engine and put in a Centerforce clutch. A few days later he starts having a weird vibration. He takes it to his so called Master Mechanic, who cant find the source of the vibration, but he says its coming from the back of the engine. So we pull the truck in, and remove drive shafts and pull the ****** away from the back of the engine. Pull the clutch, look everything over, nothing.. Put it back in and start the engine with the ****** apart from the engine. Still has the vibration... We feel like complete failures and are now thinging the vibration is somewhere in the engine.. I`m standing in front of the truck, resting on the radiator and looking at the engine, when I notice a big scratch and a partial hole on the freshly painted inner fender, it looked as if someone hit it with an ax. I look up and notice a fan blade missing off the radiator fan. Vibration problem found, radiator fan out of balance. All that work for something simple, and thats after the so called mechanic couldn't find the problem...
I do dumb stuff all the time its usually at 3 am or when I'm in a hurry to get done but most of the time its things I know better than to do
went completely through a Cad 500 thinking it had a rod knock. never found anything in the motor. but when I went to drop the motor back in I found the crack in the flex plate! At least it ran great after the rebuild DOH!
What does that smell like? I got fooled once in the Philippines and don't want that to happen again...
Had a single rail gear box behind a tough 351 Clevo, it didn't last long so I put in a new one. Done in the Barracks parking lot for the Army Parachute School I was posted to. It lasted part way into the first drive. Suspecting that it was a bad cog box I stupidly put in another! Same car park, in the rain! It made it through the week, then PoP! there goes another, I guess they just cant handle 490Hp! Put a Top Loader 4 speed that I was saving for an A model project I had, sorted. Why the hell didn't I just put that in the first time? Doc.
Decided it would be good idea to put my new motor and clutch in my c10 the day before jalopy showdown last year motor went in fine took it for a test drive noticed the speedometer wasent working back to the shop and found the little plastic gear had fell into the tailshaft housing so i decided to pull it and put the gear back in real quick didnt know doing so pulled the whole shaft/gears a spilled needle bearings all thru my ******. Out came the trans again and started fishing out the bearings. Got it all back together at 6:00am topped off the gear oil and made it there and back zero problem minus lack of sleep would have been alot easier to drive it with no speedo. Also recently left the choke cable bracket on top of the battery in my falcon first time i started it i thought it had a bad valve tap. Nope bracket was wedged behind crank pulley resulting in a bent pulley and very irritated me.
backed my dad's truck into the nose of a 70 e-type jag we'd just finished for a customer--waiting or him to pick it up. only said 1 word, then when and grabbed the hammer and dolly. had it ready for paint before the end of the day. debated whether to even tell him, in the end we did because ALL our friends knew and we figured he'd find out eventually anyway.
T56 trans with LT style bellhousing, clutch fork has to be loose in housing before you put trans in. Did that,but was a rib on fork wouldn't slide over pivot. Remove trans , slide fork in a further 1/2" install trans again. Fork is in backwards. Remove trans again, install fork forwards, Install trans again. This tim it works, yaay! Torque trans to bell housing strip bolt hole. Sunday, no stores open for helicoils Call it good.
firing order on small block chevy 18436572 right ? installed plug wires and new cap started motor up and it went bang bang ... checked firing order again 18436572 im good still bang bang was lost for two days on what i did wrong i was 17 and not a clue what i did sold the 1963 nova to the "A" hole next door and in ten mins he fixed and was driving it ....what i didnt know was i had the firing order right but the rotation of wires was wrong ....sold the car for 500 STILL kicking myself in the ----
I seem to be eternally damned to do at least one of the above on every brake system I plumb. I was told practice made for perfection, but I dunno...
Doing a clutch job for a friends Nova, can't figure out why the clutch pedal push rod was beyond loose (wouldn't even reach the fork!) Turns out I installed the clutch disk backwards. Not my proudest moment, but laughed it off all the same.
The Jalopy Journal
