God-Fucking-Dammit….
I’m not a brave man. With enough time to contemplate, think things over, then check and re-check, I’m pretty sure I can do most anything. My Nemesis though, is the black magic known as electrickery (seems ideal coming from someone who’s looking at doing a custom loom himself) – It’s not too bad when we’re dealing with low amps and power supplies with fail safe and short circuit protection. But when it comes to 12V automotive electricity and batteries able to supply many many amps and set stuff on fire and explode and spray gallons of corrosive acid all over the neighborhood, I’m out.
Having pushed the elephant in the glass room around in front of me for long enough, I was running out of excuses and entries on my To-Do list:
- All Hoses checked and tightened for the nth time
- 4 liters of 10w40 poured into the engine (3.8 with 200ml on top for filter)
- Most of 1 quart in the diff
- Most of 2 quarts in the gearbox
- Basic electronic check (connect battery and see that nothing explodes) Note:1
- etc.etc.etc
all done, no more excuses – it was time.
So started adding water to the cooling system. (It takes 6 liters or thereabouts). Got 3 liters in there when I noticed the sound of trickling water?. DAFUQ? I mean, I’d always wanted a little water fountain thing in the garden for the birds – definitely not in the garage. So look beneath the car as best as one can when it’s finally on the floor. Most of my precious water after the first 1 and a half liter or so is on the ground. Great : ( Did I miss tightening a hose, are my clamps too weak. I mean, I didn’t replace all the cheapo hose clamps with T- types to have water, that’s not even under pressure yet, piss out…
Nothing to do but raise the car again so I can get beneath it and have a quick look. I can see where it’s coming from – the inlet on the water pump distributor thingy (I had to Google that too). So loosen clamp, re-seat, re-tighten, re-try. Same shit. Car up on blocks again, clamps all the way off, hose off. *Looks at inlet pipe*… “That doesn’t look very good”. Out comes the impact gun armed with a 12mm socket. As Adam Savage would’ve would’ve put it: “There’s your problem right there“…. fuck…
Hmmm. I could probably do a hack job with some surplus hose to see if everything is ok, but I really don’t want to so a new part has been ordered with new gaskets. (Kauf oder sterben)
However – Being determined now that I’d gotten myself this far, I did turn the key all the way, and lo and behold: she started right up. Only let it run for a few seconds, but it started and it didn’t catch fire and I didn’t burn down the garage. Fucking YAY for me and my (lack of) skills \o/
Note:1 Of course I’d already done this with a 10A lab supply, but that doesn’t mean connecting the actual battery is not scary.
Something Something MX5 