No Rest For The Wicked

Busy, yeah, that's it, been busy.
Today is what, Sunday?

So,Thursday at work this guy I bought an engine from sight unseen a year ago finally gets it together and says we need to go get it out of his buddy's garage.

You read that right, a year ago I paid $500 of my tax return monies for a supposedly low mile Chevy 350 crate motor and never actually took posession of it until now.

For those who don't know what a crate motor is, it's a Chevy approved professionally rebuilt engine you order and it gets sent to you in a crate or on a skid. You can usually tell by the valve covers they put on 'em, Mr. Goodwrench is a dead giveaway.

Usually a long block meaning it has the heads on it too.

So Friday, he gets off of Graveyard and calls me at ten, I wake up and drive fifty miles to Longview Washington, a town I loathe, and meet him on the side of the road so I can follow him to his buddy's house.

We get there, wrestle the fuckin engine hoist around, it literally has flat spots on a couple of the steel wheels and pick the heavy bastard up.

It's extra heavy because there is a Turbo 350 transmission still bolted to the fucker.

That goes with the engine it seems.
What can I say?
SCORE!.
That's worth $500 all by its self.

So we wrestle the damn thing out of the corner of the garage, it takes 4 of us and I back my rig under it.
Thud and it's in, push and heave and got it in all the way so I could shut the tailgate.

El Camino's are supposed to have Air Shocks so you can pump them up when you put something in the back.

Not this one.
The fucking suspension cried Mommy and bottomed clear the fuck out.

I then had to drive fifty miles back with zero suspension on the freeway with crazy motherfuckers going 85 miles an hour because the speed limit is 70.

By the time I got back into town it was time for me to head to work so I just drove straight in.
Notice it's not covered up?
The Weather Man said it was supposed to start raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock at about five in the morning after I get off at eleven from Swingshift.

That means I need to get my skinny ass home, clean a spot out of the disaster zone I call a garage, wrestle my own heavy assed fucking engine hoist around and then pick this heavy motherfucking combo up and somehow get it inside out of the weather, by myself.

If you haven't seen a picture of me lately let me just say skinny is the operative word here.

I am 55 years old, almost but not quite six feet tall and weigh a whopping 155 pounds.

I don't have muscles, I have over developed tendons.

Every ounce of that weight is plain fucking determination, stubbornness and mean.

Your Goddamn right I got that fucker out., I got it in the garage and on a moving cart and then rolled that sonofabitch right the fuck out of my way so I could get the fucking garage door shut.

I did have a little bit of help from my sister in law, all four foot six of her. She works a rotating shift and happened to be on Swing last week so she swung by to bullshit with her sister.
That's another Blog post all by its self someday......

She helped guide me while I backed up under the hoist and then pulled a bit while I levered the front wheels of the hoist over the joint in the concrete where the driveway meets the garage floor.
That is when the hook slipped on the chain bolted to the engine and the engine went straight up and down with the transmission pointed straight at the ground and dumping tranny fluid all over the fucking floor.
This ain't a good picture but I was rather in a fucking hurry as you can imagine.

So, That was all on Friday right?
I finally fell the fuck down and went to bed.

Saturday morning at OH MY GOD ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME, my wife wakes me up and hands me the phone.

My little girl has broke down over in Portland with "smoke coming from the front of the car".

This is wimmen speak for either a blown hose, water pump or radiator in case you are unfamiliar with their dialect.

So I drag my fucking carcass out of my nice warm bed out in the POURING FUCKING RAIN that the weatherman had promised and head off half asleep to another town I fucking loathe, Portland Oregon.
I stopped and got some gas, coffee, a maple bar and headed across the bridge.
She called me back while I was on my way to tell me some good samaritan had looked at it and informed her the radiator had split at the top. She had also moved locations into an auto parts store parking lot.

Convenient that, I thought.

So I finally find her and she has got the boyfriend I haven't met yet with her.

Daddy Mode *Enabled*.

Seems like a nice enough kid, I mentally remind myself to make a point of showing the little fucker my new shotgun and introduce myself.

I take one look at where she is pointing at the radiator and immediately condemn that motherfucker.
Right at the seam where they crimp it together.
Typical.

We head inside out of the rain and get a price on a new one.
$175 but they don't have it of course. Their store a couple miles away does though.

I seem to recall her older sister lives around here somewhere, I have never been to their house yet.
Yep, a mile down the road.
They got a garage?
Yep
Call her, tell her to have her old man clean out the front just enough to get the nose of this fucker in there.

So we drive over there, pull into the driveway, I retrieve the youngest one and head out to get a new radiator.

Of course this KIA Sparta 5 or whatever the fuck it is , some little SUV, is all metric.
My Chebby is all standard.

What does daddy have in his tool kit?
One guess and it ain't a bunch of metric tools.

My son in law has a few odds and ends, I actually have a couple metric wrenches and a socket, no ratchet but there is a small breaker bar in the bottom of the bag.

Between what I have, what he has and the little pocket crescent wrench I carry everywhere, I actually got that fucker changed out, with their help, in about an hour or so.
I couldn't believe it.

By then it is almost two in the afternoon and between all the activity the day before, the lack of sleep and all this excitement, I am fucking beat.

I says my goodbye's, snag a couple pictures of my girls and my grand daughter and hit the fucking road.

I came home, fell down, took a lengthy nap then woke up a bit, went back out in my garage and started moving shit around to make more room to walk around in. I am taking my engine hoist apart to store it somewhere because it takes up a bunch of room.

I am going to get my first cuppa of the day here in a second then kick back for an hour or so and then head back out there, The Wife is gone all day so it's just me and all these fucking cats.

Thanks for stopping by, this is why it's been a bit quiet around here.

I must be a wicked motherfucker, eh?