I saw an amazing concert accordionist this evening. She gave a small recital at Sherman Clay in Bellevue. It was a very intimate setting with about fifty people. Her best quality is subtlety. Too many accordionists confuse virtuosity with artistry. There are many purported accordion virtuosi who spend their entire programs playing as fast as ( Read more... )

I did two great things today: I fixed the Cadillac and went to visit Grandpa ( Read more... )

Today my friend Greg brought his 1998 Mercury Sable over to replace the head gasket. I was skeptical that the head gasket was the reason it was losing coolant. We started with a compression test. The compression tester didn't fit in the long spark plug holes so we had to go to Schuck's for spark plug non-foulers to get the compression gauge to ( Read more... )

The Pontiac is now road worthy. I got up at 6:45am and called around to see if any auto parts stores had a coolant tank in stock. Schuck's had it. I bought the tank, took it home and installed it. With the new tank the cooling system held pressure to spec and ran at a perfect 195°F. Danna went out for a pair of used tires to put on the car to ( Read more... )

Pontiac reassembly commenced at 10am when Jim showed up. His wife let him spend the day with me working on cars. That's always a treat for Jim. We picked up this morning where the job left off last night. The intake manifold went on, then the accessories, then the drive belt, then the various wires and hoses were connected. The pieces went ( Read more... )

When I was in my teens Schuck's was a great place to buy auto parts. Grandpa and I would drive to Puyallup and buy parts at the Schuck's on Meridian at 120th. We would stop at KFC and get fried chicken and eat lunch and then head home and do whatever job we were working on. Now, Schuck's is part of O'Reilly Auto Parts. O'Reilly is the Wal-Mart ( Read more... )

I removed the exhaust manifold. I didn't have to climb under the car to do it. With some creative wrenching and a flex-head ratchet I was able to get the exhaust pipe off the manifold and then get the manifold off the head. I pulled the rocker arms off the head and then removed the head bolts from the block. The head came off easily ( Read more... )

I mostly finished taking the Pontiac engine apart. I have to remove the exhaust manifold from the rear cylinder head and then remove the head. At that point I will have completed the necessary tear down. At the point where I stopped for the day I found another important clue to the problem with the Pontiac: one of the rocker arm bolts pulled the ( Read more... )

Today I tore into the Pontiac for the first time. I'm really comfortable working on older, RWD GM vehicles, like my truck or the Ol' Buick. GM really knew how to build those cars. They were exceptional and although there were some weak points in the designs those vehicles were easy to work on because there was a lot of room to access various ( Read more... )

The truck liveth! After several futile days of trying to remove a 1 9/16" freeze plug from the side of the engine block I managed to pull it out. I tapped the bottom back into the block and then pried the top out with my new locking flex-head prybar from Sears. I had always thought of flex-head prybars as a luxury tool- the kind of thing men ( Read more... )