It's been thunder and lightning here in San Francisco.

How much thunder and lightning is there???

There's so much lightning that the mosquitos are being wiped out in droves by a 200,000,000 volt bug zapper.

 

Don't let those ugly, bullying bolts intimidate you dude...

The big, ugly bolts weren't nearly as difficult as all the other stuff in the way.
Brake line, wheel velocity sensor, a Freon pipe, 2 heater hoses, three pieces of interior liner for the wheel well, and a partridge in a pear tree.
The ball joint popped right out when I used my fan blade puller on it. The bigass bolts had Nylock nuts so, not 100 ft-lbs, just a struggle all the way down the shank.
I got so tired that I took a nap at 4:30 pm.
Tomorrow is probably cancelled for being too sore to work, but Saturday is planned for attacking the other side.

 

The big, ugly bolts weren't nearly as difficult as all the other stuff in the way.
Brake line, wheel velocity sensor, a Freon pipe, 2 heater hoses, three pieces of interior liner for the wheel well, and a partridge in a pear tree.
The ball joint popped right out when I used my fan blade puller on it. The bigass bolts had Nylock nuts so, not 100 ft-lbs, just a struggle all the way down the shank.
I got so tired that I took a nap at 4:30 pm.
Tomorrow is probably cancelled for being too sore to work, but Saturday is planned for attacking the other side.

I hurt just thinking about it.

 

I hurt just thinking about it.

It's going to be easier on Saturday. I won't be fighting my own ignorance!

Busted a knuckle with a crowbar because I didn't know to loosen the bushing nuts and rotate the studs out of the way.
That part alone will save me most of an hour!

To stay on topic, Lovely weather. I only broke a sweat during the cussing and bleeding parts.

 

It's going to be easier on Saturday. I won't be fighting my own ignorance!

Busted a knuckle with a crowbar because I didn't know to loosen the bushing nuts and rotate the studs out of the way.
That part alone will save me most of an hour!

To stay on topic, Lovely weather. I only broke a sweat during the cussing and bleeding parts.

I get it. So it only hurts when your heart beats.
Nice here as well. Cloudy, but the rain can't make it to the ground because it is dry. High of 80F.

 

I get it. So it only hurts when your heart beats.
Nice here as well. Cloudy, but the rain can't make it to the ground because it is dry. High of 80F.

I consider this a way to stay healthy. Getting old hurts, but becoming a couch potato is the road to death. I would much rather alternate between working and resting compared to just sitting and waiting for the end of me.

ps, congrats on the weather. Reminds me of Southern California (sigh). A steady diet of low humidity is something I remember fondly.

 

I consider this a way to stay healthy. Getting old hurts, but becoming a couch potato is the road to death. I would much rather alternate between working and resting compared to just sitting and waiting for the end of me.

ps, congrats on the weather. Reminds me of Southern California (sigh). A steady diet of low humidity is something I remember fondly.

I miss So. California. I lived in Newport Beech, Laguna Nigel, and San Diego. It's got to be the best weather in the world. If you wanted a new plant you just threw a seed out and waited a few weeks. I think I lived there for 10 or 12 years and saw a skim of ice once during that time.

 

A perfect, sunny 22°C (72°F), with sunrises marked by a fresh 18°C (64°F) ... no need for heaters nor A/C ... if only the rest of the year were like that in this place...

 

Yeah, cat's don't smell.
I bought a house in 1972. It smelled of cat pee. I wore out a gallon of Clorox and an ex-marine trying to get rid of the smell.
I checked again about 3 months ago. The present owner of the house said it still smells of cat pee.
Nobody has been able to get rid of that smell in 44 years!
So, yeah, cats don't leave an odor.

[sarcasm/off]

Maybe you and the current owners were the only non-cat owner of the house. There may have been 10 different cat-owning families living in that house since 1972.

 

Maybe you and the current owners were the only non-cat owner of the house. There may have been 10 different cat-owning families living in that house since 1972.

I have a sister-in-law-in-law that makes excuses for everything I talk about. Like you, she hasn't met the people or the situation she is making excuses for.

 

Heat index of 77F and sunny. Still, no sweat because I wasn't fighting my own ignorance today. I got the second upper control arm (with ball joint) out in 59 minutes and the new one in and tightened down 21 minutes later. I am sure I will use up another hour cleaning out pockets of dead leaves and putting the interior fender liners back in, but the second one was so much easier than the first one!

 

Three days of too cold to work outside, so I'm well rested and painless. Tomorrow will be 71 F and sunny. Time to get at the transmission. It has a drip at the drain plug, so I went looking for the dipstick. It doesn't have a dipstick! It doesn't have a filler tube! What?

Apparently Ford, "had a better idea". No way to check the transmission fluid and no way to top it off. They expect you to run the car until it has a leak, burn out the clutches, and buy a new transmission. That must be why it's on its third transmission! All the better for me. The dripping fluid looks pristine but nobody has checked it for 25,000 miles. I found a fill plug on the passenger side and will fit a tube to it. The drain plug has a center bolt to a stand pipe about 2 inches high. Any transmission fluid more than 2 inches deep in the pan will overflow through the stand pipe if you remove the center bolt. Just take out the center bolt and add fluid until it overflows.

Ford says to inject transmission fluid into the center tube by attaching a 1/8th inch male pipe thread adapter. Easy enough to find that but I'm not going to put in a pint of fluid at a time and take the tubing off to see if it overflows after every pint. What a PIB! I'm much more likely to fabricate a fill tube so I can stand up and add fluid until it overflows.

 

'tis the first time I've ever heard of a sealed-for-life transmission...

What was Ford thinking? gee... let's make a toaster-like transmission for our next model... if it breaks, throw it away and buy a new one! why bother with annoying oil-checks and repairs?

 

Mine has the same bullsh*t idea transmission.To drain the transmissions you have to remove the transs. diff. cover plate and then buy a new gasket.To refill it you need to locate reverse sender switch and then do it through it.
Its all done tovmake cars last shorter and not servicable at home.

 

Mine has the same bullsh*t idea transmission.To drain the transmissions you have to remove the transs. diff. cover plate and then buy a new gasket.To refill it you need to locate reverse sender switch and then do it through it.
Its all done tovmake cars last shorter and not servicable at home.

And so ford doesn't have to story the 800 service parts that make up a transmission. They just sell you a new transmission. For the past 30 year, all of the corporate world is examining how they can reduce inventory carrying costs. Look around at your local auto repair shops. There used to be three or four Transmission repair shops in every little town. Now, you have to drive to a neighboring town to find one. The transmissions in cars have improved and, not only have these ships gone away, so have the profits of auto companies in selling repair parts. So, replacement it is.

Also, auto companies have spent so much time optimizing the cost of every part, there is no longer a part that wears out first and the life of the entire transmission can be extended by replacing one key part. Those parts that were in pristine condition at 100 or 150k miles were considered "over engineered" and costs were reduced by making them with less steel or from cheaper alloys. So, if you do have a failure, chances are that other parts are close to failure as well. Then you say, how about a rebuilt transmission. If it was serviceable, I could buy a rebuilt transmission. Again, by the time someone disassembles a broken transmission, and buys and installs a rebuild kit (and stores that transmission until someone needs it), the car owner may as well have bought a replacement transmission that was efficiently made from scratch on an assembly line. The assembly lines are highly automated and the points where humans are needed, the new wage scale makes them "cheaper than robots" type labor instead of the skilled transmission technicians at the local AAMCO transmission shop. The AAMCO technician would appreciate the challenge but, he knows it is not worth the effort.

Finally, transmissions have become way more complicated that the 3-speed automatic in your grandfather's buick. Mercedes loves to call their advancement 4-matic because it was one of the first to go beyond the industry-standard 3 speed automatic. Now, to improve fuel economy and keep engine revs as low as possible and still provide reasonable power, transmissions with 7, 8 and 9 speeds are available. All computer controlled shifting with torque limiting and traction control and some with automatic downshifting to limit speed on hills. The local AAMCO guy just cannot keep up with the complexity - which is implemented differently across each brand or even models within brands.

A new one is not a bad idea.

 

Mine is a manual so it should be able to be serviceable since its fairly simple when compared to auto.

 

Mine is a manual so it should be able to be serviceable since its fairly simple when compared to auto.

That's true, but as I said, there are multiple reasons, not just complexity of the box.

 

it is not worth the effort.

Do you mean I went to transmission school for nothing?

Actually, I heard the same speech before I went to transmission school. I can agree that making a profit on transmission repairs is a failing game but...I don't have the kind of cash flow that says I can drop $3400 on a transmission without feeling the pain. I look at the mule from the other end. I've never spent more than $600 in parts to fix a transmission. It takes me 3 days and 3 trips to the parts store, but it's about $3000 cheaper than hiring somebody else. Hmmm...I can work for $1000 a day and be cheerful about it.

the skilled transmission technicians at the local AAMCO transmission shop.

They are generally more skilled than I am. They usually don't have an instruction book in one hand while they assemble a transmission.
But they are dirty, rotten scoundrels. They prey on people with no knowledge. I saw them look at a car with a leaky modulator valve ($12, external part) and sell the customer a whole transmission. After I went to transmission school, I took my van to get its first annual fluid change and band adjustment and they tried to sell me a new transmission at two different AAMCO shops. That's three out of three for highway robbery.

 

Gorgeous, sunny 20°C (68°F) down here. Perfect day for a leisure walk, listening to music... and not worrying about my car's transmission.

 

Gorgeous, sunny 20°C (68°F) down here. Perfect day for a leisure walk, listening to music... and not worrying about my car's transmission.

That's why we don't have to do that.