Anyhow, I’m here to talk realness about cars, because working on them is hard work, it is difficult unless you have the right space to work on them, and it takes a lot of time, patience, screwing up, and fixing it. This one isn’t about what order you should put your wrenches on your hand truck or any kind of high mindedness about what vintage or origin of cars is easiest to work on. This is about the fuckups, kludges and failures.

My 68 Datsun, long suffering with little reward, now sports an enormous oil filter of unknown vintage which happened to be on the shelf when last I was feeling oil-changey. Actually that memory has a somewhat vintage feeling itself, now that I think about it. Maybe it’s time to fix that. It’s a big filter, I probably added a half a quart of capacity to the motor by using it and it fits right in the vehicle’s character, having been rescued from a barn only to find new life as the world’s most reliable dump runner. Sometimes if it screws on you gotta see if it works, sometimes you find out that the only difference in most older domestic oil filters is how tall the can is. Other days you spend five hours removing an exhaust manifold to replace it with a header, and then spend two hours putting that manifold right back in because the dozens of people online who swore up and down they had one in theirs were just lyin’. The difference between getting duped and learning something is all in measuring it yourself. Get out the visual aids if you have to. Getting in the car once is better than getting online a thousand times.

And it’s important to reevaluate your projects from time to time. In the time between when I started this article and today, the world’s most reliable dump runner has been sold and I upgraded to a 94 Jeep Cherokee. I need a dump runner less and less and a 4×4 more and more. I read a LOT about doing SAS swaps, how to mount a transfer case in an old 2×4 frame. It was fun to read about and fun to think about but when it came time to answer whether I wanted to have a hot rod Dodge or a hot rod Datsun finished, the answer was Dodge. So off to the next guy she goes, earning me $50 over my purchase price and not even washed.

And now about the Zebra. Princess Shamwow is stalled right now, well… not stalled but it appears I’m still digging my way to the heart of it’s problems. I tried to take it down the block to get some lugs busted off and it died 50 feet from my driveway, and hasn’t been able to drive more than 50 feet since. The battery just dies, there’s a huge short somewhere, I finally get it back into my driveway and begin digging into the harness. Despite the presence of super heavy duty “fleet wiring” on this particular dart, the main harness bulkhead power wire is shorted somewhere, and melted into the adjacent circuit at the firewall. The alternator is hot from the effort of welding wires together and the battery is only saved by the shittastic positive cable. I was dreading this, worst case scenario: I have to rewire an old car. Suck ass. Time to throw that piece of shit away right?

Ehhh nah. It’s cool, actually, I had a 12 circuit harness laying around already (these things are filthy cheap now and pretty good) and it only took me like 2 hours to pull every wire out of the car and cut off all the custom-looking plugs. It took another two hours to pull the forward and rear cable bundles through to their loom hooks. I will not lie — It’s gonna take a while to get all the plugs on; but I’m actually not that worried about it. I have heat shrink, a good set of crimps, a good stripper tool, and a huge bag of insulated blade connectors. I’m not even gonna tape up the harness, I’m just gonna ziptie every few inches to keep it in a bundle. I debated about how to penetrate the firewall, and I even went so far as to buy a Weatherpack 22 cavity military connector but it seems like an enormous pain in my balls to crimp 44 connectors and weather blocking jammers and still figure out how to cut this obtuse ass shape in the firewall if I’m not planning on plugging and unplugging the harness a lot. Which I’m not. I’m not planning on unplugging it from the car ever. There’s no reason to. The front clip never comes off the body on a Dodge, so I think I’m going with plan b. I’m gonna use the original firewall plug plate, cut off the old plug bases and drill a big enough hole to fit a ¾” PVC electrical conduit box bulkhead through, silicone the thing into place, then stretch a piece of bicycle inner tube over the whole mess and feed the wires through. Once all the wires are fitted, I’ll fill up the cavity with some more silicone, heat shrink that bike tube down onto the wire bundle and it’ll look mostly legit and be so much more reliable than the old wiring it’s ridiculous. But it is gonna be hard, and it’s currently still raining up here in Portlandistan and that is a huge ass bummer.

I also had a problem with my new Jeep on day one. The drivers side brake caliper was dragging and the brake was smoking hot after a drive from downtown. I limped it home slowly on residential streets and parked it, and sat down with the phone calling the dealership and trying to figure out of my warranty covered brakes, and how much a deductible was. They said that if I just paid the $300 now they’d have the truck come out and then it didn’t matter how much the rest of the work cost. Now, I understand better than most that not only are used car dealerships criminal enterprises, they are also part of a criminal network of warranty companies, shitty shops, etc, who are designed to take money out of your pocket first and then out of each others pockets in the long run. But $300 to start a brake job? The discussion of where the work would take place began to make my head hurt and I just hung up went to the Autozone on my bike and paid $40 for two new brake calipers and $10 for a bottle of brake fluid. Took me about an hour, meaning my hourly rate on that job was like $250 right? That’s top shop prices.

The next problem (and blog post): the turn signals won’t cancel after you turn. We’ll talk about trying to navigate the parts catalog and car company politics.

“Shit. Fucking shit.”

The hot engine sputters and finally dies. I wait for the boots to grind across the sand scrabble pavement and keep my hands where everybody can see them. And before I open the window I mutter it again. A common refrain in those days for me.

“Five fat years and five lean years, that’s what they say in the book.”

And I didn’t know what it meant then, I said it bitter, to ask what historical richness had bought me this immediate poverty.

To ask of God why and when would mine arrive, when I’d have and not worry, when I’d slumber untroubled and toil endlessly as a machine on a track and never quaver with fear or in laziness slack. When I’d feel like this fire had purpose and direction.

To ask Him why these were the best years of my life as all His children kept telling me.

To ask Him to not exist at all, for all the good He does.

And now I’m lean and times are fat, and I say it now with a quiver, to ask what time will take from me to repay this immediate wealth.

To ask of God how and when mine was found, and to worry over when it’ll change. To ask Him to return to me the untroubled slumber of my youth, the strong back which let me toil without end, the ignorance of consequence which let me never quaver, and the aimless fire which burned out all laziness.

To ask Him why these were the best years of my life and how I could make them last just a bit longer.

To ask Him to exist. For all the good He does.

When I was young, I watched his specials whenever they were on TV and they were on all the fucking time. I watched him on flying machines and telling truths and making me and my folks laugh at the same time, at the same nonsensical things we all take for granted. He had this weight to him, he was serious but goofy, his words were true but funny.

As he wandered in to the Mt Tabor lounge to record the podcast, it was clear he still had it; like a switch he turned on and off or a livid puppet he could still operate.

The face would lock into Classic Gallagher and he’d do the wind up for a good one — Something fun like chairs if our legs bent the other way or a hilarious rejoinder about how good fudge is. (My 12 year old brain yearned for it) — and then he’d drop that face and he’d say something about how there’s two types of Mexicans, good ones and bad ones, and we have nothing but bad ones here.

Mostly it was depressing.

Part of me cringed, to see that fame and fortune don’t make you happy if you’re too smart for your own good. The grotesque reveal: if your brain is convinced you shouldn’t be happy; moreover that humans shouldn’t be happy — you won’t be, and others joy will only bring you pain. Part of me wished he could be happy playing with the puppies one last time, which is what everybody but Gallagher himself was ready to let happen. Part of me cringed when he broke, too stoned to follow his own thread or too bored with his invective to care, to shamelessly promote one or the other of his idiotic patent troll plans. And part of me just tuned out because it became obvious that when he says something deep he’s just trying to butter you up to sell you watered down race bait, convince you to buy his pseudointellectual babble, or obliquely ask you to give him drugs on the street when you see him.

He was full of memorable quotes, and I’m sure there’s tons of discussion about the brown folks talk but he also said that humor was taking something that other people like and smashing it. By that measure, he killed. He smashed my opinion of what it was to be the smartest kid in the room. He smashed my innocent belief that he wasn’t a racist. In fact it forced me to realize I only thought he wasn’t because I’d seen Gallagher, Stevie Wonder, and Gordon from Sesame Street in tight offwhite bellbottoms, so clearly they were in cahoots. The rending of my youthful optimism about race in America, laff riot.

I worried about him for a minute, I read he was broke. And then I read he wasn’t really broke he was just getting a lot of traffic tickets in California and so he was avoiding his houses. But the article has another notable quote.

“I see things on the side of the road, which, of course, I’d never see if I just drove by. And I pick up these things, because, to me, it tells me about the society, and I find parts of cars and they’re important parts—and I wonder how the car is driving without that part now. It just seems odd to me.”

When I read it last year I heard it in the old Gallagher voice and my heart went out to the brave spirit speaking that truth. And now I know that he was just trying to sell some plan or idea and I wonder what it is. I wish he’d just come out and say it. Is it you Gallagher? Are you the important part that has fallen out of our societal vehicle, the pitman arm or the tie rod end all abandoned on the side of the road? Should we hit the brakes and swing back around for you, dust you off and install you back where you belong?

That’s not how it works man. When something breaks and falls off your car in the real world, you call one of those unmentionable brown folks and have em’ tow your car to a yard, where they replace it with a shiny new one.

Maybe one that isn’t as racist.

Fall 2012. It was finally happening, I actually got a little excited, but I played it cool. I consciously ignored the news stories about it, the Facebook discussions. I consciously chose to ignore the date as it came up, dismissing any discussion about it. I didn’t look it up or mark it on my calendar. I didn’t want to jinx it, like if I accidentally talked too much about it, it might not happen. But most importantly I wanted to be genuinely surprised. The full apocalypse experience.

But in the darkest part of my stupid little heart, I thought one day I’d get on the bus to head to work, and while I stared aimlessly off the Parkrose Max platform, there’d be a funny smell, or maybe a startling noise. Each earthly ear deafened as every living throat shrieks simultaneously. A livid, howling meatpipe organ of agony, wavering higher and higher as the thousand layers of the blessed veil are ripped from our eternal eyes. My gaze would fall upon the workbooks of a construction laborer, caked with that funny extruded swirl slurry of concrete thin set and silty mud that always reminds me of dying ferns or the filigree on some Victorian sconce work and then I’d have the futile, thrashing fugue of worry about our foolish small world for the last time. My human eyes would weep and melt and smolder, and it wouldn’t even merit screaming through my flaming beard about, for All would Know/See/Hear the 12th Bak t’un was at an end and there would be no more need for calendars or eyes to see them. The time of man and trains and Parkroses would be over. The winter felt bleak enough, the summer short enough, the re-election of Barack ‘R/C Hunting Enthusiast’ Obama hollow enough. Every nut bag in the world out there collecting guns for their ‘big statement shooting’. Fracking? Fracking and flaring? Are you fucking with me. Fall 2012 just had that Apocalypse feeling to it. I thought maybe we had a goer.

And now I’m pruning my apple tree, and cleaning unfrozen dog turds, and pulling out new blackberry from the cursed rock pile in the corner. I even had to clean out the fridge the other day. No miscarried souls in there to drag my unwashed heartfeather to limbo for the big tally, no locusts eating my bread butts, no ichorous grubs fouling my greens; just that gross old chicken juice smell. Bz’cht* the UnPronounceable hasn’t rent from the Heavenly Crystal realm into ours to see what chaos the poison Ego has wrought on Gaia’s juices and gargle its foul fermentation, and frankly it’s February. This is well past tardy and deeply into “being stood up”.

Maybe we all have to live after the rapture.

Maybe it happened, Jesus or Quetz’al or the turtle we all live on the back of came back – just popped in all cool to see how those sick ass monumental, healing teachings they left us with were working out, “POP QUIZ HOT SHOT”, and we were all so distracted by steam whistles or vacuum tubes or our own polyp filled assholes that They couldn’t find anybody who would even pay attention. Crawled out of a cave way out in the middle of the Australian outback on the top of a pile of rocks on the vernal equinox just like all the signs said, like what it told _everybody_ to write down, and the only one present to celebrate was a wild dog who was so scared it threw up, but was so hungry it immediately ate the throwup and skulked away. Cruised up into the stratosphere to figure out what was such a big deal we couldn’t even remember to show up for the big soul weighing mid-term rally, and couldn’t make sense of our jibbering at all. We were busy making shit we didn’t need and trying to sell it to each other in bulk and shitting and shrieking and swatting at each other so noisily that we were unrecognizable as civilized mature organisms. The dominant primate horde little more than an infestation of children, swaddled in shit and money and secrets and hysteria enslaving each other in increasingly small loops with shiny stones and sharp swords. Feral. Unsalvageable. So It-What-Taught just left us in our mess, chuckling darkly as it slid back to the Realm Immemorial.

“Good luck with that 3D printing stuff guys. Sounds great!”

That’s what I’m calling it now, I’m not really quite sure if that’s the best name for it. A work in progress.

I don’t think it really started during elementary school for me, but at some point as I was transitioning between childhood and “life after”, I learned that the best way to deal with something horrible happening was to put your head down and wait for it to end. If you waited long enough, a respite period began, and the sweetness of that relief would be so monumental and complete, it would wash the dreariness of this bad shit away. It worked with so many things, in the short term, things would be awful, bullies would be throwing my shit in the shower and pissing on it or somebody would be shooting an impromptu dart into the meat of my leg or the security guard would be harassing me for the fifteenth time because he “didn’t like how my eyes moved” when he asked me about shit, but at some point, all of these shitty people would just be gone and I’d be back in my cave again and everything would taste sweeter. Icy blue cans of Pepsi pulled one handed from a seemingly never-empty drawer in the bottom of the fridge simply tasted better, than tepid Coke bought from a flickering steel caged soda machine situated neatly between the redneck and chicano “free harassment” zones. Carrying my rented cello to the orchestra room past the wrestling gym, for example, was a higher stress proposition than dragging it down the hall to my bedroom, and playing it on the corner of my bed.

For me, Spring Break represented freedom from the world at large. I missed the school work, the schedule. Semesters, quarters, periods and penalties for being tardy, all of this made sense to me. On the first day back to school I’d wake up before my alarm, get ready and sometimes be at school when it was still early morning dim and I’d have to go hit the greenway and ride ten or fifteen miles to waste some time. But after a while, knowing that going to school meant “seeing other humans and the way they treat each other” ground me down. And soon I found myself with my head down, enduring, waiting for Spring Break. When I could wake up and look forward with great excitement to a day where, if I was really lucky, I wouldn’t see anybody my age for a whole week straight. Nobody. None of this confusion and constant fucking harassment and no weird “what do we do with you now” panic like summertime brought along, just a solid week, unmoored. The prospect is so catalyzing, I can barely eat (and in those days I could ALWAYS eat) and Friday before it begins, instead of hitting the snooze button for the fifth time, I’m waking up before my alarm again. The dusty red pink haze over the horizon lases first sunlight to the cicadas and me, jittering our enthusiasm for daybreak in the parking lot.

Waiting for relief works when the problem is too many days of teenage angst in a row, because as I now know, the only cure for being a teenager is to wait until you’re not one anymore, but in most other situations, sitting with your discomfort without a plan is failure by any other name.

I am tired of failure, regardless of how easy it is.

They aren’t even asking the right wrong questions. There’s not a school for psychopaths (aside from the quite arguable para-psychopathic military special forces), there’s not a specific thing that happens to you when you’re a kid and makes you think, “Hey shooting kids ain’t so bad, in fact… sounds fun.” But I can tell you this – there’s a specific thing that happens to you when you are a young man living in despair, and you see the grim specter of age and irrelevance marching toward you. Wealthy people experience this as a time of shaking off the old and exploring the new. People with no options, people who have lived for years and years in the same rut, they experience it like a fucking vise clamping down around their heads. Can’t do this anymore, can’t afford anything else, can’t stop time so maybe I should stop being me and start being a legend. Everybody remembers those names!

In short this is my bio for every American shooter. I don’t have the cultural awareness to make these generalizations about other countries killers but I can say without a doubt about the big hitters in America, 2012 – He was a lazy, privileged American asshole who couldn’t see past the end of his nose and wanted desperately to have a legacy. Just like every rampage shooter, he was a young man whose hepecker and gutsjuice were telling him he was about to become forever irrelevant and he better do something about it _soon_. Guns load up real quick and it only takes a few minutes to drive to the mall. Having been sold all-in-one lifefixes and get rich quick schemes his whole life, he saw the absolute shortest shortcut one-step-plan to people remembering his face and decided to give that a try, because if it ain’t easy then fuck it it’s not worth doing. He was first and foremost an asshole, who spent his life tricking the small and dwindling number of close friends around him into thinking he was fine because he was afraid to ask for help, and once he finally felt alienated enough, he was self-justified into his nihilistic suicide drama. A lazy asshole coward who has conned the television set into paying attention to him, at long last.

Do yourself a favor – Turn off that search box, take that picture of him off your screen and stop searching the face to find violence in it. It’s like staring at the Dali Lama to try to see God or sifting the Pope’s shit to foretell the weather, it just doesn’t work that way.

I had snugged down everything as best I could and still had what sounded like a massive exhaust leak on the drivers side. The passenger side sounded fine and looked like it was nice and sealed. No amount of evening out the manifold flange bolts would seal it up, in fact the leak sounded just as big as ever. I finally pulled the driver side manifold to investigate and found one “soft” feeling exhaust bolt on that side and a nasty exhaust leak. The last exhaust bolt in the back had pulled out about 1/4″ of threads. I replaced the bolt (and the frontmost bolt which was also too short and not engaging enough threads) with an LA style short stud which was able to get plenty of thread further down in the hole. Everything looked fine, and I was taking the manifold in to clean it up when I noticed it has SHATTERED. The source of my exhaust leak was now obvious.

I have no idea what could have caused the breakage other than a somewhat angular block lug about halfway between the exhaust port and the starter. It’s possible that was hitting the manifold in some way and tightening down the exhaust bolts levered it until it shattered (I didn’t see any contact when I put them in or took them out but who knows) or maybe I just dropped them and it cracked and the thermal stress broke em’ but they are fuckin’ trashed. I busted out Mr Visa again and bought some cheapo headers and a dual exhaust kit, hopefully they will show up sooner rather than later. Hopefully she sounds like a muscley grumble car and not like a sharting two stroke.

I definitely want this bitch to stop givin’ me hassle.

Update: I have found the origin of the crack and I now believe this to be an incompatibility between the late Magnum block and the 73 smog manifolds. The kink in toward the block before the manifold hits the Y pipe interferes with a square lug on the back of the block. Some dressing with a grinder would probably fix it, and it might not happen with any headers other than the late smoggers, but it sucks balls and I broke my manifolds. Oh well, I have headers and duallies coming UPS, I didn’t want to do that this year but fuck it whatever.

First memorable and important fucking thing – Aaron is not a special boy born in the sun who never ever has to follow the rules. That’s simply not the case. Never, ever is.

I failed in a lot of ways to get this motor swap done in a reasonable amount of time. Between getting discouraged (more writing about that later, because it’s been pretty difficult to fight and enlightening to overcome) and simply trusting that any amount of reading would make up for even a minute of doing has left me without my car for months, and feeling despair a few times along the way.

The short version, for all of you who don’t want to read boring technobabble? ALWAYS DO YOUR FUCKING PRE-START CHECKLIST. ALL OF IT. FROM THE START TO THE FUCKING END. CHECK THE OIL PRESSURE VERIFY YOUR JACK STANDS ARE SQUARE AND KICK YOUR TIRE CHOCKS ALL OF IT AND DONT SKIP SHIT LIKE MAKING SURE YOU TIMED THE ENGINE RIGHT BECAUSE YOU WILL FEEL LIKE A DICKHEAD LATER.

It roared to life, it came to temp, I was just getting ready to diddle with some carb settings on my SWANK ASS new carb (Barry Grant Street Demon, more about this fucking GREAT little guy later) and Nathan heard it burbling, but just as he came out the horrible stamped thermostat neck began to spray hot water all over the engine and I had to shut it down. But it runs, praise Doctor SpaceJesus, thanks to following the fucking instructions and erring on the side of doing more doing instead of more thinking.

So, without further adieu, the full list of caveats for a Mopar LA 318 to Magnum 5.9 Swap are:

Oil Pan – Buy a LA 360 car oil pan if you have a car, and use the Magnum one piece oil pan gasket. This will cause two 3/8″x1/2″ voids in the corners where the LA pan expects the U-channel locators but I just used those holes as injection points for some silicone, left the pan not-quite tightened down until it set, and then torqued the pan gaskets, It’s a low pressure area and the one piece gasket actually has a little skirt that covers most of the void from the inside, so this is one of those “good enough” fixes. If you have a truck you can probably use the cool awesome donor pan with the good gasket and no goop. Or if you are a fancy man you can graft the corners from the magnum pan onto your LA pan.

Motor Mount – The drivers side motor mount for the 318 is different (wider), you can make up the gap with two high grade “thick” washers, give or take a thin one.

Transmission Brace – The drivers side transmission bellhousing brace (which runs from a lug on the block just ahead of the starter to a hole in the bellhousing clocked further down from the lower starter bolt) is not the right length. The 5.9′s mounting point is several inches closer to the front of the vehicle. I haven’t found a fix for this yet. Presumably a 360 car or maybe a brace from a magnum truck, have to hit the J/Y with a ruler.

Induction – Carb or FI? FI is a second-stage type project for me, I wanted something that would get me on the road quickly without having too steep of a learning curve, so I went carb. There’s a few manifolds, I couldn’t get a Crosswind (RPM Air Gap knockoff) so I got an RPM Air Gap. It’s… pretty sweet actually, Edelbrock makes a nice fuckin’ manifold. I need to do some plumbing for PCV and the booster and stuff but there’s plenty of holes there. The big under-hole thing is a terrible crap catch and makes the top of the motor look slobby when you have coolant leaks. Which you will. Because: thermostat housing.

Throttle Cable and Kickdown – Regardless of induction you will be on your own for throttle cable mounting. There’s a lot of options like OEM cables in custom bracket options (Bouchillon again) and modding the LA 4bbl stuff (bring your hammers and torches because it’s pretty crude shit), but after all the hemming and hawing, I went to these Lokar cables. Cheap enough and work good, which I guess is why they’ve been around for a zillion years since the grandpas cars. My new carb has a slightly different mounting bolt to throttle/kickdown linkage measurement than a standard holley type, I may order a new one, since I can see that the cables are about a half inch out of line at max adjustment on the Lokar generic bracket.

Thermostat Housing – The thermostat housing on the RPM Air Gap, at least, is not a standard LA size housing, it’s a “Late” design. You can cut down the donor neck (which is like 90000 miles long) and use it, or you can source one for an 80′s Dodge V8 car. Like a Diplomat with a 5.2LA in it or something. They are shitty, horrible stamped steel, and will require liberal siliconing (or in my situation, re-re-siliconing again again), for the most part. I am still looking for a cast aluminum diplomat water neck. I have seen a picture of one but never found out what the manufacturer was. Still looking, might be another junkyard find, so far all the LPS parts have been stamped steel.

Radiator Hoses – Ho hum. You swapped a motor, now you have to pay the piper by dealing with flex-hose until you can spend an hour in the back of your local parts store to figure out some that will work.

Starter – While the LA starter will fit without any grinding or changes, it’s huge – stupid huge, requires you to drop the suspension and exhaust every time you touch it and is woefully out of date. Ironically the mini starter which is stock to the donor vehicle probably won’t fit. There’s this big lug, just above the oil pan gasket, drivers side, rear, has a plug driven in through the bottom, that needs grinding, maybe a touch more than 1/8″ across it’s radius. Difficult to describe, if you have it in the stand, find the lug (I’ll do a diagram later) and just flatten out it’s radius to a 45 degree bevel instead. If it still don’t fit, it is easy enough to do in the car, as long as you have eye protection and an air grinder/electric die grinder of >dremel tool class. You could do it in place with a dremel but you’ll be there, arms over face, shooting sparks into what you laughingly refer to as your hairline basically forever. With a big die grinder it’s a 5 minute job and 2 minutes is finding your ear plugs. I made a very big deal of this and it set me back many hours of work for my stubborn headed laziness installing, then pulling that ridiculous greasy LA starter after it failed one crank in. This amounted for hours spent on my back in the mud versus five minutes thinking about it rationally while the motor was on the stand. Don’t be like me America, the mini starter whips the motor over effortlessly, well worth the effort.

Timing Cover – This is where you make a big choice. If you keep the magnum timing cover, that lets you keep the magnum serpentine setup. It’s cool, if you want all accessories, that’s awesome. If you got a truck donor motor the power steering pump will be in the middle of your battery box, so be prepared to make some major car mods if you want to keep the serpentine. If you put on an LA timing cover you can’t use any of the magnum accessories at all, except maybe kinda sorta you can mod the alternator and use it but it’s not a great solution (gets close to the block on the output stud). If you’re using an LA timing cover, and using a stock Magnum cam, or a cam ground on a stock magnum core, with no provision for the fuel pump eccentric, Bouchillon makes a cam snout extension. It took mine a silly amount of time to get here for what amounts to a little machined spacer but it works perfectly. If you don’t give a crap and plan to run an electric fuel pump anyways then you can skip this and save yourself a few weeks of waiting on parts and some money. Regardless, do the seal on the cover while you have it out. It’s easy and always worth it.

Harmonic Balancer – If you’re using the stock serpentine setup, you’re fine! Just use the donor one, install the seal saver that came with your timing cover seal kit (you did your timing cover seal right). If you are using any other type of belt system, get ready to throw that guy in the garbage. It’s all cast as one and not worth it. Professional Products makes one that has a replaceable weight that can be set for LA 318, LA360, and Magnum, it’s pretty cheap, SFI approved, and just has a regular LA style bolt pattern, so you can use your 318 pulley, any aftermarket serpentine pulley system, any aftermarket billet pulleys, etc.

Magnum Crank Sensor – There’s a crank position sensor that hangs off the back of the block. You can either clearance your bellhousing for it with a grinder, or unbolt it and plug the bolt holes (or not). Obviously if you are retrofitting the stock EFI you need to clearance it or figure out a different way to get that signal from the engine. I unbolted. If and when I go EFI I’ll use an EDIS type wheel mounted on the front of the engine instead.

Flexplate – If your 5.9 magnum has a weighted flexplate you are good to go, you oval one hole to bolt your LA torque converter to and scoot. I lucked out. There’s a big tone ring for the EFI but it doesn’t interfere with anything when you bolt it all together. If you have a neutral flexplate with weights on the torque converter (afaik neutral flexplates are limited to “early” magnums, 92-94), you either have to source a weighted magnum flexplate and modify as above, find a specialty B&M flexplate weighted for the magnum with a neutral converter, modify a neutral balance converter with mopar performance weld-on weights, buy a custom converter with the right balance, or devise an as to yet unknown method for transmitting power between a motor and a transmission, superior to all before it in every way. Who am I to limit your options.

Air Cleaner – Obviously I’m way off stock here so I can’t reuse anything, and my carb choice makes it even less tested. I think that a stock Mopar dual snorkel would clear the hood on top of this manifold/carb combo but I’m not sure. I bought this and the drop (they claim 1.18″ which sounds right) is just a touch too much, it hits the electric choke on the Street Demon. But I mean just a touch like I think a double gasket under the air cleaner base might do it. The issue is even after this clears I have fears about the 3″ element clearning the under hood, I need to do a clay test.

Valve Covers – The donor valve covers have one totally normal PCV and one weirdball breather thing you’ll have to pry out and replace. They have a nice screw in oil fill hole in em and they have real nice gaskets. There are Mopar Performance and Edelbrock aftermarket parts that fit as well. I believe I’m going to be installing a regular old breather on the passenger side with the cap and the PCV on the drivers side going to a barb on the back of the carb.

Exhaust – Anything that bolted to an LA motor and fit in your LA car will bolt to this motor and fit in your LA car. I am using the stock LA manifolds and they fit great.

Then, I remembered my old issue with the track lights in the house. They all took $10 apiece 35 watt halogen spotlights. They were burning out 2-3 per room a month and getting real spendy to keep up. I took a big chance on some Chinese 4x1W LED replacement bulbs and they are AWESOME. Not one has failed in over a year of service and while the light is certainly very cold, they're bright as fuck.

So I tore down the old fluorescent hood fixture, drilled a piece of 3/4" aluminum flat to mount inside its housing, and then fitted four GU10 bases, each with a 110v 3x3W 6500k lamp. The result? Stunning bright light all the way to the gravel. Fish look brighter, plants (and algae) exploding with new growth. Once I build my new top, I plan on building a hex shaped 7 lamp fixture (which will allow me to grow anything I want to). I also ordered two 10w LED floods (also 6500k) for the 10 gallon. I'm totally sold on LED lighting, BTW.

That’s it so far. Very slow progress overall but I’m trying to get out there and chunk away at it. Hopefully I’ll have way more radical news next time.

Well luckily for these fish I grew out of my Preschool of Doctor Moreau period and they just get to have a regular fish house. Here it is, a lucky craigslist find that I resealed with silicone. It’s got a SunSun canister filter full of ceramic biomedia and floss, an aquatech HOB filter for additional filtration and polishing, and two very fat very messy fish. Jank Teef and Latrice Royale.

It’s surprisingly satisfying to stare at. As I am unable to enjoy anything sans tinkering, I have bought some GU10 bases and chinese 6500k LED spotlights to build a custom grow light fixture for it, I should be able to grow all the way down to the substrate, and the fish should be able to support TONS Of plant life if I can get enough light on them.

Alright, so you have your basic toolset, and you have your consumables, and you’re looking for the next big upgrade to your project handling capabilities. Trust me it’s not a bottle-brush hone and it’s not a tubing bender. It is an angle grinder. This thing is good for dozens of otherwise impossible fixes, like hacking through rusted in place bolts or putting a wire wheel on to clean up nasty undercoat. This thing is gonna run you like $50 if you shop around and you’ll end up using it everywhere. Be careful with grinding stones and cutoff wheels, you can very easily fuck yourself well past being able to fix, but sometimes it’s invaluable to be able to delete metal from a part or delete a bolt head from something that’s truly stuck. If you don’t have a quality drill, get one now, find one with a keyed chuck, and get the following accessories: a set of drill-to-socket adapters, a set of step-drill bits. You also need a good plumber’s torch (you already have one you pyro, but this isn’t JUST for you, OK) because heat is Doctor SpaceJesus’ magic blue/yellow wrench, and you will end up burning some rubber bushings clean before it’s all said and done. A vacuum gauge (and a vacuum pump/brake bleeder), and an oil pressure gauge and sender are pretty invaluable. This is another couple hundred bucks in tools that will multiplex your capabilities hugely. Still have money left over after smokes and beers? Lets take care of that now.

Build yourself a workbench. Set the top of it right around your beltline, make the top out of two layers of 1/2″ plywood. If you can find an old laminate countertop or something to use for this, so much the better. Make sure the legs are sturdy — stop looking at those 4×6 timbers, some 2×4′s will be fine, and adjustable, so you can level the damned thing. Then go out and get ready to spend some serious money on a vise.

I know, I know, a vise is just a big pair of channel locks you can’t stuff in your pocket, but it is SO much more. It’s the key to drilling and cutting stuff square and not, for example, tearing off your thumbnail, snapping off drill bits and dulling their ends, or gouging a hole in your palm while you do it. It’ll help you install all those seal savers straight — you are installing seal savers on everything, right? And a high quality one, with some creativity, can do everything from driving out balljoints to bending tubing. If you want to do these jobs regularly, and right, what you really want is a 20 ton press, but that thing is HUGE LIEK XBOX (do you… I don’t know if you get that or not. The Xbox really is quite big. Oh and the cords are gonna catch fire? So keep an eye out for that recall.) and will not be friendly to your free wheeling lifestyle. It’s a great tool, and one you’ll want eventually, but right now for intermediate-level car repair, you want a bench mounted vise in the “large cat to small dog” size range. Don’t cheap out on this one, get something with a warranty that isn’t written in crayon.

Want more? Of course you do. You don’t have Smokey’s Speed Shop Mobile yet, so you’re still looking for more capability. Well, look no further than a compressor. This is another one that will weigh you down, so get something in the 3 gallon range and recognize that you’ll never be able to run a DA or body saw full time off it, this is strictly for filling tires, running a small paint gun, and short blasts of power like the impact gun for loosening stuff that you can’t quite get leverage on with the cheater and the breaker. Know that with this increased torque and impact, you are gonna shear off more bolts than ever, so always start with the tools from 101: penetrating oil, then wrench, penetrating oil, then breaker; before moving to 102 tools: oil, then torch, then oil, then impact, then grinder. Grinder don’t need oil. Grinder don’t care. Get a long hose and quick connects for whatever tools you have. Learn the maintenance schedule for your compressor, and pay attention when it’s leaking. Upgrade to a bigger one when you feel like you can swing it (I am at 20 gallons now and it’s just a teensy bit small for full time use but as long as you wait for it to catch up it’s fine).

Now, this is the biggest, most important lesson for 102. Documentation. Write down what you’re doing. Take pictures or draw diagrams of what you disconnect. Don’t count on your memory to save you, don’t count on hoses pointing in the right direction, take the extra couple of minutes to tape a label to some shit. Trust me here, this is going to save you some serious embarrassment and frustration down the line. The “there’s always parts left over” joke is good for a chuckle, but that turns to a groan when you hear a terrifying PLING on the freeway and you lurch to one side, or can’t ever get a carburetor to idle right. When you’re doing little shit like replacing a shock or an alternator, you’re gonna be fine just winging it but once you have to dismantle two or three major systems to get at your repair, you will wish that you had a little note that told you which of two wires was on the 12 o’clock stud on the alternator versus the 3 o’clock one instead of trying to divine position from where the crudded up things hang.

And while we’re on the topic of wires. You’ve not jumped into too much electrical, just because the systems are complicated and you hate trying to learn, but mastering the art of wiring replacement is critical. You’ve already got a cutter/stripper/crimper, now it’s time to add some smart accessories: a soldering iron, some flux, some solder, some heat-shrink tubing, and a variety pack of wiring connectors, along with a cheap digital multimeter. This won’t cost you more than $30-40, buy four or five different colors of wire and take the time to learn how to use it, and you will transform from the guy who can replace his alternator to the guy who can fix the car that mysteriously turns off when you hit the dash in this one place. IF YOU CAN’T FIGURE IT OUT, READ A BOOK. IF THAT DON’T HELP, TAKE A CLASS. Find somebody to teach you. This is a stumbling block for you now and unless you fix it soon it’s gonna leave you fed up and out of patience for cars altogether.

About the wires, and the documentation — if you can, find the factory service manual. If you can’t, buy a Haynes or Chilton, but don’t expect much out of them. FSM’s are precious like gilded Angel eyebrows. Hayes are like… listening to the guy at the parts store tell you how to do something over the phone. It’s better than a kick in the balls but for the most part you can figure out whatever the H/C is gonna tell you by just staring at the part you need off. Remember, these are SUPPLEMENTS to your documentation, not replacements. They tell you how stuff “should” be, your documentation will help you realize how stuff currently IS. And with those docs and some troubleshooting methodology with your multimeter, your vacuum gauge, and your oil pressure gauge, you will be able to track almost any problem down to its root within an hour or so. Knowing what is wrong before you start disassembling the motor is always a good thing.

That’s basically it, that’s all I can offer. Welders and benders and fishmouthing and metal work and all that crap? That is off in the distant future. You need a place to work on your cars, and then you need to build up your toolbox, you need to work on your patience, and everything from there on up is cream. It’s building experience and confidence on a solid foundation of tools and techniques, not just running to the tool store every time trying to buy the biggest, most badass thing you can find and then manufacturing a reason to use it. Trust yourself to find people who can do what you want, learn how to ask questions and judge answers. (serious about the therapy too, you need it)

What are you driving right now? The Lincoln? Or is that guy already gone, that sucks dude. The Honda ain’t a bad car, and you should have taken better care of him while he was yours. You’re in a bad period, though, and it’s about to get worse. You’re about to take your fucking show on the road (you know this, already, in your heart. Arizona doesn’t get any better. It doesn’t change to magically be an OK place for you. Just go.) and you’re gonna drag a bunch of cars halfway across creation while you do it. Do it. Love them. Hate them. Throw wrenches, it’s gonna be great! (you’re gonna bust sooo many knuckles you dipshit) But anyways, here’s a list of worthwhile things to think about before you pick up a leaker and try to make it into a looker.

This is basically rule number one. Never trust that guy about the motor. It is not put together right, it wasn’t recently rebuilt, nobody went through it, it didn’t roll in purring like a kitten, it’s currently fucked, waiting to get fucked-er, and the longer you ignore that the worse a situation you will be in both financially and physically when it fails. Don’t trust that guy about the brakes, either. Don’t trust him about the carb, or the electrical. Assume you’re gonna have to tear into it early, or have somebody you trust tear into it. You are not going to have anybody you trust for quite a while, so here’s some big ass things to do, IMMEDIATELY.

Do you have a garage? Not a driveway, not a dirt lot, a garage, like a place with your tools and shit in it? No? You need to consider finding a place with a garage. Spend your precious time and learn how to deal with strangers and haggle enough to find one you can afford. If you can’t afford a garage, and you don’t have a driveway… you’re kinda screwed. I’m not saying you need to go buy a Tiburon (but you totally should turns out those Hyundais are fine! Despite all the ko-cars-are-crap talk. Who knew? No matter what Grandma Mickey says, don’t buy a “Kiva”. Not OK.) but maybe nothing French or pre 1950, OK? We’re not trying to buy up all the Francophile toolchest bits on, where the fuck are you working now, the school district? Yeah, you’re not buyin’ 2CV parts on you janitor bucks so calm the fuck down. Anyhow, my point is, you need a place to work on the car. So get working on that now.

In that garage, you need many tools, but the first tool you are going to need to buy is this. Yes, it costs more than a torque wrench, but trust me you’re going to need to use it thirty times more often. Don’t be tempted to get the little one, this packs down pretty small when you put the legs in it so it won’t get in your way (for example when you move to California next year with no plan and no money, smaaaart. No really it’s totally fine you needed to get out of there, it’s fine. God you dipshit.) when packed up. As a matter of fact it would store most of the tools you are gonna need right inside (since you will never, ever own or maintain a cohesive tool box or tool chest). Clean stuff. It takes more time than wrenching ever will but the difference between a fix made with clean parts and a “fix” made with parts that are soaked in grease will make a gigantic difference in how much you enjoy the cars you love. Add to this a giant bottle of the cheapest degreaser you can get for it, the big can of WD-40, some brushes and rags, a spray can of penetrating oil, a bottle of Naval Jelly, and an aerosol trio of paint stripper, black engine paint, and silver exhaust paint along with some masking tape to cover gasket surfaces. If you wanna really set yourself up right, go buy a box of nitrile gloves AND USE THEM. DOUBLE GLOVE FOR SPEED. KEEP A DOZEN IN YOUR POCKET. CHANGE THEM FREQUENTLY. This whole package will set you back about $200 and it will change the game as far as car work goes. You won’t have to snap off bolt heads (but you’ll do that plenty, dummy) or bolt rusty parts back on to an engine ever again. You won’t have black crap jammed in your cuticles. (And while we are at it enjoy that fucking hair buddy, grow it the fuck out and put some product in there, you have some great hair and I’m not gonna ruin the big surprise of “when” for you but it does NOT last forever, tiger) Gaskets won’t leak incessantly, things won’t rust into place, things that ARE rusted into place will be removable. You won’t cringe when you open the hood, and it’ll make it EASIER to identify leaks and track down problems. Tools you can borrow beg or buy, but having the right chemicals makes everything easier.

Second step… you need to learn where your local car wash with power wands is. Or you can borrow a pressure washer. This is where you’re gonna do your big degunking projects. And yes, you need to degunk that car. Unless you can see all the bolt heads and not just bolt-like-shapes beneath oil and dirt cake, it is not clean, and it sucks. Pressure washers aren’t quite cheap enough for me to mandate them like a parts washer, but for a couple bucks in quarters down at the car wash you can take care of whatever you need taken care of.

Third, start with a simple set of Craftsman tools. The warranty is great (now, not so great. Kobalt maybe.) and the tool quality is better than that dollar store home fix it kit shit you stole from Dad. As long as you stick with an American car, a basic set of SAE sockets, 3/8 drive ratchet with a few extensions, set of box/open end combo wrenches, screwdrivers, and a good pair of needlenose pliers, channel locks, and wire-cutter/crimpers will basically let you take apart any portion of the car and put it back together with confidence. If you go import, buy metric. If you buy British… (just… just don’t buy British right now. Wait till you have a shop with a welder and stuff man those guys… don’t buy British yet) Once you’re into bigger projects, get a 1/2″ drive set with a breaker bar and a torque wrench — do not confuse these two. There are some special tools you’ll want to buy — go cheap on these, don’t think Matco, think… the lobby of the Ace Tools on a rack — a harmonic balance puller, a steering wheel puller, a three arm/two arm combo puller. You are now equipped, plus or minus some cheater bar leverage to do basic repairs on a car.

Fourth, and this is important, so pay attention. Get a bike with fat tires. Put a basket on it. Trust me nobody cares if you have a basket on there (in the future it’s actually cool to have a bike with a basket. I mean, not in Arizona, I don’t think, but where you’ll be) and you’re gonna have to get to a parts store and back with some fairly heavy things. (Plus it’ll help you lose some of that chub there, Chubs McGubbs. Put down that Burrito Supreme and listen to me please.) It sucks to be stuck without your car. It sucks MORE to have to rely on some dickhole to run you to the Napa.

Fifth, and finally. Find a good parts store. Your local parts store is not only a highly efficient warehouse operation capable of bringing parts from across the country in just a few days, but also a tool library for stuff that you use so rarely or cost so much that you can’t justify it yet, THIS IS CRITICAL. FIND A GOOD ONE AND IT WILL PAY DIVIDENDS. Shopping online is great, and you can save a lot of money (especially as time marches on. Holy crap I can get anything delivered now hahaha sucker), but sometimes when driving — or specifically not driving — a project car there is a time factor which cannot be denied. This isn’t something you’ll ever regret doing.

That’s it. Every car is different, every project is different, they all have foibles, and they all have character. They’re all gonna require some kind of creative thinking to figure out. You’re gonna need power tools eventually and instead of just being in break/fix mode you should really be planning out maintenance in advance but that’s kinda 102 level shit so lets leave that for 22 year old us, OK?

So I am balls deep in motor right now, I haven’t the foggiest idea how or why I worked on cars before having a parts washer. How did ANYTHING ever hold oil? Oh, right they didn’t, for the most part. This motor has been a sludgemonster for quite a while, seems to have been weeping out of the hand-tight intake manifold bolts and down from the four-different-flavors-of-RTV valve cover gaskets. Dribbling down the back of the timing cover, and out of the back of the intake manifold by the distributor. Everything is gently preserved in a quarter inch of dusty sludgegrime. Stripped and scrubbed the valve covers, the intake manifold (what a mother fucking boat anchor holy jesus christ), timing cover, and crank pulley. Used Naval Jelly to strip the rust off of the exhaust manifolds and heat shields. Scrubbed everything as best I could, and then shot it with some engine paint. I’m into her for about $120 (and $23 worth of ibuprophen) now, gaskets and timing chain along with the paint and the stripping stuff. Here’s some progress pics.

Valve covers getting stripped

Timing cover after paint

This shit is taking forever, BUT, it’ll be the last time I have to do it for a long while. I’m going to do the motor mounts (and the transmission mount) while the manifolds and shit are off, only makes sense, because I have plenty of time. Why do I have plenty of time, you ask? WELL. At the very end of the night, I tried to pull the choke shaft out of my Carter BBD to do the Idle Tube Fix ™, and lo and behold I managed to shear the heads of BOTH the screws that hold the choke butterfly on. Turned over the shaft and lo and behold my screws were staked into place after tightening. FUUUUUUUUUUU.

I doubt highly I can remove those screws, and I’d be hard pressed to tell you where to go for Carter parts in town, I could find brass screws but that shaft? Maybe if I go dig around in the pull-a-part for a few hours. Plus this carb has been a royal pain in my balls (and the balls of thousands of others, if the insanely high number of forum hits on a google search for “carter bbd issues” is any indication), and a rebuilt from the parts store is $240. Frankly, I’ll be fucked if I spend a fucking DIME on a newly rebuilt Carter BBD when I have a Road Demon Jr 625 waiting on the bench for a thorough cleaning and an electric choke, and a 4bbl aluminum “Crosswinds” intake being shipped to me like… Monday. There’s the slight possibility that the stock throttle cable and kickdown lever assembly won’t fit right with the new intake, but a fix for that (which will very nicely transfer over to the new motor when it is ready) is $150 worth of Lokar shit away, and was very much on my list for the engine swap anyways. Sigh, it’s just money, right? Anyhow it’s stuck me in a very minor carman’s funk. I didn’t actually want to spend the money on this Lokar shit (and some brackets and shit from FBO Systems), or Bouchillon but at least it pays forward.