Work Day 1: The Aftermath

After awaking from my exhaustion induced slumber Friday morning I decided to cancel my sub job that afternoon. Working the hours I do and remembering that Friday was to be a work day on the car, I made the executive decision that Tracy Unified would have to do without their video attendant/babysitter for an afternoon and I could catch up on some chores before Eric arrived later. Suddenly my phone rings and it is Eric on the line informing me that he is leaving San Jose post-haste and will be arriving in Tracy within the hour. Eric, being a legitimate adult with a job, I assumed meant the work day for the car would have been after he got off work on Friday. Clearly I was mistaken. 11:30 am - as good enough time as any to start drinking wrenching on the car.

With no specific plan in place as to what we wanted to accomplish, Eric and I set out survey the mechanical landscape and come to a consensus on what sort of bullshit we could strip off our bitchin' IROC. Clearly the rear hatch glass had to go and it did with nary a problem.



Then we moved to the engine compartment. We all remember vividly the wild bucking and smoke from our Cannonball Run from Alameda to Tracy whose cause had yet to be determined. Speculation was high that it was a fuel problem, but with any vehicle 80% of the problems typically are electrical. We both decide that the emissions control crap that California forces our great American car companies to install certainly has no place in such a sweet machine. Let's not worry about the issues experienced on 580 until we get the car back on terra firma. Hold on, something is amiss. What could this be? We're no mechanical geniuses, but certainly that doesn't look normal (see below).



You might have noticed that the electrical component had melted to the very emissions control device that we had previously decided to remove. Thanks environmentalists.

With the cause of our malfunction somewhat determined we turned our attention back to the task at hand. While the events of our day were varied we dare not bore you with the mundane details. Here's a recap of what we accomplished:

• Removed rear hatch glass and struts
• Diagnosed/fixed the brake lights issue
• Went to Sears, bought some more tools
  
• Removed spark plug wires and spark plugs. There was oil on the plugs which indicates either worn piston rings or valve seals, neither of which we plan on fixing
• Removed AIR system
• Removed A/C compressor
• Removed AIR/Smog pump

For next weekend we hope to accomplish the following:

• Replace front brake pads
• Flush out diarrhea brake fluid with clean fluid, bleed system
  
• Check/replace master cylinder fluid, bleed system
• Check/replace power steering fluid
• Change engine oil and filter
• Replace spark plug wires and spark plugs
• Try and figure out why our transmission only has 4 out of 5 gears (maybe)
  
• Revisit exhaust manifolds and work on dual exhaust (maybe)