Fun With Old, Rusty Things

Had a pretty productive day. Spent it with my friend Boog working on my car. It's a 1968 Ford Torino GT fastback. Brenda says that I'm getting a new car one piece at a time. Had to change the timing gear a while back. Ford decided to coat the gear in plastic to make it quieter, but after forty years the plastic went went to pieces.

But this created a secondary problem. Where did the plastic from the timing gear go? Well it turns out it ends up in the oil pan where it can block the filter for the oil pump. So we had to remove the oil pan and clean it out. First of all, YUCK!! Forty years worth of oil, rust and gunk in my hair. Second, a big fuck you to the engineers at the Ford Motor Company. I've become convinced that they use some form of magick during the assembly process. They cast a spell on the parts that causes all tapped holes to move 2 mm off center in any direction if they are ever disassembled to ensure that they will not line up when you go to put them back together.

We put the front end up on ramps and put chocks behind the back wheels. Safety first. Then we took out the bolts from the oil pan. Naturally it wouldn't just drop out from under the engine. So we unbolted the motor mounts and jacked up the engine off of the oil pan. That allowed the pan to clear the oil pump. And bump right into the sway bar. So we had to unbolt the sway bar and move it out of the way. With almost unheard of good fortune, it came loose without any real trauma. Generally, when removing parts from an old car you can expect every fourth bolt to snap off.

So we got the oil pan off and began to clean it. This may have been the nastiest thing that I have ever done in all of my years of working on cars. It was even worse than brake work which leaves you covered in soot and always draws blood. There was gunk layered on top of crud on top of ick on top of grime coated with old motor oil. First we tried degreaser with scraping implements. Degreaser my ass. We finally switched to gasoline with green scrubby pads. That did the trick. Oil pan so clean you could eat Coco Puffs out of it. Then a quick shot of Ford blue. I figured that I may as well paint it while it was out cause I'm never taking it out again.

We reversed the process to get it back in. The air turned cold, the wind howled ominously carrying the distant chants of a coven of witches employed by Ford. Every bolt hole shifted 2 mm off center. My big assed screwdriver of doom helped to get the motor mounts sort of lined back up. When working on my Ford, I always keep my big assed screw driver and a hammer near by. The hammer is just for anger management. Shear force of will got the pan bolts to thread. Bolted the sway bar back in place and the horror was over.

Changed the oil filter, added six quarts of Quaker State 10-40 and started her up. Nothing gushing out of the bottom. Yet.

Maybe tomorrow I'll fix the power steering. Or sit around in my underwear and watch T.V. I don't know.


Done for now.
rob