The "Situations Only A GRM-er Would Find Themselves In" Thread

Knurled wrote: In a non-"crazy cat lady of cars" story: spending 2 hours fabricating a bracket that I could buy from Summit for $11.

I do this all the time...access to lathe, mill, and tons of scrap, most of its little adapters, flanges, and such. My craziest was i spent 13hrs machining a power steering pulley i could have bought for less than $20 used online. But wheres the fun in that?

Laugh while reading this thead, and think I am not doing so bad! I only have 5 cars stashed in two different cities

I do have still have keys on my ring, to cars that don't even exist anymore.

icaneat50eggs wrote: Getting busted by your wife for your internet history. Not for porn but because you broke your 6 month ban from craigslist

I read ^^this^^ out loud to my wife, her response:

"Really? 6 months!?, how does one make that happen?"

Madhatr wrote:

icaneat50eggs wrote: Getting busted by your wife for your internet history. Not for porn but because you broke your 6 month ban from craigslist

I read ^^this^^ out loud to my wife, her response: "Really? 6 months!?, how does one make that happen?"

My only guess would be a Maserati Biturbo.

Brett_Murphy wrote: In reply to Rufledt: It depends what's in the fridge, really. There is a gradient of acceptable starting at snacks, going through to beer and then on to bearings at the top.

There's some cheeses (i'm in WI, i got a lot of cheese), very few drinks left despite starting the week with lots (it's been hot here), and i think a bottle of crappy vodka left in the freezer by the fridge's previous owner. There's a stereo on top of it and a GRM sticker on the freezer door, however.

Esoteric Nixon wrote:

mndsm wrote: Having to stop and count which cars you have, and what state they're in. (Im down to four, but i still have them in three states. Mn, florida, and indiana)

Volaré?

The volare and ms3 are in mn. The other mx6 is gone. Ben has the race car in Indianapolis. The mini and the prism went in the divorce. The corolla came with me.

Pulling a tranny for my caprice from a caprice in a junkyard.that last bellhousing bolt by the distributor is a bitch but if you jack up the tranny a bit there's room. Walk to get my Jack from the truck and get told it's " unsafe to use your own jacks in the yard" but get told that precariously stacking tires and brake drums is in fact far safer than a jack.

So I have my gf standing on the drive shaft as a lever to push the tranny up so I can stack various refuse under the tranny so I can get the last bolt but I can't get it high enough to reach with my short wrench.solution?

Dig thru cars in the junkyard til I find some hot pink adhesive bandage still in its wrapper and use 3 wrenches wrapped together to get a longer wrench

Antihero wrote: Pulling a tranny for my caprice from a caprice in a junkyard.that last bellhousing bolt by the distributor is a bitch but if you jack up the tranny a bit there's room. Walk to get my Jack from the truck and get told it's " unsafe to use your own jacks in the yard" but get told that precariously stacking tires and brake drums is in fact far safer than a jack. So I have my gf standing on the drive shaft as a lever to push the tranny up so I can stack various refuse under the tranny so I can get the last bolt but I can't get it high enough to reach with my short wrench.solution? Dig thru cars in the junkyard til I find some hot pink adhesive bandage still in its wrapper and use 3 wrenches wrapped together to get a longer wrench

Reminds me of the seatbelt snatch strap solution.

chiodos wrote:

Knurled wrote: In a non-"crazy cat lady of cars" story: spending 2 hours fabricating a bracket that I could buy from Summit for $11.

I do this all the time...access to lathe, mill, and tons of scrap, most of its little adapters, flanges, and such. My craziest was i spent 13hrs machining a power steering pulley i could have bought for less than $20 used online. But wheres the fun in that?

I'll have to keep you in mind if I need an out-of-production pulley...or when I'm ready to get redundant V belt pulleys made for the Samurai.

"Stop trying to do a burnout in the uhaul" -swmbo

In reply to GameboyRMH:

I even made it underdriven cause the steering was too numb. The magical abilities of a lathe haha

In reply to mndsm:

I recall the Uhaul guy going over the insurance policy and i asked "so if i ramped it off a sweet jump and totaled it, youd give me another?" He said without missing a beat "yup"

In reply to chiodos:

We get the extra insurance for a reason.

In reply to chiodos:

There's the rental rallycross solution. Might not be very competitive but it'd be fun as hell.

And I thought I was being nuts for trying to turn a pressure washer cart (had a broken pump) into a welding cart using the ancient Hobart Handler I bought from the CL. Pulled some angle iron from a sleeper couch frame I saved. But I still need some 3/4 square tubing and four 1" freeze plugs. And I still need to work out how to attach the gas bottle. But by the time I am done I may have learned to weld a little bit. Maybe.

$9 a day insurance? Hell yeah!

I do plan to take a rental on a rallycross but at the moment i dont think we have any rallycross events anywhere local due to the birmingham think. Moving to the PWN in 5 weeks so maybe i can try it out there haha

In reply to chiodos:

No need for local. Fly and drive since it'll be a rental. Bonus points for not knowing anyone at the event when you show up with the rental Uhaul.

When the kid delivering pizza has a nicer car than you do.

At 4:00 am you finish the motor rebuild and install. At 4:30 you take off for limerock. What could go wrong.

I'm gonna let my wife read this thread and then she will know I'm not "that" bad...

dean1484 wrote: At 4:00 am you finish the motor rebuild and install. At 4:30 you take off for limerock. What could go wrong.

It won't break. If you took your time, had it ready a week before, etc. you'd run into a million problems and leaks. I can't say I've never dropped the heads back on a motor and left for a road trip 12 hours later...

You spend more on a set of sticky track tires than you paid for the car.....

rslifkin wrote:

dean1484 wrote: At 4:00 am you finish the motor rebuild and install. At 4:30 you take off for limerock. What could go wrong.

It won't break. If you took your time, had it ready a week before, etc. you'd run into a million problems and leaks. I can't say I've never dropped the heads back on a motor and left for a road trip 12 hours later...

BTDT. March 2006: Finished first re-build/install on the Millenium Escort at 3:30AM, drove 45 minutes on the break-in oil, changed oil/filter, loaded SWIMBO, one of the WildScotsKids and luggage and departed Tulsa at 5:15AM for a non-stop drive to Chicagoland to pick up a 2003 P71. Went to Goose Island Brewery for dinner that night and fell asleep with my forehead down on the mouth of my bottle amber ale... Before dinner had even been brought to the table...

dean1484 wrote: At 4:00 am you finish the motor rebuild and install. At 4:30 you take off for limerock. What could go wrong.

I have also done similar... freshened the motor on the vette before power tour 2011. Took it for the first shake down run at 1:30am the day we were supposed to leave, got 3 hours of sleep, drove it to work (blew the power steering return line and replaced with one of the vacuum line from the head lights), worked 8hours, drove home, packed the car and left for Indianapolis.

Some where out side of Peoria, several hundred miles from home at a gas stop around 11pm, I looked at the front wheel and realized I never torqued it. I dug in the car got tools, and was finishing up just as the wife was coming out of of the gas station with a "Ummmm what are you doing?"