Mint Condition

Well, what I expected to be a one, maybe two day ordeal turned into four days of frustration, stress, and general greasiness. On Tuesday, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and my spring break to change the oil pan on my car. The reason for this was because the drain plug was already an oversize bolt, it wouldn’t tighten, and I had a slow oil leak. Also, my oil pan had a dent in it, which gave me more of an excuse to buy a new one.

Removing the old oil pan ended up being more involved than I anticipated, and I spent all day Tuesday and part of Wednesday getting it out. I had to remove the crossmember, the starter, and drop the steering linkage center link in order to get enough clearance to drop the pan.

Getting the steering linkage out of the way caused a particular problem. To get enough room, I had to remove the idler arm from the frame, and remove the idler arm and both tie rods from the center link. The passenger side tie rod was very stubborn, and I could not for the life of me get it free. I ended up having to purchase a pickle fork in order to separate the tie rod from the center link.

On Wednesday, I finally got everything out of the way and was able to drop the pan.

Using some gasket sealer, I put on the new gasket, fit the new pan in place, and threading the bolts back in. Now wait, didn’t I say this took four days? Yes. Things got kind of bad.

Thanks to my stupid torque wrench, which decided not to click, I overtightened one of the bolts and snapped the head off. Okay, not a huge set back. I drilled into the broken stud and used an easy out to extract it. But at this point, it was too late to buy a new bolt, so I had to wait until the next day. That’s not all, though: I also managed to put in one of the bolts ever so slightly crooked, and now it wouldn’t tighten down. Well, there was nothing I could do at that point. The weather was supposed to turn that night, so I put a tarp over my car and turned in.

Thursday, I picked up a new bolt to replace the broken one and got that put in easily enough. As for the crooked bolt, I bought a helicoil kit. I’d never tapped a hole before, so I was really hoping this would be successful, since I was dealing with the engine block and did not want to ruin it! Well, the kit called for a 17/64″ bit to drill out the hole as the first step, and then things got frustrating.

Because I didn’t want to undo everything and drop the pan all over again (what a pain that was), I needed one of the following:

1. a long drill bit to reach past the oil pan
2. a regular drill bit with an extension
3. a hex drill bit with an extension

My first try was the local True Value hardware store in town. They had the right size bit, but not as a long bit, and they didn’t have an extension for me. Darn.

Next, I drove up to Lowe’s. Being a bigger store, I figured they’d have it. But they didn’t have anything that would work. No extensions, no long bits in that size, and no hex bits bigger than 1/4″.

So I drove over to Home Depot. They had an extension! I showed the guy at Home Depot the bit I wanted to use and he said it would work. Well, lo and behold, I got home and found out the bit didn’t fit in the extension. Great! Well, it was late, so I had to wait another day to sort this out.

Friday, I returned the extension to Home Depot and made sure they didn’t have anything that would work for me, then I went to the nearby McLendon’s in a desperate last attempt to find a solution. Well, McLendon’s had it! They had a very, very similar extension, but this one actually worked. The employee was kind of enough to try it out for me on the spot, and unfortunately the bit I had already bought was a bit loose actually, so I bought a new drill bit that fit the extension much better, along with the extension itself.

Finally, I had what I needed to tap the hole and fix my mistake! Well, after a quick prayer, I drilled out the hole successfully. Next, to tap it. I thought my neighbor had the right socket adapter that I needed for that, but it turns out he didn’t, so I drove downtown to True Value to buy the adapter and return the first drill bit I had bought. With the socket adapter, I tapped the hole, also successfully. Phew!

Last step was to insert the helicoil and then thread the bolt back in, which was pretty straightforward. I put the bolt in and tightened it down, paying very close attention to my torque wrench and stopping when it “clicked”—it’s more like a subtle bump that you have to feel for carefully at low torque settings.

Look at that beautiful Ford Blue!

So this project took much more time and bit more money than I intended to spend, but in the end, it all worked out. I filled up the car with oil, ran it for a while and checked for leaks, and praise God, none were found!

Last Wednesday, being the last day of school, I took the opportunity to go by our old landlord’s place. He sold me the Mustang originally several years ago, and he has an old decrepit Mustang of the same year sitting in his yard that he had used for parts. He’s getting ready to scrap it, so I stopped by to see if there was anything I could salvage from it. Here are some pictures of the poor car.

I took the shoulder belts, the turn signal knob, the radio, and the instrument panel. The radio probably won’t be of much use, and it appears to be aftermarket anyway, but I was able to take the bezel off the radio and put it in my car to temporarily spruce up the look a little bit. The turn signal knob is just as a backup.

Also, my landlord said he’d save for me the brake and reverse lights when he chops it up. Other than that, there’s not much left on the old car, and not much of that is worth taking. But it was fun to poke around it.

Giving the Half Tank Rule a shot, I filled up last night when I was just under half a talk, sticking with Shell regular. By the way, what’s the deal with gas prices? They’re going up again! I just paid $2.93 per gallon, where a month ago I was paying $2.59! Anyway I did the math, and I’ve got my mileage up to nearly 13.3mpg now. Great news! I shall keep employing my tactics and continue to add new ones.

On a related note, I’m going to look into getting an electric choke for my carburetor to replace the heat choke that is not operating as it should. I did a little bit of research, and it looks like that will probably cost me about $50 to do. In the long run, I’m still looking to upgrade to a 4bbl carb, probably an Edelbrock, with a new intake manifold.