Even More X-11 Progress!

This is getting to be a habit. It's been about 8 weeks since the last update, 12 weeks since I dropped a different distributor in.

The difference has been amazing. For much of the last two months, I've been making adjustments to the ignition timing and carb settings. Since I'm running the car with a non-computer-controlled carb and distributor, I don't have a manual or sticker for where the base timing should be set. I went with 10 degrees BTDC, plugged the vacuum advance in, then set the carb mixture and idle speed.

Much better. I've had none of the hard-start issues that plagued the car over the last couple of summers. I did have a bad afternoon the day I drove across town to get the X's tag renewed, though. I didn't have any tools. The car stalled as soon as the front tires touched the tag office parking lot and several more times on the way home. I never figured it out, other than the car was running hot. After it cooled down for a few hours, it started right up with no trouble. I got out the timing light a few days later and put things like they should have been weeks before. Fixed.

The next Friday, I went back to the tag office to get the Tracker's renewal. No troubles, no overheating. While I was sitting in line, I thought about the tachometer I'd repaired several months before. It was in a box behind my seat. The dash was only partly put back together from last year's electrical project; all I needed to do to be done was...hook up the stupid tachometer, adjust it, and install it properly.

I'll do a writeup on the tach separately; there's a common problem with GM tachs from the '70s through the '90s where a resistor goes bad and makes the thing read too high, too low, or not at all. I found a website with some decent step-by-step directions. The repair is dead simple if you're even okay with a soldering iron.

The tach worked, needing only some adjustment to read correctly. Once I got that done, I kept going, putting the instrument panel back together (so now I have fully-functional gauges AND dash lights), putting the heater/air conditioner controls back in (so now I have a working heater and defroster for the first time in 18 months), reinstalling and wiring the front stereo speakers, and bolting the steering column into place for the last time.

There's still the glove box to reinstall, but man, does the dash look good. The engine's running better than ever before...though there's still the small matter of getting that freaking dead muffler from last year swapped out.


On an X-11 related note, I recently found a program that let me grab almost all of the Chevy Citations Forever Yahoo Group, which I've been trying to archive for at least 6 years. It's called PG Offline and should work for most Yahoo Groups, as long as you're subscribed. I nabbed everything back to March of 2002. Everything for the 3-4 years prior to that is corrupted and useless. THANKS, Yahoo. Still, the yield was more than 31,000 posts spanning 12 years. That's not bad.

PGO is primarily an offline reader; you can grab a range of posts or the entire archive and look them over without needing to be inline. It also lets you export an archive to an SQLite database for further hacking. I found an SQLite browser which further let me save the post archive as a Comma-Separated Values file.

From here, I'm going to write a little Python code to go through the CSV and save all the posts as conversation threads to make stuff easier to find. There's a ton of technical stuff formerly locked up on Yahoo's servers that I can set free and make available to group members--engine swaps, parts sources and numbers, and like that. We're always getting new members who can't find info about parts.

Next grabbing project will be the group's photo archive. muahahahaha!

X-11 Progress!

It's been about 4 weeks since I dropped a different distributor into the X.

Holy crap, what an improvement.

It could just be a matter of ignition timing. I was never able to turn the other distributor far enough either way to get better timing. It turns out there was a metal vacuum line in the way in one direction, but I couldn't find an obstruction that would keep it from turning the other way.

Could have just pulled that distributor out, turned the case 60 degrees, adjusted the rotor back the other way--all to make what was the #6 spark tower #1. Just swap the plug wires accordingly.

But then, I wouldn't have been able to use this other one I had, would I? =)

The replacement item came with a box of goodies shipped from a guy down near Orlando, Florida. He had a little Holley 4160 4-barrel carb, an Edelbrock intake manifold to fit the X-11's 2.8L V-6, and some miscellaneous bits to make it almost a drop-in weekend project. I paid him $300 and waited. He had the parts in his barn and needed some time to get them together, box them up, etc.

I didn't sweat it. But it did take nearly 2 years.

I could have gassed up the Tracker and taken another road trip...

Nah. No way. According to the Google, the drive down and back would have been even longer than 10 hours there/ten hours back.

No. Way. I don't think the Tracker could make the run, with its engine so close to overhaul time. The little guy deserves a rest.

Fed-Ex did the work instead. The carb turned out to be from a 1972 or so Ford 302 marine engine. It's a little larger than I'd like; the 2.8L V-6 calls for about 350 cfm of air flow. The smallest Holley 4-barrel flows 390 cfm, which is fine. My Holley pulls 450 cfm. That shouldn't be an issue, really.

The intake is Edelbrock's aluminum 2-piece--the manifold itself plus an adapter casting to match a 4-barrel carb. There's also a 2-barrel adapter which would let me either go back to the existing Rochester 2SE carb I'm running or to a Holley alternative. For that matter, with the 4-barrel adapter in place, I could even install one of the all-in-one fuel injection systems from Holley or elsewhere. All it takes is a thousand bucks or so. (heh)

Both the carb and the intake are just going to stay in the box for the time being. To swap it all in will take some planning and some parts I don't have yet. Because the intake was intended for rear-wheel-drive vehicles like the Camaro and S-10/Blazer, the coolant outlet will end up on the passenger-side end of my front-wheel-drive car, so I'll have to work up a long, long, long top radiator hose. I'll also have to design a different air intake. The Holley is huge compared to the little Rochester 2-barrel. There's not a lot of room between the top of the engine and the underside of the hood, so the existing air cleaner would have to go.

The distributor is a mechanical and vacuum advance version of the 2.8's all-electronic item. The car's existing power and tach connectors plug right in, so I went from this:

...with the coil mounted on an ugly homemade bracket and the wiring spliced to plug into the X-11's factory wiring...to this:

...a factory installation that looks like what the car came with. Except for the computer-controlled stuff.

The past 4 weeks have been amazing. I've gone from a struggling starter to an enthusiastic one for the first time since I got the car in 2009. I'm still getting a little hard-starting trouble when the engine's hot, but I haven't been stranded so far.

Next project is to dial it all in: get the timing set, get the carb adjusted, and hopefully get a little more power out of the thing.

X-11: Progress?

Tentatively optimistic in the wake of Tuesday's distributor swap. I've made one adjustment so far, turning the distributor a bit clockwise after the starter struggled to spin the engine over.

This has been a consistent issue for most of the last five years and I'd always it was a starter issue. Especially when the engine was warmed up, the starter was working as hard as it could. I'm not a great mechanic, and I never thought that maybe the distributor was a bit too advanced or retarded, perhaps causing a buildup of cylinder pressure keeping the engine from spinning easily. Certainly sounded like it, especially Wednesday morning when I tried to fire it up. This time, the starter was dragged to a standstill, pushing hard against the crank--even worse than ever before.

After that little adjustment, though, the engine spins over at least twice as fast as before--strongly, no hesitations. Unheard-of in 5 years of tinkering!

This is all the same issue I've been trying to work out for a while, especially after getting stranded a few times in the last year. It seemed for a month or so that I made things better with the exhaust work I did in November, but that's also when the weather started getting cold.

As soon as things warmed up again, the drivability troubles started again--starter having trouble turning the engine, getting worse as the engine warmed up, dragging the battery charge down (and looking for all the world like a bad starter). Once the engine started (IF it started), it ran fine. Idle was a little ragged. Hard to judge gas mileage, since I hardly go anywhere lately. Haven't been to Fort Pickens since my back-to-back day trips in February of 2011 (here and here). Haven't been back to Fort Pike since my time and gas-wasting road trip out there in 2011. Power? Hard to tell there, yet, but if the starting issue is solved now, I'm up for a Pickens trip.

X-11: Smoke Test!

Dropping the replacement distributor into the car took less time than finding the cap and rotor I needed from storage.

It only took a few bumps of the case counterclockwise and clockwise to get the engine started, then a smaller bit of turning it to find the sweet spot--well, the temporary sweet spot. As soon as I got the thing locked down for a test drive, it started raining. Drove it anyway. Seems smoother, can't smell it dumping raw fuel into the exhaust.

Next up is another round of tuning and tweaking that should take care of all the drivability issues I've been having for a few years--hard starting when it's hot, which gets me stranded and makes a-holes unhappy; rough idle, dumping fuel, impressive clouds of gray smoke that fumigate the area if I coast in third at highway speeds...poor car.

Assuming that's taken care of, all that's left is the leaking sunroof, rusted-out rear hatch, clutch, power steering, rear tires...radiator...air conditioning...stereo (still uninstalled more than a year later)...getting the dash back together...bodywork...muffler...

X-11: Spark Test

The X-11's been running poorly lately, especially since the beginning of summer. I'm currently running a distributor and coil from an '85 S-10 Blazer. It works well enough, making a really nice, fat white spark, but I've never been happy with the installation. I had to make a bracket to mount the coil and wire up connectors for power and tachometer feed. None of it looks good. It seems to have a block of some sort on the casting restricting how far it can be turned (probably for emissions purposes), but all I'd need to do is loosen the hold-down, pull the distributor, turn the shaft just a little, and put it back. It's been a guessing game trying to get the engine timing dialed in ever since I put this distributor into it. It's really happy in winter, but I start having drivability issues once the weather warms up.

The distributor I'm testing in this video is identical to the X-11's original item, aside from being non-computer controlled. It's an all-in-one style with the coil built into the cap. Very clean installation, no external coil and wire, and the car's original wiring just plugs right in. There's nothing to keep it from being turned for more advance, either, so maybe the engine will have better hot-weather manners.

My test rig was powered by an old PC supply. I originally intended to run jumper wires to each of the distributor cap "towers" (where the plug wires connect) and even started making up some jumpers for the second half of the video, but at this point I was satisfied that it'll work, since I could hear a "chirp" from internal sparking where there wasn't a jumper and could see a good spark in the tester for those that were jumped.

I could have used a lab assistant, though, to see just how good that spark was. The last time I rigged up a test like this was for the distributor that I'm about to swap out of the car. My lab rat then was a co-worker who just couldn't resist the urge to touch the pretty white fire--and BAP!!. He jumped a couple of feet in the air. He didn't think the thing was going to work. Heheheh.

I still need to check out the vacuum advance and replace the cap and rotor, but now it's ready to drop in.

Pic of the Day: Chevy V6 Power Wheel

Taking a break from the Lincoln/"The Car" project. But I had this idea for what was going to be a table showing how the four engine cycles (Intake / Compression / Combustion / Exhaust) overlap in the GM 2.8 Liter V6.

Exciting, huh? Gearhead stuff ahead!

In one of my old auto mechanic books, there's a simple illustration of the overlap in a V8. I'd been meaning to do something similar to that for years just out of curiosity. I did scribble a table in my notebook last night, but when it came to copying that to a CAD drawing, I decided on a diagram instead. Think of it as a map of how the engine runs.

For the car-guys-in-training:
Each ring is a cylinder, #1 on the outside, #6 on the inside. This follows this engine's 1-2-3-4-5-6 firing order.

Red represents the combustion cycle (or "stroke"), where power is generated.
Gray is exhaust.
Blue is intake.
Orange is compression.

Each cylinder follows these four cycles (hence "four-cycle" or "four-stroke" engine). Technically, the intake cycle should be first, since everything else depends on that: air and fuel are drawn into a cylinder, the mixture is compressed, then it's ignited, and finally the burnt gases are pushed out of the cylinder.

I put the combustion cycle first on cylinder #1 (closest to 0 degrees) because getting all those things to happen properly depends on getting that cylinder set up properly (Top Dead Center) while the engine is being put together.

The wheel represents two full turns of the crankshaft, since it takes that long for a single cylinder to go through all four cycles--intake and compression in one, combustion and exhaust in the next.

Looking at how the circular markers line up, you can see which pairs of cylinders are moving together: 1 and 4, 2 and 5, and 3 and 6.
While Cylinder 1 is burning fuel, #4 is breathing in--and both pistons are moving downward.
As #1 breathes out, #4 is compressing its air-fuel charge--both pistons moving upward.
As #1 breathes in, #4 burns its fuel--both pistons moving down.
As #1 compresses, #4 blows its exhaust--both pistons moving up.

The other pairs perform the same way, but overlap the rest in such a way that there's always one cylinder firing for every third of a rotation, or 120 degrees.

Project: "The Car" plans in CAD (pt. 5)

This thing's looking more like a car now. I got the peak lines for the rear fenders, part of the rear roof, and what looks like a vent panel just in front of the trunk lid.

Just think...it's taken me something like 20 hours to get this far. And I only have the side, bottom, front and rear views to go!

Then..."The Car."

Close your blinds--it might be out there watching.

Project: "The Car" plans in CAD (pt. 4)

Took about 3 hours from my busy napping schedule to get back on the Lincoln. I made a slight adjustment to the front fender line and placed the rear window opening and a rectangular panel that sits just ahead of the rear trunk lid.

It took several hours' worth of studying all the source pics I grabbed last week to work out just what the Mark III's real shape is. On first glance, it's just a slab-sided brick with a knife-edge fender peak that runs the length of the car. It's not obvious just yet in the drawing, but there's a very subtle "Coke bottle" effect. The front-most point on the front fenders is the widest. The body narrows very slightly just at the rear edge of the doors, then swells just wide enough for the rear wheels before narrowing again at the rear bumper.

So it's a subtle slab-sided brick.

Good thing about CAD is that I can erase lines without messing up the screen.

Project: "The Car" plans in CAD (pt. 3)

Struggling.

Johnny Lightning's Lincoln is reasonably close--well, it's in a ballpark near mine.

Still working on the front end of the Mark III, trying to hash out the shape of the fenders. Had to go looking for more source photos of Lincolns. Ended up at a page comparing the Mark III and its Cadillac competition with lots of usable pics and one hell of a long loading time.

Good thing I'm not on dial-up anymore. That site would have taken days to deal with. Just grabbing the link to paste it here made my computer choke for almost 2 minutes.

So anyway, the Lightning car is somewhere near right for suitably vague definitions of right. Still cheaper than finding a full-scale Mark III to measure.

About the only line I've locked in since the last post is the base of the windshield.

Need more caffeine.

Project: "The Car" plans in CAD (pt. 2)

Moving a little faster today. Ordered a scale modeling ruler from Excel (1/24, 1/25, 1/35, 1/48, 1/72).

Still working on the top-view, going front to back. At the current stopping point, I've gotten the front bumper, grille, and hood roughed-in.

Starting to look like a car.

Project: "The Car" plans in CAD (pt. 1)

1977's "The Car" was a low-budget lift of "Jaws" (interesting discussion of that at the link). The acting and dialogue are laughable in places--hammy, campy and over-the-top.



It's one of those so-bad-it's-good flicks that's worth watching with friends, but not so bad that you'll need extensive alcohol support. Bring your sarcasm along.

(article at Wikipedia)

(The Drew Review: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)

The IMDB page.

A little town in the American Southwest finds itself stalked by a mysterious black car.

First, a pair of teens are run down as they ride their bicycles on a mountain highway.

Then, it's a French horn-playing wiseass who, frankly, had it coming. The Car backs over him, then hits him a few more times for good...measure (heeheehee).

As the bodies rack up, the cops try to confront the bad guy only to get wasted themselves. It's up to newly-minted Sheriff Wade and his remaining men--and the county's wife-beating dynamite expert--to try to trap The Car under tons of rock.

The real star of the movie is The Car itself. It started out as a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III. George "Batmobile" Barris and his guys modified three of them, mostly by adding sheetmetal bodywork over the existing Lincoln panels.

One of them is the "hero car," the main actor if you will, used for the bulk of filming. The other two were stunt cars. There's some disagreement in the various writeups I've seen online, though. Barris' own website says there were four--one hero and three stunt cars. Another source says three, with a fourth "loosely assembled" on a later-model Thunderbird body for the movie's finale, where The Car is tricked into going over a cliff to its doom.

Either way, only one survived filming. It was parked on the Universal back lot for a few years. Supposedly, it was auctioned off in 1984. The auction picture does look like one of the originals, but there are some differences. The hero/shooting car had chrome trim around the windshield; the two stunt cars had black trim and so does the auction car:

The bumper and grille are wrong, too, but the bodywork does look like one of the real articles.

I've scoured the Internet several times looking for source photos, drawings, trivia, the same sort of thing I was doing a year ago working on my build of Revell's 1/96 Saturn V. With that one, I got close to a gig of photos and videos.

With this one...not so much. a little more than 240 pictures and some videos, a dozen conflicting websites.

Guillermo del Toro got his brother to make him one.

This guy's build is much closer, since he started from a Lincoln Mark III. His Facebook page has a ton of build photos and some behind-the-scenes shots of the Barris build and filming.

Ertl made a 1/18-scale die-cast of The Car about a decade ago. I found one of those on Ebay for close to $200. Way out of my price range. I'm not bringing another car home, either, though there are several up for sale...and even more out of my price range.

Tom Zahorsky at Johnny Lightning built a single 1/64 scale Car in preparation for tooling, but the project got axed. The one in his blog writeup is the only complete one.

From here, it gets even more scarce. A poster named "Tom" scratchbuilt one in 1/87 scale. There's a picture of this tiny wonder at 87thscale.proboards.com about a fourth of the way down. He mentioned making copies available in 2008, but hasn't been back to that site since 2009.

Crap.

I took a lot of screen-captures from my copy of the movie, grabbed pictures of Lincoln Mark III's, and dug around online in search of a cheap Lincoln until I finally found this ugly green creature:

This is a '69 Lincoln Mark III from the Johnny Lightning "demolition derby" line. Here it's clamped to a modeler's miter box to give me a good right-angle reference for accurate measuring. Measure twice, draw once, right?

This is me, so you know there was a snag. Johnny Lightning, Hotwheels, Matchbox and the rest sell their cars as 1/64 scale.

I worked on my first CAD attempt for most of Friday night and well into Saturday morning before I realized that nothing was lining up with the real-world specs for the Mark III. Did a little measuring Saturday night and found that the Lincoln is actually closer to 1/72 scale.

Crap, again, and crap.

Scrapped most of the previous night's work--well, 6 freaking lines and a few guidelines--and started mostly over. Since I started with the real-world specs, I kept my basic guides. About all I had to do once I got restarted yesterday afternoon was to move the wheels back a few scale inches.

Here's where it is now, complete with expanded view guides for front, rear, top and bottom. I decided to work on the top view first this time:

So far, it's just the center section of the hood, the grille, and part of the front bumper, but it's a lot more than I had before. Yeah, this is probably the more complicated way to do it, drawing up the complete Lincoln and then drawing The Car over that, but it seems like the best way to get the right results.

No idea when I'll get done, but for now I'm just enjoying the challenge. CAD fort drawings are much easier--lots of straight lines, simple curves, and repeated details. For all its slab-sided, hard-edged looks, even the Lincoln is more complicated than I'd expected, though Barris' Car is going to be much easier. Lots of those straight lines and simple curves.

Bonus cool: Barris is also responsible for the Beverly Hillbillies' Olds truck.

X-11--Five Years!

I still haven't done any of the body work, but every day the car's running is a damn sight better than sitting unused in someone else's driveway.

Hard to believe it's been five years since the X-11 was delivered.

I'd post a picture, but Blogger won't let me for whatever stupid reason.

Screw them, Here's Rush playing "Red Barchetta" in 2008:



Awwwwww, yeah.

X-11: Only Took Five Years...

When I first got the X-11 in January of 2009, both front brake rotors looked like this.

I completely re-did the rear brakes (new drums, new shoes, everything else cleaned up and lubed). About all I did up front was to drop new brake pads in and clean some of the rust off the calipers. I needed the car moving and new rotors could wait a little longer.

The replacement pads did a good job of scraping the rust off, but the rotors themselves were under spec and had grooves like little metal records. A good panic stop was very entertaining! I'd push on the brake pedal, then a little harder, then harder, watching that other guy's rear bumper getting closer. The X-11's nose would dive, but she'd stop with plenty of room between her nose and the other car's tail. Maybe she was testing my blood pressure for me.

More recently, though, I was hearing some occasional loud, low grinding noises like I was dragging granite blocks across cement.

For the record, no X-11 shipped with granite blocks.

Sounded really bad, and always after some moderate to severe braking. I started imagining the rotors getting worn down until they looked like these:

Yikes.

That is what happens when you don't get your brakes worked on like you're  supposed to. Those shiny "fingers" are the insides of the rotor--and the outer half of it is missing, ground down by metal-on-metal contact with a worn-out brake pad. Inevitably, the joker driving a truck like this will tell you, "It just started making noise this morning." Heh.

I saw one back in my Pep Boys days (1996-98) where the entire rotor had been worn down to the point where it fell off the hub. On both front wheels. "It only started making noise this morning," the woman said. "The brakes were acting funny, so I drove it here."

Then she wanted us to put the tires back on and let her drive it home because she couldn't afford new rotors and pads just then. We offered to call a tow truck, because that was the only way the thing was leaving. All it'd take was her hitting a bus full of kids and nuns and Pep Boys would be signing ownership over to someone new.

She left the truck and got the work done a few days later. This was a big full-size Ford pickup. Plenty of liability damage, there.

I had those images in mind when I ordered new pads and rotors back in August. Took me another 4 months to get myself together health-wise. All the usual stuff: one knee or the other, one foot or the other, or my right elbow would seem to flare up just as I was thinking it'd be a good day to work on the car. Add the trouble I have getting up and down and almost-constant tiredness and it seems to take a confluence of cosmic powers to get my ass out there.

I've still got things that need reinstalling after all the electrical troubleshooting back in May; a dead, rusty muffler to replace; a blower motor with a bad wire; an oil change 10 months late; and a lot of other stuff. Got the parts, but they won't install themselves.

I can tick the brakes off that list. Only took me two days, this time, to get them done. I have to relearn the brake pedal, but it feels amazing. Stops like a cat.

The rotors didn't look too bad. Both of them were the original 32-year old pieces the car shipped with. Both were close to 3/16" thinner than their replacements (and very likely under the "REPLACE THOSE SUCKERS NOW!!" spec). That grinding I'd heard was probably from the pads I threw on in 2009, which now have grooves ground into them from the wear on the rotors.

Then (because I was feeling productive for the first time in months) I re-fixed the horn. That's two things off the list. Only 2-1/2 pages to go.

Road Trip: "If You Want It Done Right Tour" ends...

...and it only took me 6-1/2 months.

Ever since I took to the highways of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia to get my own damn engine thanks to a less-than-helpful...acquaintance, I've had that engine tied down in the back of the Tracker.

It's been entertaining. The tail-dragging Tracker was skittish and threatened to bottom out on every bump.

The original plan was to get the engine out the morning after I got back from Atlanta. Medical stuff and too-cold March weather became medical stuff and too-wet April weather, then I went to San Francisco for a week. All the airport walking kicked my ass...and then it was too hot outside.

It was too hot outside yesterday morning, too, when I finally had enough and dragged myself out to finish the job.

The most difficult part: my new, unused engine hoist was still in pieces, still boxed up, and still in the cellar from the morning I bought it in mid-2011. No way I was going to be able to haul the thing myself, but I'm a pretty smart guy--and modest. Used the Tracker and a tow strap to pull it up.

It might have taken a half-hour without all the medical stuff. Took 2 hours to get this far, with frequent rest breaks. As soon as it was on the ground, I quit and sat in front of a fan for a few hours.

It only took 30 minutes to put the crane together and just a few to spot the Tracker into position.

Picked it up and drove the Tracker out from under it. Finally!

I'll need to get that blue beast on a stand and safe from the weather in the next day or so. From there I'll be able to start figuring out just what engine I've got.

I'm just glad that road trip's over.

Pic of the Day: Another Satisfied Customer!

I just got an email from a second member of the Citation X-11 Yahoo! Group thanking me for the decals I drew up in CAD.

The first guy did his in grays (it looks like he kept it close to the original colors); this second guy did his in orange and red:

He hasn't put the decals on yet. I love the car's new color!

Road Trip: The Little Citation That Could

Tallahassee damn near dried out in 1998. We had several months without significant rain; most of the spring and early summer went by without relief.

Tallahassee's surrounded by woodlands. Lots of kindling in the undergrowth. There were quite a few controlled burns, places where you'd be driving along and start smelling smoke, come around a curve and find a patch of ground the size of a house still smoldering.

There was at least one uncontrolled burn, a big forest fire between Tallahassee and Crawfordville. I could smell that one from my apartment 11 miles to the north.

We needed relief pretty badly and when the rains came they made up for lost time with a vengeance. We were getting some light sprinkles around mid-morning. I covered the Citation with a tarp: the area around the top of the windshield was pretty badly rusted out. If it rained hard enough I'd be driving home with a soaked seat and pools in the footwells.

Light sprinkles turned to heavy rains like gray curtains. Not bucket-loads, but tanker loads. Windshield wipers struggled in vain, giving only inches' more visibility. Falling water smote car roofs like a thousand Neil Peart drum solos.

The great thing about the delivery driver job I had at the time was that on a typical run you could be gone for an hour or more, depending on whether certain shops had ordered something. Our customers were scattered widely around town and in Quincy, Crawfordville, and Monticello, which are 15 to 25 miles out. Plenty of time between shops for thinking and recording writing ideas on a little tape recorder.

Not so great if you're struggling to see past the nose of your car, hoping the guy in front of you can see the guy in front of him (a common hope in rainless Tallahassee, a forlorn one in any other weather). Within hours people's yards on the southeast side of town were lakes, flooded from front door to pavement by insufficient drainage and massive runoff from Doak Campbell Stadium's lovely parking lot a few blocks north. There was an insane amount of water running in the shallow ditches and not much place for it to go. Most of my shortcuts were under water by noon. Lake Bradford Road had a lake where it went under a railroad bridge.

It rained all day, hard. We stayed busy. And wet. By quitting time it was back to sprinkling.

The Citation had stayed reasonably snug and dry, but the real test still lay ahead. Just about every road I could take had a problem; Lake Bradford was flooded, Orange Avenue westbound wasn't much better off, and eastbound would lead me to Monroe Street, which would be clogged with cars and construction instead of water.

I took Lake Bradford. That lake under the railroad bridge hadn't subsided much, but where it had been too deep for my delivery car (a Geo Metro), the Citation nosed through without any fuss. I passed a few abandoned cars on the higher ground just past the bridge. I knew not to try taking my usual shortcut that would get me to Ocala (Pepper, Lipona, and Belleview to Ocala, for the locals), so I went around the stadium's east side (Varsity to Pensacola). Varsity was flooded, too. Damn stadium. More abandoned cars on the roadside, some of them with their rear ends floating in nearly 3 feet of water.

The Citation rolled on, kicking up an impressive bow wave even at low speed. I took it slow. Pensacola Street took me past the north side of the stadium. At least now I was out of the worst of the flooding, but now I joined the lines of cars seeking higher ground and passage out of town. I don't know why I didn't just hit Ocala and head north like I normally would. Probably the traffic was too heavy that way. Can't remember. For whatever reason, I ended up on Mission, I think. All I remember about this bit is that I was cruising north on whatever road, came over the top of a hill, and had to panic stop so hard that all four wheels locked up. A line of cars stretched more than a mile to where this road--I'm pretty sure it's Mission; it's the only one that makes sense--dead-ended into Fred George Road. Stop sign. Very long wait.

From the shop to my apartment took at least an hour, probably 90 minutes, instead of fifteen. The Citation never sprang a leak, even when the water was halfway up the doors--though the next morning I discovered that my door and one taillight had become water tanks. Plenty of other people weren't as lucky. The Tallahassee Democrat ran a photo of one FSU parking area that was under six feet of water. A few inches of roof was all that showed of some guy's vintage '50s Chevy pickup. Some antennas poked up in other areas. Shortly after the July 13th Rain from Hell, Tallahassee or the County or someone decided that the southeast side's drainage problem should be addressed. Now there's a big drainage pond or two. I haven't seen the neighborhood since I moved to Pensacola in 1999, but it's got to be better for them these days.

Road Trip: You Turn Me Right 'Round, Baby...

Not really a road trip, so much as a test drive that went sour.

I had this monster '76 Impala wagon 20 years ago. It was the first car I owned that I actually drove anywhere. Mine was as white as Eric Estrada's teeth. There were some dents and dings, one spot above the left taillight where the previous owner backed into a garbage truck, and all the floorboards were rusted out, but for the most part it was straight and rust-free.

Huge car. Twenty feet long, with three rows of seating. The back row opened backwards so the occupants could look out the back window and make faces at other motorists [remembering that wrong--the seat flipped up facing forward, but there was still room behind the third row for small, unsecured, face-making brats].

Coolest feature on this beast was the "clamshell" rear door and window. Turn your door key partway and the rear window would retract into the ceiling. Turn it all the way and the tailgate would retract under the floor.

That was about the only "extra" other than power steering and brakes. Everything else was manual.

The Impala and I had a rivalry the entire time I owned it. I had it in my head that this car was going to run, and run well.

The Impala had other plans. Very passive aggressive. I'd have it running (again), run out and hop in to head to work, and...nothing doing. I'd curse it up and down, grab my 10-speed out of the back (got in the habit of always toting a bike as backup), and go to work.

I'd been fighting the Impala for about a year, rebuilding the carb, adjusting things, tricking it into being more reliable. Took it for a little proficiency run to see whether I could get my gas mileage into double digits, since 9mpg really freaking sucks. It wasn't even a big engine, just a run-of-the-mill 350 with a 2-barrel. I never got around to hot-rodding it.

Headed east down Creighton Road toward the bay...and damned if I didn't get trapped in a line of cars behind a big yellow road grader. I could hear its engine howling, maxed out, but only giving the thing 20 mph. When it turned south onto Old Spanish Trail, I fed gas to the Impala and headed for Scenic Highway, where I'd be able to open the throttle at least a little. South on Scenic, down to Langley, west. There's a long, high hill from Scenic up Langley. As I crested the hill...damned if I didn't see a line of cars ahead, and that farking road grader crawling along like a rolling roadblock.

I should have turned on Spanish Trail, which is right at the top of the hill. But no, I kept rolling along, planning to turn instead on Leesway, which runs between Langley and Creighton, to escape the grader. It took forever to get to Leesway. Some jackass in a black Lincoln tailgated me once I made the turn. I glanced at him in my rear view mirror--and there was a sudden flash of red ahead of me. I had an impression of something car-sized right in front of me, felt the Impala jounce, heard a loud CRUMP! and screeching tires.

The Impala barely slowed. I'd only been doing 35, but a 5,000 pound wagon has a bunch of inertia.

I was still trying to put things together as I hit the brakes and guided the car over to the curb. People were pouring out of houses, there was a red Chevy Cavalier in the yard to my left, and the Lincoln had vanished. I sat there shaking for several days in a few eyeblinks.

Turns out that this 18-year-old girl had been trying to get around a road grader that was holding up traffic a few blocks away and was so intent on looking for it that she ran the stop sign just as I rolled into the intersection.

The Impala rammed her right on the driver's side rear wheel, bashing sheetmetal from door to back bumper. Her car described 3/4 of a circle and ended up in someone's yard, two tires off their rims, rear axle bent, a sculpture dedicated to physics. The other driver was shaking harder than me. Maybe some bruises, possible whiplash.

The police ticketed her for failure to yield and figured the had about $2,000 damage to her car. He looked at mine and guessed maybe $500. The front bumper was compressed and swiped a few inches sideways. The grille had shattered and the nose panel above it was flattened. Both corner caps above the headlights were damaged--but the radiator was fine.

Her car was loaded onto a flatbed. I drove mine home.

A week or so later, her insurance company sent a guy out. He looked it over, pronounced it "totaled," and offered me a $400 bank draft--minus an imaginary $75 "towing fee" because I was keeping the car.


$325. Assholes.

When Troubleshooting Just Causes Trouble

Just to show how good I am at overthinking car troubles (and why I'd probably starve if I had to work as a mechanic)...

I was cruising along in my '83 Citation (the '81 X-11's "little sister") maybe 10 years ago, headed north along Scenic Highway. As I passed a last line of houses and started seeing undeveloped woodlands, I heard a loud BANG, like a gunshot.

Didn't stop to check for bullet holes. I just hit the gas and looked in my mirrors. Didn't see anything. Once I got home, I didn't find any damage. The event was shrugged off and forgotten.

The Citation's engine developed a rough idle, slightly worse gas mileage. I looked over everything, checking carb settings, ignition timing, engine vacuum. Didn't make sense. The carb settings were fine, timing was a little off but not causing trouble. Engine was breathing fine, maybe a little low.

But the idle stayed rough.

I went through the shop manual's troubleshooting guide--carb's okay, timing's good, vacuum's good...all the easy stuff got checked off the list. The manual suggested that the timing chain might have jumped a sprocket, and all the symptoms seemed to agree. I hated to think this might be the problem, since it was more work than I wanted to do.

Drove around like that for several months, occasionally trying those simpler checks--carb, timing, vacuum--in the hope that I'd missed something simple. Finally stopped putting it off, parked the car, and got to work.

Busted out the jack stands, got her nose in the air...loosen the belts, lose the water pump, timing cover...huh.

Timing chain looks fine. Rolled the engine a little to line up the crank and cam timing marks.

They're fine.

Shit.

Oh, well, probably the original chain, and as long as I'm already here...put in the new one, double-check timing marks...new seal on timing cover, new gasket...water pump, pulley, belts.

As long as I'm here, though...let's do the valve cover gaskets, get rid of that little oil leak.

Kind of a pain in the ass. Some stuff in the way--SNAP!

Shit!

There's a little trident-shaped set of pipes that are part of the emissions controls. The engine computer blows fresh air into the exhaust system through these to burn unburned or partly-burned fuel.

I'd just snapped one of the pipes. They tend to rust pretty quickly as it is, but on a 20-year old car they're brittle. Turning the nut holding the pipe in place just folded the pipe.

Wrecked all three getting the thing off of there. At first, I tried fabricating one from brake line (which is all the pipes were, basically) but couldn't bend the stuff with my limited tools. I put that project on the back burner, plugged the exhaust manifold with pipe plugs, fixed the valve cover gaskets, and buttoned everything up, pissed that I'd wasted a weekend on a not-bad timing chain.

Car started up as always, ran just fine, but that idle just wouldn't stabilize. Bugged the hell out of me. And again I tried all the simpler stuff yet again--carb settings, ignition timing, vacuum check. No leaks, no computer trouble codes, and still no idea what was causing the roughness.

A year went by. I still occasionally tried to ferret the problem. No magical new information in the troubleshooting guides. I wondered whether the engine computer might be acting up; it controls spark timing, fuel delivery, and all that. I thing I pulled it out and looked it over, decided I wasn't going to screw with it, and bolted it back in. No easy way of poking around on a plastic-sealed circuit board. Nothing looked burned or damaged.

I don't know what I was doing, the day the problem was solved. Maybe just checking the spark plugs, something I hadn't done in all the troubleshooting. I know I'd never looked at the things because...

...you car guys will love this. Really.

Put your drink down.

As I was feeling along the back side of the engine, I found the #3 spark plug hanging by its wire.

Remember that "gunshot" I thought I'd heard? I remembered it, then.

I'm guessing that I didn't tighten #3 down properly sometime before the "gunshot." Every time the plug lit off the air and fuel in the #3 cylinder, the concussion worked the plug out a little. That BANG was the final air-fuel charge blowing the loose plug out. From then on, my V6 was a V5.

Threaded the little shit back in...tightened it properly (this time). Engine ran perfectly.

The X-11 is just the latest in a line of cars with laughing rights on me.

Grounded, Pt. 3: Embarassingly Simple!

This is one of those times I'm glad my car can't talk, let alone laugh when a big, complicated problem boils down to something stupidly simple.

The X-11 has earned some laughing rights. Maybe she's just being nice to me because I'm kinda slow, like the time I ran out of gas just a few yards past a gas station...and coasted the damn car a quarter-mile downhill trying to get it started.

Ha, ha.

Or how about the time I tried to start her up, got nowhere, did some testing and decided that the fuel pump was bad. When I tried to replace the pump, I ended up breaking several bolts in the exhaust system, which is inconveniently in the way of the pump. Ended up having to replace every bolt in the engine end of the exhaust. Got the new pump in, got the exhaust system bolted in...and still had the same problem.

Turns out it was a couple of bad fuel hoses. A couple of bucks' worth, compared to 6 weeks' work and too much money.

Hah. Hah. Hah. Goddammit.

Now, I'm slowly putting things back together after trying to find an electrical fault. For all the circuits under the dash, there's a single common ground, a black wire with a ring terminal that's bolted to body metal (One Ring Terminal to Rule Them All!). I've got the dash in the back of the car, car guts all over the floorboards and back seat, I've gone over every wire and connector, pored over wiring diagrams, sat in the driver's seat and stared at the mess I've made, looking for that damn ground, and all this time it's been right there, dangling from the wiring harness.

Some previous owner screwed around under the dash and ended up bolting the ground terminal in the wrong place: a metal bracket that doesn't touch any other metal in the car. Might as well have left the battery disconnected.

All this time, the only ground for everything under the dash has been a skinny wire and crappy terminal from an aftermarket power radio antenna kit. When I pulled the old radio to try running wire to a newer one, the tenuous connection was broken--and everything either stopped working or freaked out. The air conditioning fuse self-destructed (must have been an impressive burnout).

All this because one wire got put in the wrong place years before I even had the car.

Hee, hee, hee, hee. I'm dyin' over here.

Grounded, Pt. 2

I wish I could say I've been busting my tail the last few weeks tracking down the electrical trouble in the X-11.

Hasn't worked out like that. Ever since I got out of the hospital in December it seems like I can't do anything but sleep. Before, I didn't get more than 3-4 hours at a stretch, then I'd be awake for 6-8 or more.

Finally got out to the car Monday afternoon and did a quick ohmmeter check showed something like 150 ohms' resistance between all the ground wires on the driver's side end of the harness and a good metal ground. I grabbed a jumper wire and ran a direct ground to one of the connectors. There were some strong sparks and the wipers swept across the windshield for the first time in 5 weeks. My dash lights lit up.

Turns out everything was grounding through a skinny black wire running from an aftermarket power radio antenna to a bolt on the gas pedal mount. I haven't found where it's all supposed to ground, yet. Hope it's easy to find, and easy to get to and fix; I'm pretty sure it's corrosion--either on the ground terminal itself or on the car's body. There's too much of both in too many places.

This afternoon, I ran some heavier wire to a good ground, ran the other end to one of the dodgy "ground" wires, and everything's working like it should.

Now all that's left is to fix a few other small things under the dash, put it all back together, and get my little racer back on the road.