The Wandering Gypsie

He got quite the chuckle out of my posting, but felt he needed to add his two cents.. afterall, he is the one doing a good chunk of the work along with A. So, here’s my recap of Sunday/Monday, with his notes. Enjoy! (**ps** sorry the pics don’t exactly match up. it was too much to try and duplicate it exactly..)

sorry it’s kinda dark. but that’s the engine on top of the jack.

Ok, so Sunday night, the huz went out and started the process of removing the engine. He removed the tires, and disconnected a bunch of stuff. (gee, sorry for sounding so ‘technical’ but I was gone to the store while he did this so I don’t know everything that was done). I disconnected the electricals, the clutch linkage, throttle linkage and shifter linkage and fuel line.  Next, he propped up the engine with the jack, and a couple of pieces of wood. Which I can only think it was to not ‘injure’ the engine, but also to have evenly distributed weight. Yup that’s it mostly, I didn’t want to put too much strain on just 3 bolts. I think he then told me he unbolted it – all that held in the engine? (well for the most part) 3 bolts.

This was the extent of it on Sunday – 4 hours at most (actually less than that, this car is really easy to work on). Like I said, I was gone to the grocery store, we gotta eat too ya know *wink*

As it turned out, the huz had to take a day off of work monday, because the repair to his universal joint didn’t go as well as he’d hoped on sunday, so after getting the Volvo squared away, The huz & A. went to work on the massive chore of actually completely removing the engine from Roxie.  As you can see, we’re quite resourceful around here. Using what we have to get the job done. Those are cedar logs helping to hold up the engine.  Redneck engineering at it’s best!  *chuckle* I prefer to call it Yankee ingenuity.

they realized almost too late that the muffler was still attached. out came the leatherman to saw it off.

Huz is on the left, A is on the right – both working diligently (cussing ensued i’m sure) to completely detach the engine.

As the afternoon wore on, I had food duty. Not that I minded. I got to play with fire! *grin* I’m quite a good little fire faerie when it comes to grilling. Kinda jealous of that, I love playing with fire too, but you are so good at it also, I love my fire faerie. Monday night’s dinner was grilled lemon pepper chicken & hot dogs over a cedar wood fire! OMG! It smelled wonderful! I can still smell it in the house – the windows were open, and the wood was still kinda green, thus causing a bit more smoke than normal.  We could smell it in the garage, the smell of wood burning, 2 fire fighters, you do the math. (it’d been cut 2 weeks ago)

Anyway – yes this is important to the story –  The guys would call me out to take pictures of the process while I was making dinner.  (see told ya)

grill fodder! lemon pepper chicken legs and hot dogs..did i tell ya the cedar smelled AWESOME?!

I’m quite good at multi-tasking and because the cedar wood was still somewhat new, and none was split smaller than quarters, it took a while for the grill to get really going, so taking pictures of progress was a cinch!

Soon I’d gotten a nickname.. “the documentarian” or something like that. “A” thought I was nuts to be taking so many photos, but, I want to see where the journey started and watch the progress, and when Roxie is “done” (meaning drive-able and then some), I’d like to look back and see the progress.  Right now, it’s still too early for me to be able to do much, other than order parts and get the guys tools or parts necessary, but I suspect very soon, my hands will be working on her too!

For now, however, I’m happy enough preparing nomtastic food to feed the guys doing the grunt work *wink*.

grilling is fun! i got to play soot sprite

Ok, while I’m playing soot sprite & kitchen witch, I get called out again to go look at what they’ve done.. I swear y’all aren’t gonna believe some of this stuff.

A was like, so “Mz Documentarian wanna see your engine removed from your car?” So I went with camera in hand to watch them “drop the engine” this process took about 10 mins because they couldn’t find what was keeping the engine from, well, dropping. They tried a few different things – accidentally  broke the speedometer cable, Stupid me, I was looking at it the night before and just forgot to disconnect it. and then finally realized the axle was the “block” so the set out to remove the right side of the wheel & axle to get the engine out. I snapped a few more photos, gave them a hand with moving some parts/tools and then by this point, had to go back to KP because the grill was just about ready for the food.  As i was putting the chicken on the pan to bring to the grill,  i’m summoned yet again to the garage. Again, the resourcefulness of redneck engineering never ceases to amaze me. I kid you not, they made an engine hoist – out of a chain, padlock, and a ‘come along’. –Resourcefulness + engineer mentality.

makes me wanna say “Hey y’all hold my beer and watch this!”

I was wearing my fire helmet because of the age of the come-along, if the cable broke, well, ya, that plus with all that weight being suspended from above, just rather be safe.

I got several photos but only a couple came out, as I didn’t have a lot of room to take photos in the area they were working.  They successfully got the engine hoisted up and onto the stand that’s going to be a temporary holding spot for it. (It’s actually the huz’s homemade staff display rack he made out of piping used for commercial sprinkler work).

350+ pounds of engine sitting on top of the homemade staff display.

I helped in this process as well. After the engine was put on the rack, we had to move it back. the guys pulled and if a leg got ‘off kilter’ I had to kick it back into place to keep the rack even.

The whole purpose of pulling the engine was to pull the gearbox/differential to see what broke, and remove, so that it can be swapped with the some from the Corvair Spyder ( parts donor, soon to be here). With such a simple drive system as this, this is the easiest way to do it.

This was the last thing done before dinner.

It doesn’t seem like much, however it took several hours..  I dare say about 4 hours? give or take a few minutes. *wink* I’m pretty sure we had dinner around 7:30pm – which left approximately 30 mins for eating, then dessert was s’mores! which the kids thoroughly enjoyed.

The evening wrapped up with all 3 minions getting showers then off to bed, i put my feet up and watched “The Princess Diaries 2″ , then the huz and i snagged our clean up showers and went to bed.

I’d say it was a pretty darn productive day two right? If you’re interested in seeing all the photos from day two, check out my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/thewanderinggypsie

So, if you’re liking the journey so far, share it with your friends and make sure to follow me to keep updated on my latest wanderings!

Until next time,

~Gypsie