Stage 2a – shocks, bushings, wheel bearings, big brakes, cv halfshafts (too much…)

What happens when you buy the cheapest car ever and then drive it as hard as you can? Well, besides that tingly feeling on the backs of your wrists and neck as you pitch so violently into corners that oncoming cars actually just drive off the road to avoid you, you begin contemplating how quickly the side of your face would wear through when you roll the car onto its side with the windows down.

Oh, and you actually begin to realize WHY the car was so cheap. Very quickly.

In my case, it is because everything is broken. Or so old as to operate as though it was broken. Which frankly, is worse, because it makes a new part harder to justify. “Well, this isn’t officially broken yet…”

Thus begins the ridiculous-parts-buying binge. Not only am I buying ridiculous parts (how many cotter pins can one man have?) I am buying a ridiculous amount of them. I have three boxes of crap to install, all of which is contingent upon the purchase of some obscure thing that I can’t remember.

As an example, I bought a Brembo big brake kit. Awesome! Aluminum calipers, vented rotors, braided steel lines – come on! This is car geek heaven. Unfortunately, I never received the pins that hold the brake pads into the calipers. I have 26 thousand cotter pins, 10 bobby pins, and one Bobby Brown cassette tape (My Prerogative), and yet no damned caliper pins. I had to have a friend machine some for me. This has been the story of these parts.

Or how about this? I have CV style halfshafts to replace my crazy “sliding” halfshafts (I can still hear Hanz and Viktor laughing about this one in the BMW design lab back in 1965… “Hey Hanz… check ‘zis out… Ve vill fill zem vis ninety weight GEAH OIL! And make ze boots clear so zat ze driver can check ze fluid level ven zey park ze car. But, no one vill do it because zey are so shtoopit! And ve add ze tiny drain plug on each side! So cute. So Shtoopit! Hahahahahaha!”) and I don’t have bolts to secure these new halfshafts to the differential.

I will get this done. But not soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 7th, 2005 at 5:48 pm and is filed under 1600-2, Cars, Vehicles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.