Saturday, June 16, 2018

3 Random Pictures

Just a few pictures from my phone...

To start off, last week they held Burger Week at Oinkster. Never posted about it, but I followed up in 2016 by participating again. I skipped last year, but heard about it again this year and decided to give it a go again. Once again, I enjoyed breaking the routine. One thing, though, since the Oinkster has a fairly small parking lot, I usually end up parking up one of the side streets and walking about a block. Along the way, I passed this tree with massive roots, where it looks like they actually conformed the sidewalk to clear it!!!

A week back I was wearing a shirt with a breast pocket. I dropped my phone into it before we went for a drive in Jade. Unbeknownst to me, I'd managed to swipe the camera on on it's way in, and it took over a hundred pictures as we drove. I deleted all but this one, as we were going under a railroad bridge. Most of the other ones were nothing but sky, and a few with palm trees or power wires.

Final shot is of the wife's pelvis. I've never gone through all of it, but she's go a lot of titanium!!! Started out by getting both knees replaced at the same time. Following that, she had the one hip replaced, and I believe this is the first picture I have of it. Next, she had her shoulder replaced, the one she's been complaining about for the longest time. Most recently, last August, she had her neck reinforced. Last Monday we had a final appointment before she was going to get her spine reinforced, but her doctor noticed she was having trouble getting around. The X-ray he'd taken for her back had down to her hip bones, and he called in his colleague, the hip guy. Now she's got an appointment with him next Monday!!! Her doctor reasoned that hip surgery is a quicker recovery than back surgery.

Monday, June 11, 2018

A Sign From God

You may have noticed I haven't posted in quite a while about any sort of progress with Scruffy. Back a couple months ago, my shadetree mechanic had charged the air conditioning in her, and when I got home from there, I'd attempted to back up whilst parking, and lo and behold, reverse wouldn't go!!! Grrrr.... I've had more transmission problems with her than any other of the Saturns I've owned!!! I've had the idea for a while of buying up a running parts car to get the engine out of to do a build on, as well as to have a transmission, just in case. That was something of the impetus for this post. It was a very terse ad for it, and the outside picture looked real good. Very low miles, 67,000 I think, and it looked well optioned, and was a year newer than 3. I had the thought of, if it was as good in the flesh and had the ABS option, swapping it to my daily and sacrificing 3. Getting in touch, turns out it had no current smog check or title, so the $1,300 asking price started sounding less good. In the meantime, I used one day off to check the resistance on the valve body solenoids in Scruffy (an issue I've seen before), as I could buy a rebuilt valve body for under $300. No dice, but I had also found that the main bore in the valve body can become worn and cause this symptom. Finally got the cash together and made it over to take a look, and found it to be a single cam model, and nowhere near as good as the pictures appeared. Sad trombone. Also came across an ad for another low mileage one that had a similar fate to Scruffy's nose (first shot was of the engine, kind of rare to have ANY shot of the engine, and then I noticed it appeared to not have a hood!!!) but it was gone before I was able to make it out there.

Come to the following weekend, Memorial day, and the junkyard is doing their 40% off days. I'll try my luck there!!! There are two in the age range to have the late model head with the roller valve train and undersized exhaust ports. Both are a year newer than either of mine. My first pick was a sedan with front end damage, I reasoned was running fine right until said front end damage occurred. Found it, and started looking into it, only to discover several mounting points on the engine block had also been damaged in the collision. Located the second choice, a dead ringer for 3, and it looked kind of better... someone had attempted to mount a early exhaust manifold to the late head, and that did not go well. By the way, there's my shadetree mechanic friend, Chad. He was also in search of a transmission.

I had wanted to try and determine the mileage by powering up the instruments, and had a couple things to try that with. Powering up the circuit for them with a power tool battery, or using the key switch with that battery to the terminals under the hood. The key was there, albeit in two segments, but still was able to turn. Did not work, though.

In the process of trying to get the engine ready to yank, we had the idea to take off the drive belt. The crank pulley was easily accessible, so we tried loosening that. It did not want to turn, then we had the thought to try rotating the crank, and it didn't move either way at all!!! Also not a good sign for an engine, so gave up on that idea. Went ahead and took the transmission out of it.

And there it is!!! It wasn't real easy to get out, but we got it!!! Ended up dropping to engine cradle to get it out. Ended up doing the same thing to get the transmission out of the other one that Chad wanted, too. Left it in the back of my dad's truck until the next weekend. Figured I'd drive Scruffy down for one last run with that transmission then do the deed. Got about a mile, and it stopped upshifting out of first gear. Another possible symptom of that worn cylinder in the valve body. Took her back, then drove to my parents' house and pulled the valve body out of the junkyard transmission, just to see if that's all it needed. Put it into Scruffy's transmission the next day, but I kind of knew it wasn't going to work. Took the pan off (by the way, if I haven't mentioned previously, the pan is on the top of the transmission in S series Saturns, and the filter is an external spin on) and right away could smell that the clutches had been burning. Did it anyway, and at first reverse actually worked, but in short order it was as it had been before.

So I have yet to get it put in. Spent a while yesterday cleaning it off, and while it's not 100% spotless, it'll still probably be the cleanest thing under the hood once I do get it put in.

Meanwhile, I picked up a few other things while I was there. The visors in Jade were looking pretty bad, so I found a pair in the front end wrecked one, and my wife had caught the passenger side mirror and cracked a piece out of the outer shell, so I got that off the same one. The center console in Jade has a cover on it that the plastic is cracked out under the top pad, and the early body style console has a design flaw. It has two cup holders at the front, one directly behind the cigarette lighter socket, so if you're charging your phone, one is unusable. The later style has one in front, and one towards the back, and it's offset from the lighter. Also, the covered box at the back on the early style is somewhat rare, so I took the console from the same one I got the transmission from. It looks like the back end mounts a little differently, but I should be able to adapt it.

Clipped to one of the visors was this cross with Proverbs 3:5-6 on it. Up on the cowl of the coupe was this reflector with a blinky red LED from Mount Moriah 62nd anniversary.

I'm taking it as a sign from God.