Getting There

Transmission filled with three fresh quarts of Royal Purple Synchromesh.

Exhaust has been returned to its rightful place and torque to spec.

Something interesting about the C6.  The exhaust doesn't really hang from the body except at the very back of the mufflers, and then from rubber hangers.

The cats come off the manifolds and the intermediate pipe is hanging from springs that are hanging from the bottom of the torque tube.

Trans Filled

Something I am totally not used to in this car is the manual transmission uses ATF for fluid.

There's something unnatural about that to me.

I use the slightly less expensive than tritium Royal Purple Synchromax fluid.

From a previous drain and fill, I had a quart leftover.

A full fill is three and change quarts; so I bought three more. ($$KA-CHING$$)

I have a handy pump that lets me fill up transmissions and differentials at awkward angles and spaces; but it can't pump an entire quart.

I pumped all four quarts as far as the pump would take things and now I have 1 quart left over.

'Nam Mentality

My mother was born 8 days after Pearl Harbor.  She didn't even make grade school before we'd developed nuclear fucking weapons to defeat Japan.

Someone born on September 19, 2001 is getting ready to graduate high school.  We're still fighting in the same places against the same people.

What the fuck?

I think it boils down to two things.

The US Army has a very German form.  We're super professional, lavishly equipped and supported.

There's a problem with the German model.  It's a loser's model.  This model lost WW2.  This model lost WW1.  It wasn't in place for Korea.  It didn't win in Vietnam.  It hasn't prevailed in any situation that's lasted longer than a week.

Desert Storm might have been counted as a win if we hadn't handed the ground back to the assholes that caused the problem in the first place.  Folks, that's not a win, that's a draw.

We're terrified of getting into another Vietnam.

Guess what, kids, we're already back in one.

We don't take and hold ground.  We keep trying to rely on unreliable "allies".

We're not winning.

What's worse is we're way more worried about people we, as a people, don't give two shits about; but for some reason how they feel about us killing them matters more than killing them.

I propose we stop precision targeting and begin just iron enrichment of the entire place via dumb bombs dropped from your friendly neighborhood BUFF until we have a Hindu-Kush steppe.

Every single weapon system we've agreed to reduce the numbers of should be used on these assholes rather than simply destroyed safely.

I am just fed up with expending blood and treasure for nothing.

Part of the problem is here at home.

On the 12th of September 2001 America was united, pissed, and willing to make Arabic a language only spoken by scholars and in Hell.

But we let a certain faction of our "leadership" talk us down.

Well, here we are, in Namistan with no end in sight...

Punching

Punch list:

Put the parking brake cables back in place on the rear cradle and A-arms and connect them.

Put the rear ABS leads back in place on the rear cradle and A-arms and connect them.

Reattach the rear A-arms.

Reattach the rear shocks.

Reinstall trans tunnel plate.

Reinstall exhaust.  12SEP19 1736

Refill transmission.  12SEP19 1122

Put rear wheels back on.  12SEP19 1820

Torque all four wheels.  12SEP19 1930

Ooops forgot update!

Install new shifter.  12SEP19 2010

Reassemble interior. 12SEP19 2022

Och Me Poor Hands

Almost, but not quite, to busted knuckles.

I don't remember my fingers ever swelling like this wrenching before.

Cuts, scrapes bruises and blisters.

Muscles ache where I'd forgotten I had muscles.

No Steps Back Today

Dunno what tomorrow will bring, but...

Got the brakes bled.

Drivers side front fender liner is back in.

Front wheels back on, but not torqued on.

Remaining punch list:

Put the parking brake cables back in place on the rear cradle and A-arms and connect them.

Put the rear ABS leads back in place on the rear cradle and A-arms and connect them.

Reattach the rear A-arms.

Reattach the rear shocks.

Reinstall trans tunnel plate.

Reinstall exhaust.

Refill transmission.

Put rear wheels back on.

Torque all four wheels.

Two easy days, I think.  But prolly three hard ones as hot as it's been in the garage.

Coming Soon

Notice:    Your vehicle does not need an elaborate break-in. But it will perform better in the long run if you follow these guidelines:
• Keep your speed at 55 mph (88 km/h) or less for the first 500 miles (805 km).
• Do not drive at any one constant speed, fast or slow, for the first 500 miles (805 km).  Do not make full-throttle starts. Avoid downshifting to brake or slow the vehicle.
• Avoid making hard stops for the first 200 miles (322 km) or so. During this time the new brake linings are not yet broken in. Hard stops with new linings can mean premature wear and earlier replacement. Follow this breaking-in guideline every time you get new brake linings.
Following break-in, engine speed and load can be gradually increased.

Been a while since this section of the owner's manual applied to me.

I think the section on brakes isn't relevant to a clutch swap though.

How Can I Tell It's Not Hunting Season?

Deer interrupts wedding photo.

This Feels Familiar

I am pretty much where I was yesterday now!

Brakes are reconnected.

Trans cooler lines are reattached.

Torque tube is torqued.

Rear cradle is torqued.

Mufflers are hung.

PLUS

The clutch line is connected.

The clutch is bled.

Three Foward Two Back

So...

Got everything all buttoned up forward of the doors except the clutch line.

That quick-connect fitting kicked my ass.

Turns out that if you pull the driver's side front wheel and the rear fender liner you can get both hands on it.  JT managed to get it together after removing the spring clip and slathering the mating surfaces with a coat of DOT 4.  Then, by Braille, got the clip in and it's locked!

So we decided to bleed it while we had two people.

We were getting fluid out of the spiffy new remote bleeder line... but the pedal kept falling to the floor and not coming back up.

JT looks under the car and...  puddle of DOT 4 coming out the bellhousing.

It appears that in the process of getting the driveline back in over lunch, we managed to tag the elbow fitting in a lefty-loosy manner and loosened it enough for it to leak.

UGH!  FML!

So we disconnected the trans cooling lines and brakes again and dropped the rear again.

This time we only pulled it back just far enough to get at the slave assembly and tighten the bleeder line.

Fingers crossed!

We have the driveline lined back up with just one bolt holding it to the bellhousing and we're going to try bleeding it again tomorrow and see if it leaks.

It's verra frustrating!

With A Rusty Ice-Pick

If I ever find the GM engineer who designed the "quick detach" fitting for the clutch hydraulic line...

I am stabbing them in the balls.

If it turns out to be a female engineer, I am getting her gender reassignment surgery so I can stab HIM in the balls!

Both sides of the connection are flexible.

There is no room to grab both ends and press them against each other.  The fittings are shaped so that even if you could get a pair of channel locks in there, they'd just slide right off the fitting.

Not from the top, not from the bottom.

So this ends up being a Chinese fire-drill situation where someone has to be in the wheel well pressing the master side of the line and someone else needs to be leaning over the fender and pressing the slave side of the line.

Italian Sporty Car

First time I've seen one of these Alfa's in the wild.

Driveline Reattached!

All 8 bolts in the bellhousing now torqued to 37 ft-lb.

All 5 bolts in the torque tube now torqued to 37 ft-lb.

Transmission electrical connections reconnected!



Hey!  You can't see the floor anymore!

Rear cradle nuts torqued to 81 ft-lb.

Brake lines reconnected.  I hate brake lines and line wrenches, they're so fiddly to get started.

If we get some cooling off this evening I'm going to reconnect the trans cooler lines and route the parking brake cables and the ABS sensor leads.  If I feel real ambitious, reattach the shocks and rear-upper A-arms.

As JT says; I'm at the stage where I can finish it alone.

It feels good to be here.

Wally World

They have an automated response!

What I sent:

Due to your company's recent political grandstanding over the sale of ammunition my family and I will be shopping elsewhere.

While this may limit our choices and cost us slightly more money; we've become fed up with businesses pushing a political agenda with a thin veneer of "this was our plan all along because of profits."

If it were merely a business decision removal of the product would have happened quietly and without a press release to curry favor from one side of the political aisle.

It did not take us very long at all to find a means to get our shopping done without darkening the doors of a Wal Mart.

The shareholders of Winn Dixie, Publix, Target and Amazon appreciate your decision to cease ammunition sales and your politically motivated method of announcing it to the world.

What replied in less than a minute (on a Sunday):

Hi Angus,

Thank you for contacting Walmart.com.

I appreciate you for bringing this up to us and we do understand your concerns. We value you as a customer and thank you for taking the time to provide this feedback. We will definitely report your concerns .

I understand that you want to know why Walmart will stop selling guns on our store. Please be advised that Walmart is barring shoppers from openly carrying guns in its stores and ending the sale of some types of ammunition in response to two deadly shootings at our stores. This helps our shopper and associate feel secured every time they shop at Walmart.

For your reference, you can visit this link to know more about this:
click here https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2019/09/03/mcmillon-to-associates-our-next-steps-in-response-to-the-tragedies-in-el-paso-and-southaven


Sincerely,

Corine Nicole A.
Walmart.com Customer Care

 Don't bother with the link, it's their press release about banning ammo sales.

OK, Corine, welcome to "more but harder" land and making the gun-free zone larger and more enticing!

I don't want to FEEL more secure, Corine, I want to BE more secure.

Fewer guns has never made anyone safer, especially when there's only ONE gun present in the hands of a nutcase.

Wrote The Wal Mart

Wal Mart has joined the political fray by discontinuing handgun and (they don't say it this way) semi-auto rifle ammunition sales.

I detest these virtue signals.

So I looked at what we buy from Wal Mart, found it for the same price at (at least) three other vendors and suggested them to Harvey.

Guess what I found.

The $200 a week we've been spending at "the low cost leader" is $150 if we spread the shopping across four stores.

We've been paying a 33% convenience fee for one stop shopping!

So I wrote them, thanking them for making me check pricing and product availability.

Insulated

TV Dinner wrapper repaired with some foil tape!

While I was down there I caught a fun perspective.  Looking up through the shifter hole!

I am officially ready to get the driveline back in the car!

Perhaps as soon as lunchtime Monday, depending on JT's schedule.

My AR Is Useless Against The Might Of The US Military

Two words:  Warsaw Ghetto.

A very small group of people with nothing left to lose took a handful of handguns and held off the most powerful military in the world.

The method was as old as war.

Use the inferior weapon to get a better one from an enemy soldier, hand the inferior weapon to the next guy on your side.

Warsaw was only taken when the National Socialists gave up on capturing it intact and leveled the place.

That going to fly here?

The Germans had nobody they knew or cared about living in Poland.  Their only reason for wanting Warsaw somewhat intact was spoils.  Loot.

It's a refrain that repeats over and over.

A tiny group of determined resistors can pin down gigantic militaries.

Something that hasn't happened yet is a resistance spawning from a place were guns were present in one of three households before the shooting started.

If a handful of handguns can hold off Nazi Germany, how will millions of AR's fare?

If around 700 IRA terrorists can stop The Royal Army for decades, how will millions of gun owners fare?

Militaries hate counterinsurgency.  The US military, by the way, isn't good at it.  Our endgame is always to give up and go home.

A domestic insurgency will not have that option.  They're already home.

Their supply lines are very dispersed thanks to pork-barrel spending policies.  How long does that whiz-bang drone keep flying when there's no transportation out of Wichita for a few days and a widget becomes unavailable?  Then, when they solve that outage, another component is delayed from Titusville?

Never mind the antenna farms that allow those things to work are fixed installations HERE and are WAY more accessible to an American resistance fighter than around the planet like in Afghanistan.

The really sad thing is its not necessary.

"Don't start none, won't be none," is actually in place.  The American gun owner isn't committing crime and wishes to be left alone.

But keep poking at them and eventually there's going to be a violent reaction.  Remember what I said about the Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, "nothing left to lose."

NEVER back someone with nothing left to lose into a corner.

White Supremacy

Quick!  Someone tell Colion Noir he's a white supremacist for advocating for gun rights!

David Hogg thinks the recent spate of mass shootings is because of white supremacy and whatever a post-genocidal society is.

Dave...  Dave, Dave, Dave.

You wanna see what post-genocide looks like.

Go.  To.  Poland.

Now that you're in Silesia, find some Jews.

C'mon Dave.

Now, come back to America.

Who did White America® wipe out so thoroughly as the National Socialists eradicated Jews from Poland?

Blacks?  There's plenty around and their population is pretty steady as a percentage of the total census.

Indians?  Still lots of them around, actually more as a percentage than when we were actively at war with them.

Whom did we commit genocide on?

Well, we did make a game attempt at eliminating Southern Democrats...  but despite killing almost three hundred thousand of them; they persist to this day.

Just like decimate, I don't think people know what genocide means.

I Am About Ready To Reset My Tech Clock

An dial it back to 1983.

I am fed up with planned and mandatory obsolescence.

The printer died.

Any new printer I get will not work with my old Mac because OSX 10.6.

My Win7 laptop has decided, all on its own, to no longer connect to the old Mac, which pisses me off because there's a Drobo attached to it whose sole purpose is to store the 16tb of files for remote use.

I don't want to move files around to use them on the laptop.

Oddly, the old Mac can see the laptop and read and write to it.

I'm still not done being pissed off at The Precious and it's high tech fuel system.

Some Good News For A Change

Robert Mugabe is in Hell this fine day.

You Can Sometimes Tell When Somone Doesn't Have Kids

If a child is doing something irritating (but harmless) to get your attention, the fastest way to get it to stop forever is to ignore it.

Paying attention to them is what they desire, so paying attention to them is the last thing you should do.

There's lots of "adult" examples too.

Open carrying AT people is such a thing.  If you ignore them, they either go away or rise to the level of harm where you can do something with the legal system.

The people who hate guns do not hate us more because someone is lugging around an AK strapped across their chest.

The people who hate guns most certainly DO point to pro-gun sites bitching about the people carrying at people.  They're saying, "look, even the pro-gun kooks condemn this!" and divisions are sown among us.

Kids, I can remember when merely buying and owning something like an AR was condemned by the "normal" gun people.  How my friends and I were looked at by the population of the range when the Mini-14's with folding stocks, pistol-grips and pinned on flash-hiders came out and it is a very similar reaction to the open-toting riflemen.

I lost count of the number of ranges that restricted the rate of fire to no faster than a trapdoor Springfield and someone shooting a semi-auto had to slow to that rate.  Ranges where a magazine that wasn't legal to hunt with wasn't allowed on the range.

How common is that today?

The truth is "what's normal" moves around.

An AR is just another hunting rifle now.

The Fudd ranges that didn't allow for the most popular gun in America aren't seeing much shooting.  Their clientele have dried up.

This same sort of freak-out about methods has cost us before.

Florida lost campus carry from "you're not doing it the way I want!"

We lost the hearing protection act because people can't read.

We're losing open carry in businesses because we're providing cover to the gun grabbers.

Complaining about if it's foolish from three states away isn't how to reach the people who need to have it explained to them because there's hundreds of gun-grabbers using that condemnation against us on sensible open carry.

Because all the Bloombots report is, "even gun rights advocates oppose open carry."

PS:  I don't have to look very hard to find a pro-gun blogger who will condemn ALL open carry for them to parrot either.

Out With The Old

In with the new!

There's quite a bit of play in the old throw-out bearing.  I guess it was time to replace it.

Of note, there's two reliefs cut into the side of the bell of the torque tube.  One lines up perfectly with the bleeder.  The other...  Nope, nothing.

This got a moment of panic and took it off and compared it to the original part, the lines are in the same place.  All is well, I guess.

That Is Not Right

I put the little clippy things back in the trans cooler lines.

They're the same little clippy things that were the bane of my existence on the radiator removal.

I know them now and have their measure.

Installed the remote bleeder to the hydraulic throw-out bearing.

I looked up the torque specs for the bolts that hold it to the torque tube...

106 ft-lb!

For those tiny things?

Nope, misread that.  INCH pounds.

Just barely over 8 ft-lb. or as we say in The Cavalry, "snug."  Marv refers to this as "just barely finger tight."

Um NO

This was not a restoration.

This is a new build car with a vintage VIN plate.

Punched

Bellhousing back in and seven of eight bolts torqued to spec!  It went in like it came out, wouldn't move, wouldn't move, wouldn't move, glorious musical bell tone and it was in!

The last bolt gets torqued after the driveline is back in because it holds the clutch hydraulic line.

Front cradle is back where it's supposed to be and the nuts cranked down to 81 ft-lb.  That's sure fun under the car!  Good thing I'm fat!  Skinny guy would skid across the floor.

I forgot about the front stabilizer sway bar yesterday, but remembered it when torquing the cradle.

I still have to address the insulation issue.

Bad Leg And Wrenching

One nice thing about working on jackstands is I don't have to stand.

I can sit or lay under the car to do what I need to do.

A furniture dolly is great for moving heavy things under car too, it's like a creeper for parts!

Tomorrow's punch list:

Address the tattered insulation.
Get the bellhousing bolted in.
Lower the body back down on the front cradle.
Torque those bolts.

A Day Devoured By Locusts

For not getting shit done, I sure got a lot accomplished!

One side of the sliding glass door up and died on us.  The rounded part of the track is seperated from the riser it was extruded with lo-fifty years ago when the house was new and the Earth still young.

The other side works flawlessly.

That meant rearranging the entire dining area and porch.

Anticipating this was going to cause a lot more disruption than it actually did, I binned up most of the books in the garage shelves and started to take those down to make space for things displaced.

The shelves were already doing a slow-motion collapse due to humidity's effect on particle board, so this just moved up the timeline summat.

Harvey is happy with the new fung shui.

Introspective

Making yourself as a GURPS character is not for the faint hearted.

Well, not if you're making an honest version of yourself.

You've got to take out all the parts and look at them to assign advantages, disadvantages and skills.

I probably over-stat myself and over disadvantage.

You have to read the descriptions carefully.

Being a bit unmotivated isn't Laziness according to the rules.  Nor are you lazy if you procrastinate a lot, but really bust ass completing a project once you've started.

The Technomancer version of me raised some interesting items.

I definitely have a settled lifestyle.  With that rule in place, I can only spend 20% of my starting wealth on "adventuring equipment".   Considering that all the guns fall into that category, I had to take some serious wealth to cover the guns and home ownership.  I even got a free point of status from it because our society values home ownership.

I don't feel wealthy.  But wealth is more of an accountant's ledger than liquidity.  I have a positive balance sheet with little cash.

Something I spent a lot of time on was figuring out why Coyote Me, uncrippled from his fall from the tank thanks to magical healing, didn't end up differently than I am today.  This is the part of being introspective that can hurt your self-worth.  I can live with my character flaws.  Identifying them this way might even give me a hook to fix them.  We'll see.

Then there's The Boy...  That's staggering.  Fewer than 25% starting point value, loved one, around almost all the time...  Negative sixty points!

Great News For LuckyGunner

WalMart is going to stop selling "handgun" ammunition.

They're going to focus on long-gun hunting ammo.

I know people with lever actions in .357 and .44 Magnum who hunt with them.

That's long gun ammo!

I know, I know... they don't mean it like that.

Just remember, you cannot get 5.45x45mm 7N6 surplus ammo from Russia anymore because it's armor-piercing pistol ammo.

Hey!  Another example of someone else defining the terms for us and when we tried to correct them we got screamed at for being pedantic.

I am really wracking my brain to come up with something that WalMart sells that I cannot get from Winn Dixie or Target once they stop selling ammo.

I Think I Got It Easy

The pilot bearing that goes on an LS1 Camaro & Firebird, LS1 & LS6 Corvette, and LS1 & LS2 GTO looks like this:

The bearing that goes on every other LSx engine looks like this:

I can see why JT was fighting his tooth and nail.  The bearing puller was pulling on the bearing cage in the center and not on the outer race.

I think this is because the LS1 was designed with a bushing in mind and not a bearing.  The other LS type motors in GM's line-up don't often even have a manual option, so no pilot bearing/bushing is needed.

Today's Punchlist Done!

The clutch is installed.

I gotta replace some of that insulation with a bit of Dynamat before I go wrestling with the bellhousing.

The Sepulchral Voice Of My Grandfather

"Should I spend another $75 to $300 on a rear main seal and add another fucking week to this already-taking-too-damn-long job?"

Grandfather's voice from beyond the grave, "If you're not sure something is leaking, it's not leaking.  Don't borrow trouble."

Sage advice that comes back to me now.

 Holding the flywheel for the final 74 ft-lb pass was fun!  The 15 and 37 ft-lb passes were less than compression so I didn't need to awkwardly hold two tools.

Progress

Well past the 50% mark on this project.

The fuel pump remove and replace is long done.

New pilot bearing is in place.

Staring at the rear main seal, which is presently not leaking...  Wondering if I should fix something which isn't broken.  I didn't replace an oil seal on the Civic way back and it promptly started leaking about a year later.

It seems like, from reading reviews of the part, that it's a coin flip about if the new part will actually seal and it doesn't seem to matter what brand.

Getting a new one means work stops for near a week.

And Then It Hit Me

I'm making myself as a character in GURPS: Technomancer, as a coyote chimera.

I just realized that in a world with such pervasive magic as this one has, I would not be permanently injured by my fall from the tank!

I certainly wouldn't have pursued a career in The Army.  I didn't really care for it much, to be honest.

But what I have to consider now is whom would I be had I not been disabled.

It's mind blowing.

Read First?

Read the instructions before I start working on it and turn in my Man Card?

Might as well ask for directions when I'm lost.

Well, I read the instructions after the fact and they don't really offer guidance.

When you remove the pressure plate, it tells you to mark the relationship between the plate and the flywheel.

When you remove the flywheel, it tells you to mark the relationship between the crank and the flywheel.

This is so you can put them back in the same relative position as before so as to not disturb the balance.

I have zero guidance from the instructions for when I am throwing the old parts away.

The flywheel is easy to figure out, the old one was lined up as if there was an index pin in the holes, so that's how the new one will go on.

I've got no guidance from the pressure plate.  Near as I've been able to find, it doesn't matter at all and the warning in the manual is a legacy from when it did.

In other news:  a 32mm socket I got for The 'Nox's oil filter cover looks to be perfect to pound in the pilot bearing.

Ban Boats!

Boats are even more deadly than disgruntled Texans with AR's!

Then Why

"The flywheel does not use an alignment pin..."

Two things, GM.

First: If you don't use that pin, why are both the crank and the flywheel drilled for it?

Second: I noticed that those holes were lined up when I took the old one off.  Might as well of had a pin, huh?

Tarnished Halo

St. JT has somewhat tarnished his halo with his response to the ease with which I got my pilot bearing out.

He said, very quietly, "fuck you!"

That said, he's one of the reasons it took me so much time to get motivated to get that bearing out.

He'd tried both the slide hammer and the screw-type pullers and ended up getting the bearing out in pieces.  Pieces which fought every inch of the way out.

Sorry, JT.

Texas Shooting

Banning guns from this occurrence makes exactly as much sense as banning traffic stops.

Anticlimatic

Once I figured out you have to put the jaws in staggered so they will fit through the inner race...

Tightened up the jaw expander, gave it a gentle tap with the slide hammer...  Nothing.

Gave it a medium tap...  Movement.

Two more taps just like that...  Out.

The cavity behind the bearing was nearly full of clutch dust.  It's amazing how that shit infiltrates through even the tiniest gaps and clearances.

I'd girded my loins to fight this thing all afternoon and here I am:  Officially no more parts need to be removed.

Everything from here on out is reassembly.

I believe I will have me a spot of rum to celebrate.