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Letters From Little Rock |
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a semi-regular column
Letters From Little Rock is my column on whatever topic strikes my fancy at the time. Check in as often as you like, but I make no promise as to when new columns will appear. I hope to add a column on a weekly basis, but honesty compels me to admit that I might not even maintain a monthly schedule. March 7, 2004 Not much going on here. I wasted all day last Saturday working on the car. As per my usual it doesn't really run any better, I did some minor cosmetic damage, and now I'm scared to drive it. I started out just to replace the sparkplugs, but I fell prey to the usual temptations under the hood. I went to evil, evil Wal-Mart after I got off work Friday because I wanted to change the plugs first thing in the morning on a cold engine. They didn't have sparkplug wires, but they had sparkplugs. They even had a convenient guide that told me to gap them to .06. I figured no problem, I'll change the plugs and then go get wires at Advance Auto (by the by, Advance is the best auto parts place around here). My car has a transverse engine so to change the plugs I took off the plastic shroud that covers the firewall. When I did that I saw my speedometer cable. No big deal, right? Wrong. My speedometer hasn't worked in better than two years. I've held off replacing it because I thought I'd have to pull the speedometer to do that. But, lo, what do my eyes behold? There was a connection right behind the transmission fluid dipstick. Talk about easy access. As I was checking to see how hard it was to get to the tranny end of the cable I noticed how easy it was to get to the oil plug and oil filter and it dawned on me that a) I needed to change the oil and b) I've never personally changed the oil in this hoopty. Alright. No problem. So I set off to get spark plug wires, a speedometer cable, oil, an oil filter, and what the heck I'm feelin' automotive, a pcv valve and an oil filter wrench. I got everything I needed except the sparkplug wires. They were out. That's right. The one thing I actually had to have was not to be had. Or haved, or whatever the hell it is I mean. I had to run some other errands before I went home so I added a second automotive parts store to my itinerary. So there I was with all of my automotive accoutrements. I couldn't make up my mind where to start. I figured oil first while the engine is still warm. No problem (although I did drop the oil plug in my drain pan as usual). As I started to go after the sparkplug wires I noticed the sticker under my hood that says to gap the plugs at .045. Thank you, Wal-Mart. Okay I figured best to go ahead and pull them all out and gap them correctly. No point waiting. Except of course I was tired of sparkplugs. So I went to work on the speedometer cable. I took loose the broken end from the tranny and put the new one on and started routing it along the old one. That's when a funny thing struck me. Not funny ha-ha, more like funny I can't believe I did something this *#$%@& stupid. The length I bought was made to run all the way to the speedometer itself. I knew it was the only one the store carried, I already had it so what the hell just a little more work. This was at 5pm. A mere SEVEN HOURS LATER I was done. I made a perfect mess taking apart the instrument panel and no one will ever know how many pieces I may have left out inadvertently or because I shattered them into a thousand pieces. The cable routes through a grommet on the firewall in an awkward spot beside the boost pump and underneath some computerish-electrickicky-I'm-scared-to-dismount-it kind of thing. The old speedometer cable came out pretty easy, but the grommet closes down tight against the cable itself, about the size of a pencil. The head of the cable is almost as big around as my thumb and slightly flared at the end. To get the new cable through the little bitty hole took almost five hours by itself. I had to get on top of the engine on all fours and feed the cable (And my arm. Don't forget my arm.) under the brake fluid reservoir and it's million hard lines. To say nothing of throttle controls and whatnot. I struck upon the great idea (after hours of merely striking on the car) of taking a screwdriver that was just a little bit bigger around than the cable end and pushing it through ahead of the cable to open the hole up. It worked like a charm. But the cable only went just so far and then stopped. I fought the muckety-muck for a long while then went to look at the other side. In my great wisdom and in the first flush of genius I had managed to wedge the screwdriver firmly between the grommet and a great big wire bundle. Naturally it was just out of my reach. I managed to work that out though through the expediency of breaking something I had heretofore treated like a hen treats an egg. After I got that done the regapping of the sparkplugs was a piece of cake. Of course, Sunday, when I finally got to drive the car (did I forget to mention that I left the car door open so long the light ran the battery down?) I had some pretty uncomfortable moments. I'm not sure why, but it was bucking like hell. I knew I got the plug wires in the right order. I just wasn't certain that the speedometer cable wasn't somehow causing hellacious damage because there was this funny whirring sound I couldn't quite track down over the racket my lifters were making. I'm paying the price for going a year between oil changes. Oh well. I just couldn't get over the nagging worry that my problem might have something to do with that screwdriver getting jabbed into the wire bundle. Luckily, it turned out not to be the transmission or a wiring problem; it was the timing chain quietly going to hell. Tuesday just as I rolled into the parking lot my car died. I actually had to push it probably a quarter mile to a parking space. Tomorrow, the garage should be done with it, and I might even get to pick it up before I go in to work. I mean after all, the rest of it worked out so well.
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