well, this is just great... (rant)

[David Liu <dyliu@pacbell.net>]

so, like i've said before, my car shudders upon take off. shifts between 
gears are no problem at all.

i get the car on the drive-up ramps and start looking around the rear 
motor/xmission mount. i looked at the plate that attaches to the 
transmission case via three threaded studs. the bottom one displayed more 
thread than the upper two.. hmmm. (well come back to this in a minute)

i then inspect the upper angle plate that has the two nuts that are a pain 
to get to. i hand torque one of them - guess what? it's loose. that's just 
great. so i torque it back down and do the same all around.

(back to the xmission mount plate) i start to torque down the nut and it 
becomes loose. oops, i think, i must have stripped it. so i begin 
unthreading the bolt out by removing the nut. the bolt comes out and sure 
enough, about 1/4"-3/8" of the casing thread is mangled. i worry a bit and 
then it dawns on me (duh) that some moron before me (probably some lamer 
mechanic who either doesn't give a shit or is just stupid or absent-minded) 
didn't thread the bolt into the case enough. so, i painstakingly (i didn't 
have another nut to lock the other nut to the bolt) use vise-grips and a 
rag to cover the thread and start threading it back in. finally, i thread 
the bolt all the way in, torque the three nuts on all bolts and - done!

take it for a drive and sure enough it reduces the shudder considerably. 
now i _really_ need to replace the mount to get it all the way done.

ok, pop open the hood, check oil, top it off, do the visual inspection and 
decide to check the timing belt (it's due for a replacement soon). i take 
the cover off - no problem. after inspection, i put the thing back on and 
had a difficult time getting the pos plastic cover on just right, and i end 
up guessing at where the hex bolt's supposed to go. seems right, i start 
torquing down. all of a sudden, it gets loose. *!@&@^$!@^^%!!!! i stripped 
the thread in the block. this is _just_great_...

so it looks like i'll need to repair the thread with the coil and all in 
the block. luckily it's not a mechanical, moving part.

that's all.

ps - for those of you who still jack up the car to do things under the car, 
i highly recommend using car ramps. no worries about jack points, etc..


--
Email LIST problems to: scirocco-l-probs@scirocco.org.
To unsubscibe send "unsubscribe scirocco-l" in the message to majordomo@scirocco.org