So there I was, minding my own business, driving the Lexus from point A to point B. When I arrived at my destination, I turned off the ignition, and as it had done thousands of times before the power antenna began reeling back into the rear fender, but then it happened… I heard a horrible CLUNK, then a persistent grinding sound that simply wouldn’t go away.

I tried turning the ignition back on, hoping that the antenna might have only slipped on one tooth and cycling it would get everything back on track, but it was not to be. With the antenna stuck just a little past half way erected, I removed the trunk interior panel that covers the power antenna motor, and disconnected the power.

On another, completely different occasion I was pulling out into traffic on a fairly busy four lane street. The maneuver I was attempting was a left hand turn which requires crossing the two lanes which I can see fairly well, entering the oncoming traffic in the furthest two lanes, which are obscured by a neatly manicured and lanscaped island.

As you might imagine, this is usually a bit of a hail mary manuever and you want to do it as quickly as possible so that you have the chance to react if you happen to be pulling into traffic which you couldn’t see. I pulled across the first two lanes, reving to the redline in first gear, and quickly looking over my shoulder to check for traffic as I merge and briskly pull the shifter down into second gear. Only, this time was… different… I engaged second gear, but the shifter traveled WELL past the point it should have then felt limp and.. well.. broken!

After a minor panic attack, and some experimenting with shifting in and out of various gears, I discovered that the odd numbered gears (1,3,5) still engaged normally. But, the even gears (2,4,Reverse) had this same “limp” feeling, though I was still able to engage them.

I drove the car for many, MANY months with both of these problems but I’ve recently remedied both of them as part of my “Late Model Restoration” project. Here’s how.

Power Antenna

This one was easy, replacing the power antenna mast is both inexpensive and easy. I bought a replacement mast on eBay for under $20, and replaced it in about an hour. It would have taken less time if I had paid closer attention to the directions and installed the outside decorative nut in the right order. Ohh well!

The result, however, is well worth the effort. The shifter feels perfect now. Very positive tactile feedback, I know when I’ve engaged a gear. It’s easily “better than new” with the solid bushings and the factory fresh cable. While replacing the cable may not have been expensive (it’s a > $200 part) and not immediately necessary it’s worth the peace of mind knowing that it’s new and I’ve got at least another 18 years before I have to worry about it again.

Stay tuned for more of the Late Model Restoration, the suspension is next, and here’s a little teaser!

Time for a quick update on the Cadillac. Last time you read about the caddy, I shared my discovery that it had the rather desirable “Switch Pitch” variation of the Turbo 400 transmission. As such, I decided it was best to have it examined before I put the car back together. I took it over to Alphonso’s Transmission in Goleta, hoping that it just needed to be cleaned up, and perhaps have a few smaller parts repaired or replaced. Unfortunately, this was not to be. As he started dismantling the transmission he very quickly discovered that the main forward band was broken, the forward drum was burnt, and the 2/3 clutch pack was nearly worn down to the steel. So, the only real choice at that point was to go ahead and rebuild the transmission completely.

Now, I’m totally stoked that the trans was rebuilt, and Alphonso has been building these things for longer than I’ve been alive, and did a spectacular job. I also have a brand new variable pitch torque converter. All for the (quite reasonable) price of $1100. Problem is, I only had $600 to spend, which I was hoping would be enough to get the trans repaired, and buy a few small parts I needed to get the car back together. Instead, I had to borrow the rest of the money from our savings. This means for the next 3 months I’ll be paying our savings back from the caddy’s fund, at which point we’re expecting our new son Tate! So as you can imagine I’m not going to have the time, nor the presence of mind to be working on the caddy for a while after that, and I won’t have any money to spend on it until then.

As a result, I’m trying to do little things on the caddy until Tate is born that don’t cost me anything. So I’m tearing the motor down a bit further, and trying to clean it up. I popped the timing cover off to check the timing chain/gears. Turns out this is yet another part which is going to need replaced! The chain is SUPER loose, like enough that I almost feel like I could cause it to skip a tooth with the slack. Also, apparently in the late 60′s it was all the rage to install and market “silent” timing gears. I had the same get-up on my 1967 Ford Thunderbird. It’s essentially a hard plastic cam gear for the timing set, which is supposed to reduce the normal timing set noise. I seriously don’t get this, since the other noises that these machines make more than drown out any noise that the timing set might make. But, I digress.. The point is that the hard plastic cam gear is also showing signs of stress, with hairline cracks forming down the middle of each tooth. It’ll definitely have to be replaced.

I had hoped that I could just throw the engine back together without buying a whole lot more parts for it, and as such had sorta planned not to inspect it too thoroughly. With events unfolding as they have, I think I am going to go ahead and check all the rest of the clearances and see what else (if anything) may need replaced. Depending on how things turn out, I may or may not stick with this motor. As I’ve stated before, the 429 is a low production motor and the parts are surprisingly hard to find, as well as expensive. If I find that it needs more than bearings (a cam, or some machine work for instance) I may simply sell this motor to someone who’s working on a numbers matching restoration and buy a 472/500 to put in it’s place. The good news is that my 429 is in generally good shape, and certainly does not need a lot of work, so it should have some reasonable value to someone who’s looking for original parts.

So that’s where we stand. I had hoped to have her all back together and be driving ‘er by now, but it looks like I’m going to be taking my time even a bit more, and being even a bit more methodical. I can’t wait to experience that finely crafted and tuned transmission!

It's been a while since I've provided an update about the progress of on the Caddy.  Mostly because things have been slow due to a busy work and family schedule.  Here's the rundown of what I have gotten done though.

I have rebuilt the carb, and realized that a broken vacuum pot on the carb was actually only used to crack the throttle open a bit and increase the idle RPM when the A/C was running.  Since the A/C system is not holding pressure, and looks like it hasn't in many many years, I went ahead and removed this "extra" part.  Hopefully this'll fix the hesitation problem that I detected on the few short drives I took.  

Now, when I first got the car, I immediately noticed that there wasn't any sort of linkage that I could see for the tranny kickdown.  So while I've been staring at the service manual to get my carb back together properly, I've also been trying to figure out how the heck this thing is supposed to get a kickdown signal from the throttle.  Turns out there is a switch which is supposed to be mounted on the intake manifold, near the carb which actually sends a +12v signal to the transmission for kickdown!

Even more interesting than that, the transmission in this thing is at least as rare as the engine.  I've got a THM400 with "Switch Pitch", which was only offered in the Caddy for like 3 years.  Basically the torque converter has two stall settings, one around 1000RPM and another around 3200RPM.  It switches between the two with another +12v signal (also sent by the switch which I don't have) which causes the angle of the blades in the converter to change.  So, that means two things.

First, instead of just throwing everything back together and hoping the trans "just works" I'm actually going to take the time to yank it out and have it gone over to make sure it'll work well for me.  No sense it blowing this thing up since it's a stout and apparently rather desirable piece!  I'm hoping to have it yanked out this weekend, and over to Alphonso's Transmission by Monday.

Second, because I don't have the original switch to operate the "Switch Pitch" mode and kickdown I've got to either find one (fat chance) or devise my own.  Currently, my plan is to mount up a TPS (Throttle Position Sensor) to the carb and feed that signal to an Arduino Microprocessor which will send the +12v signals to the trans for both the switch pitch, and trans kickdown.  There is actually a guy who built a controller for the switch pitch part of the trans back in the mid 80's, and I've actually been in touch with him.  His solution uses vacuum, the brake light, and timers to operate just the pitch change of the torque converter.  Then a mechanical switch for the transmission kickdown.  His name is Bruce Roe (bcroe@juno.com) and I've been in touch with him to get some feedback on how his device works.  He's been very helpful and encouraging, I can only hope my device is as effective as his.

So, with that I've decided I'm going to nickname my Caddy "Bionic Caddy" in honor of the fact that "we have the technology, we can make it better".  It's especially fitting since I'm going to put a CarPC in it, and hopefully put a Megasquirt EFI on it one day.  Also, it abbreviates nicely to a personalized license plate *BIONCAD*.  Should be good fun.

While my simple project of identifying (and fixing) a mysterious "clunk" has sorta exploded into a much bigger project of getting the engine back together and building a controller for the transmission, I still hope to get it done reasonably soon and keep the complexity to a minimum.  Stay tuned for updates!

Well there she is, the source of my clunk! And, the way it’s sitting in there explains why the engine wouldn’t turn past TDC as well since that thing woulda been right in the way. So far as I can tell it’s a small(ish) washer that got folded in half. You can see a few more shots of it over in my Flickr set. What remains a bit of a mystery is how it got there. I’m guessing it entered through the intake, and it’s possible it was sitting on top of the throttle blades of the carb. Tough to say if it was there when I got it, or if I managed to drop it there while I was working.

All in all, there doesn’t seem to be much (maybe any?) damage from the whole debacle. The you can see both the cylinder wall and the combustion chamber for that cylinder, and they both appear unharmed! Remember back when I described that one of the cylinders had a spark plug that had 0 gap and appeared damaged? Yup, you guessed it, that plug came from this cylinder. Makes sense, all of the steel for the cylinder wall, piston, and head are harder than the washer would have been, and the spark plug would have been a softer metal as well. Soft enough to sustain some damage from that thing flinging around in the cylinder. This also explains why it seemed fairly inconsistent, when that cylinder was not on it’s power stroke the washer would have happily just moved up and down the cylinder wall in place. Then when there was ignition in that cylinder, the pressure probably sent it flying around!

I also made another discovery while I was working. The bolt on the front of the crank that I’d been using to turn the motor over, doesn’t actually belong there! The balancer is simply pressed onto the crank with no big bolt to hold it on like you find on many other motors. It’s becoming more and more apparent to me that one or more people who’ve worked on this thing haven’t been terribly methodical, and clearly didn’t have a service manual to reference. In spite of that, the motor appears to be fairly low mileage and it quite good condition.

The plan now is to do some more inspection and measure things to see if they match the tolerances set out in the service manual. If everything checks out, I think I may just put her all back together and run her. Going to keep my fingers crossed that everything is as tight as it appears to be so I can get some miles outta this thing!

I got the engine out of the Caddy this weekend! The first lesson I learned is that I should have either removed all of the pulleys and water pump, or removed the front clip of the car. I had a TON of trouble getting the motor out past the radiator core support! In fact, I wound up yanking the water pump off while the motor was in limbo just to buy myself a few more inches of clearance.

Once it was finally out, and safely on an engine stand, I started my investigation and search for the source of my “clunk” sound. First, I yanked the intake manifold and the cover for the lifter valley. I found nothing particularly interesting there, certainly no obvious foreign object which would account for the noise I’ve been hearing. So, I tipped the thing over and started pulling out oil pan bolts and upon removing the pan I was greeted with what you see on the left. Now I expected to find chunks of oil dipstick in the engine, since I’d previously reported that the dipstick appeared broken. What I did not expect though was that the dipstick would be so completely mismatched! The photo on the right shows the engraving of “Ford” on the dipstick. Apparently the previous owner just decided to toss whatever dipstick he had handy into the tube, and call it a day.

Not knowing what the original design of the Cadillac dipstick is, I can’t be sure, but it feels like this is a bit of a poor design. If the dipstick is straight, and goes down the dipstick tube straight, it appears as though it’ll run right smack dab into the rotating assembly as you can see on the left.

As satisfied as I was with my discovery, I realized pretty quickly that this couldn’t be the source of the “clunk” I was chasing down. The bits of dipstick were simply too small and light weight to account for the sound I was experiencing. Plus, when I pulled the oil pan off, all of the bits were sitting right inside the oil pickup which means they were likely “stuck” there by suction from the oil pump any time the engine was running. So I kept inspecting, looking for any other foreign object big enough to account for what I’d heard.

After several minutes of looking around with a flashlight, I figured I’d start turning the motor and seeing if anything seemed out of place. I pulled all the plugs so that compression wasn’t an issue, and started turning the motor over. It turned nice and easy until it neared top dead center (TDC), where it halted and I couldn’t seem to continue turning it no matter how much (reasonable) force I applied. Perplexed, I went ahead and turned the engine the opposite direction. Again it turned smoothly until I had reached a full rotation in the opposite direction and it again stopped dead in it’s tracks. Hrrmnnn..

So that’s the current mystery, the engine doesn’t seem to turn over freely any more now that I’ve pulled it out, and turned it upside down! I knew it couldn’t be piston to valve contact, since it’s a hydraulic lifter motor and almost all of the lifters had lost pressure allowing all the valves to stay closed. So, more likely it’s piston to head contact. I didn’t notice any obvious signs of bent connecting rods or loose connecting rod caps so the cause isn’t readily apparent. Next step will be to yank the heads off and see if there is any obvious damage which might indicate which cylinder is causing the problem. The title to this post may be a bit premature, but I don’t suspect I’m going to find anything minor. Stay tuned as I continue to tear it down to find the problem!

Having discovered that both of the motor mount nuts were missing the Cadillac had earned a stay of execution. Early last week I purchased a new set of fasteners for only a dollar! After installing them I had expected to just start the car up and see if the “clunk” sound had gone away. Imagine my surprise when it cranked over and over and over, and over again without starting up!

I’ll spare you all of the details of troubleshooting the no start issue, but suffice to say I replaced my ignition coil, and second guessed myself countless times on the proper firing order and timing for this engine. At the end of the day, (I think) the timing was retarded by nearly a whole cylinder and one of the terminals of the coil wire was smashed.

My victory over the timing, and getting the car running was short lived though. It ran for only a few seconds before I heard the “clunk” noise I had been diagnosing, and it occurred a couple more times before I shut it down.

A new mystery has surfaced as well. I may not have already mentioned that my oil dipstick seems to be a replacement from some other vehicle, and that it seems like it was actually broken off near the end, so it doesn’t reach the oil in the crankcase. Well, in addition to that mismatch I discovered something else quite interesting while troubleshooting my timing issue. I had the motor near TDC for cylinder 1, but had gotten a bit past it, so I started to turn the engine “backward” to get it back to TDC. As I did so, I noticed that the oil dipstick seemed to be moving! Curious, I continued to turn the motor backward, and the dipstick continued to be forced out of the dipstick tube!

I’ve put off removing the motor long enough, it’s going to come out, and I’m going to do a very thorough tear down and inspection of motor. Hopefully, I’ll find the answers to all of these mysteries, and hopefully I’ll find that the motor is in good enough condition to use for a while.

With things starting to slow down with my work schedule, I was actually able to take this weekend off! I got to relax quite a lot, spend some time with the family, and spend a little time in the garage with the Caddy.

You may remember from my last last update about the Cadillac, that I had a few outstanding mysteries to try to resolve.

First, let’s talk about the “easy” one, the Harmonic Balancer/Dampener. You see, it seemed have been bent or damaged at some point, since one side of it was closer to the engine than the other. This created a situation where it would “wobble” on the crank as the engine was running not cool! As was preparing to remove it, I pulled some of the bolts which hold the crank pulley onto the dampener. What I noticed is that when I removed the first bolt, which happened to be in the spot on the dampener where it was “pushed out”, that the dampener seemed to start returning to it’s original shape. After completely removing the bolts, and using a pry bar the dampener was back to it’s original shape! Turns out that someone before me replaced one of the pulley bolts with a bolt that was nearly twice as long, and it was pushing on the dampener causing the problem I observed!

Now, for the more onerous “clunking” noise. When I first heard it, I thought for sure that it was an issue with the valvetrain, so sure was I in fact that I pulled the passenger side valve cover off expecting to see a bent push-rod, or a broken rocker arm, or some other catastrophic failure. Imagine my surprise when I looked under the valvecover and found no problem what-so-ever! I even pulled the drivers side, thinking I’d misjudged the origin of the noise, no luck there either. At that point I had pretty much decided that the engine was going to come out, and I needed to do a complete inspection to find the source of the issue. I put my tools away and put the project on hold for awhile.

Now, as it just so happens in the meantime I read this little gem, which described another symptom which I’d just sorta ignored. I read down to the 6th post in that thread, and I had a light bulb moment. If my valves were sticking open, it’s possible that the “clunk” I heard was the rocker arm smacking the stem of a still open valve. This would explain why it wasn’t a consistent sound which increased with RPM, since the valve(s) may not stick on ever revolution and increasing RPM probably got the valves moving enough that they did not stick. So, the valve covers came off again, and all the spark plugs came out, and I began turning the engine over by hand, fully anticipating that I’d see one or more valves on the passenger side staying open. Sadly, I was disappointed once again as everything worked exactly as it ought to.

At this point, I was again convinced that the only solution was to yank the engine entirely and do a thorough teardown and inspection. I did a quick compression test which I’d been intending to do for some time. All of the cylinders were within a few PSI of 150, except for the # 5 & 6 cylinders, which were both just north of 170PSI. That’s a fairly good sign that the shortblock is probably in decent shape, and I’ll probably be able to run this thing once I solve the mystery of the “clunk”. So I proceeded to yank the wiring, and everything else I needed to on the top of the motor, then jacked the car up and headed underneath to disconnect everything down there. Once down there, I took a quick peek to see how hard it was going to be to access the engine mount fasteners. Imagine my surprise when I realized that BOTH of the engine mount nuts were missing!

It occurred to me pretty quickly that this could just as easily be the source of my “clunk” sound, the engine slapping against the crossmember when it skips a beat. And even makes more sense that it would be the passenger side since the engine rotates in the opposite direction! At that point I put the car back on the ground, put my tools away, and called a day. Today I am going to go buy some replacement nuts for the motor mounts, and hopefully install them soon to see if that solves the “clunk” mystery. If it doesn’t this time (for sure) I’ll be pulling the motor out to tear it down and inspect it.

The next mystery for me to solve is that the spark plug in the #8 cylinder had absolutely 0 gap! I’m hoping that it was just a mistake while installing it, and not a piston which reached up and slapped it silly (that could cause a clunking noise too), we’ll see soon enough!

So when I bought the Caddy, I knew it had a cooling system issue. The previous owner had diagnosed it as a leaking water pump, so that’s where I started. Little did I know what lay in store for me!

First, the 429 Cadillac motor which is in the 67′ Deville was only made for about two years, and in very low volume. As such, there is hardly any aftermarket parts available for it. I spent about two weeks trying to track down a water pump before finally finding one on eBay. One of the biggest issues was that I could not tell if the pump was a one, or two inlet pump. None of the illustrations showed any difference between the two. I finally was able to track down a Cardone part number, and find actual photographs of the parts. Turns out I had a one inlet pump.

So secure in knowing that I’d ordered the right water pump, and a number of other supporting parts (thermostat, hoses, belts, gaskets, etc), I started tearing things down. The first thing I noticed is that the apparent leak in the cooling system probably wasn’t originating from the water pump, but looked like it was likely coming from the lower radiator hose which was bulged and clearly distressed. This is interesting, since the pump that was installed was aluminum just like the original, and could possibly be the stock water pump!

I also took this opportunity to remove some other ancillary bits which weren’t needed or functional. Someone before me had already disabled the “smog pump” system by removing the hoses from the air pump to the inlets on the exhaust manifold, but they had left the smog pump and brackets in place, so I finished the job of removing those. I also removed the A/C compressor since that system had long since lost pressure and was not operational. Interestingly, the compressor was only held on by a single bolt!!

I noticed also that the mechanical fan attached to the water pump did not have a clutch, which is normally installed on the A/C equipped cars. I decided that rather than trying to reuse that fan, I’d go ahead and install an electric fan, we’ll elaborate more on that in a later post though. The radiator also seemed fairly new. Nicely painted, no bent fins and no obvious rust inside like there obviously was in the block.

One other thing I noted was that the harmonic balancer on the crank appears damaged. It kinda looks like someone took a big hammer and hit it, causing it to bend into a sort of taco shape. Going to need to probably pull that off and see what’s what.

So, having completed the water pump R&R and getting it all back together, I started the car up to pull it into the driveway and let it warm up before topping off the cooling system. I cleaned up a bit as it idled in the driveway, then went to “tap” the throttle to bring it off of high idle. Of course, the throttle stuck! After getting the pedal to come back up, the engine was still running, and all seemed well aside from a little smoke. Then, I started to notice a “clunking” sound that was coming from the passenger side of the engine compartment. Not really consistent, and didn’t increase or decrease with engine speed. Not knowing what it was, I quickly pulled the car back into the garage, and called it quits.

And that is how it has sat for several days since then. I haven’t had a chance to look into the mystery clunking noise, and the balancer is still misshapen. I had hoped to get some miles out of the stock 429 before doing an engine swap (which was always my plan), but it’s starting to look less promising that I’ll be able to do that. A shame too since I wanted to try to get a chassis dyno run or two in order to see the “actual” stock horsepower/torque numbers of the 429.

I’ll do a bit more diagnosis of the “clunking” noise, and see if I can repair the balancer without too much cost. Stay tuned here for more!

Okay I know what you’re thinking, and no I didn’t figure out how to turn a basic reciever into a studio receiver, but sadly, I’m simply not that cool. What I did do however was open the boxes for my two new RadioPopper JrX Studio receivers, put batteries in them, test them (oohh pretty), then instantly void their warranties. Why you ask? Because I can. Also because there were just a couple design choices which weren’t convenient for me so I wanted to tweak them to fit my workflow and needs a little better.

So, as part of my aforementioned shopping spree I decided it was time to upgrade my wireless triggering system. I was previously using the “Cactus v2s” triggers, which worked reasonably well but had limited range and reliability in spite of the fact that I performed hacks on those as well. My choice for a replacement is the JrX system from RadioPopper. In my case, one transmitter, and two Studio receivers. The studio receiver allows you to control the output of up to three groups of the White Lightning or AlienBees studio strobes and/or TTL Nikon or Canon speedlights (with yet to be released RPCubes). This works well for me because I have some old and new Nikon flashes with TTL, and when I step up to studio strobes, I’ll likely choose White Lightning and/or AlienBees.

So now to the nitty gritty stuff. Just like on my old Cactus triggers, I really wanted a nice way to mount or hang these triggers on a light stand. When I modded my Cactus triggers, I went a little crazy and bought 100 lanyards so I had plenty to spare. Sadly the receiver didn’t have any built in place to mount one, so I went searching for an appropriate place. I finally decided on putting it just below the data port which (if you’re looking at it from the front) is on the left side of the trigger. There is space there to drill two small 3/32 holes pretty close together to thread the lanyard through.

The other thing which bothered me about the receivers was the special battery that was required. Now, to the credit of RadioPopper, they chose a battery which is common enough that there is a market of rechargeable versions (the CR123A). And, even better David over at Strobist has done the hard work of finding a good package and strategy for keeping charged batteries in your gear. There’s a hitch though. The rechargeables will slowly discharge on the shelf or in my camera bag. I’m an amateur/hobbiest, and as such I only break out strobes and wireless triggers maybe once or twice a week. Chances are I’d have to replace the batteries just about every time I pulled my triggers out for use! Okay, so that’s an exaggeration, but stick with me for the punchline there are other reasons the battery RadioPopper chose doesn’t quite work for me.

Enter my second mod. Just like the one on the Cactus triggers, I replaced the proprietary 3v battery with a pair of good old fashioned AA cells so I can use some of my standard NiMH rechargeable batteries. Now, I know what you’re thinking, that I complained about the self discharge of the LiFeP04 battery and here I am replacing it with an even faster self discharging NiMH rechargeable? Well, yes, and for a few good reasons. First, I have a pretty good stock of rechargeable AA’s and chargers, and I have enough devices that run on them that I can be pretty confident I’ll have a charged up set ready for me when I’m shooting. There is also the excellent Eneloop NiMH battery which has a self discharge rate so low that you can consider it non existent for all practical uses. And lastly, in a pinch, I can find a crappy set of AA’s just about anywhere, and their superior mAh (usually 2000 or greater for an average rechargable AA, vs 750 mAh for the CR123A rechargeable) means they’ll last longer during use, and have more capacity to self discharge giving me a bigger time buffer for storage. In the end, it’s compelling enough for me to make the switch.

So there you have it, my two simple mods which make these great triggers just that much more user friendly for me. You can see a few more pictures of the mods in my Flickr photostream. All of those photos were taken with a Nikon SB24 which was triggered by a Radiopopper JrX receiver which was already modded, in case you were wondering if it worked. Now to wait impatiently for the RPCubes so I can control all my Nikon strobes!

Well, it’s finally done. Today I hauled the last bit of the Explorer to the junk yard. By this point, all that was left was really the front suspension, the frame, and the shell of the body. It was not a straight forward experience though, lemme tell you the story.

As you can likely tell from the picture the vehicle was pretty much completely stripped. The rear axle was also removed, since I have a couple potential buyers for that. So, I have only the front wheels to roll it on. Fortunately, a member of the Explorer Forum came out last weekend and grabbed a few items I had left which were going to be difficult to ship, and brought me a second spare tire, so the front end is rolling on two spares rather than my nice Cobra Replica wheels, which I also have a couple buyers lined up for.

So the question is, how do you move a vehicle that only has wheels on one end? The easiest answer was to get a two wheel car dolly to stand-in as the rear axle. Easy, right? Well it would have been, if there had been any for rent in town! I started the search yesterday, and called every rental place in town. None of them had the tow dolly I need. So, after hours of searching and coping with my own disappointment that I wasn’t going to be able to finish this project on schedule, I sucked it up and made an online reservation with U-Haul. Now, the fine print says that they’ll make good on the online reservation no matter what. So I figured they’d haul one in from nearby or perhaps magically produce one from their bat-cave warehouse. But, it was not to be only moments later I received a call from the reservation office. They informed me the equipment I needed was in Santa Maria, some 70ish miles away. I hymned and hawed for a while, but finally agreed to go pick it up from Santa Maria, and drop it off here.

So today it began, I headed out at 11:30AM since my reservation was at 1PM to pick up the tow dolly. It was my day to watch Quincy, so of course he came with me. The drive out was uneventful, made it in just under an hour, and didn’t even get stopped for speeding! Things went smoothly picking up the tow dolly, and I was off in only a few minutes.

So, first things first. It’s time for Quincy and I to eat, or it ain’t gonna be a pretty drive home. We don’t have Del Taco at home, so whenever I can I seek them out and patronize them. Quincy was absolutely STOKED to sit in a booster seat, and he ate like a champ (sweet!). After a quick lunch, we were on out way home.

The drive home was equally uneventful, but much slower. I just set the cruise at 60MPH and pointed us south. The drive home took more like 1.5 hours, but I didn’t want to find out what happened when/if I exceeded the comfortable speed of the empty trailer.

Got home about 3:40PM and the fun was not yet over. I had to get the trailer under the X, and get it all strapped down. That was a bit of an adventure. Quincy was done with his car seat, so I had to manage him while I jacked up the X and worked to get the trailer under it. Kinda wished I had another arm right about then. After some struggling, I got the trailer under the X, and strapped it down with a couple chains, and a pair of nylon straps.

Off to the junkyard at last! I pulled into Steel-Head at about a quarter to five. Cutting it close! I’d called them yesterday to warn them that this thing is really stripped, and they assured me they’d be happy to take it. After they saw it though, they were more than a little surprised at just how stripped the vehicle was! The guy helping me said “Seriously, you did better than my guys do”. This makes me happy. I love hearing that a project I’ve taken on has been accomplished at least as well as “the pros”.

The downside of course, is that they realized there wasn’t anything they could sell, which they assumed there would be. As such, I had to pay them to take it which I fortunately anticipated.

After agreeing on the price, the forklift came out, and I started unstrapping the truck. It had shifted slightly in transit, and one of the chains, which I’d looped over a crossmember and hooked to itself, was completely bound up. I tried tugging, pushing the truck, everything I could think of. I was probably at this for about five minutes, battling in vain while the forklift driver waited. Then it struck me, I’ll have the forklift driver push down on the truck, compressing the suspension, and giving me the slack I needed! I emerged from under the vehicle and took two steps toward the forklift driver when he said “You want me to push it down?”. It’s like he read my mind! In reality, he was probably watching me, laughing, knowing what needed to happen and just waiting for me to realize it. Whatever the case, our scheme worked, and the X was free moments later! The picture to the left is the last one of the X. I learned later, as I was leaving, that the forklift driver was sitting there waiting for me to pull out of the driveway, I was in his way! You can almost sense the X’s despair, as though it’s standing before the executioner hoping for a last minute phonecall of repreive. No such luck this time!

I have to say, there are some mixed emotions. This is the first real “nice” vehicle I ever owned. The first vehicle I ever financed and paid off. The vehicle that my wife and I brought out first baby home in. The first vehicle I customized to this extent. Lots of firsts. But, it’s time to move on. It’s been almost exactly five months since my wifes accident, and neighbors were starting to ask questions, and I was growing weary of seeing it in the car port. Now that it’s gone, it’s time to move on to bigger and better things. Namely the Caddy. I’ll always have a place in my heart for the X, but I don’t think I’m going to miss it terribly.

Here’s to you X, you’ve given me and my family lots of good times. You’ve treated us well, and in the worst case scenario you kept one of my most precious possesions safe by sacrificing yourself. X, rest in peace.