To any of my loyal readers who showed up at my house to claim their popsicle for reading all 100 posts, I apologize. You probably came to my door and knocked and knocked but to no avail. And for that I am sorry. I moved back to California.
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| Grace in front of the Michigan house the last time I saw it |
Sooo yeah, the last couple months have been rather eventful. For the past few months the wife and I had been looking at job opportunities in California. The past year and a half of pandemic, lockdowns, and other nonsensical world events precipitated by nonsensical policies got us thinking a lot about life. We both had good jobs, and a great house that we loved. But the distance from family was hard, particularly during the pandemic. Now I do have a cousin who lives in Michigan, and he and his wife have been real MVPs (Michigan's Valuablest Personages). We had won the neighbor lottery as well. We are going to miss them terribly, but we wanted the kids to be able to be around their cousins and grandparents more than once a year or so. Michigan winters are also pretty miserable. I mean the weather is bad, but that's not the worst of it. The social hibernation is a total life suck. Now for a garage hermit like me, that's not intolerable, but my wife is a social creature. Me, I missed the mountains both for the mountain roads (Grace was always intended to be a canyon carver) and the mountain biking.
Just a couple weeks before #2 was born, an opportunity to transfer to Orange County came up in my wife's company, and shortly after he was born it was made official. I had been looking unsuccessfully to find an automotive engineering job in California for a few months. Then just a week after #2 was born, a former colleague at Toyota who I'd been talking with via LinkedIn asked me if I wanted to apply for a contract position within Mercedes Benz R&D. The rest is history. I started work just last week and will be working on Sprinter van diesel emissions controls. But let's back up just a bit...
A week before we were to move, I had finished work at Toyota and all our effort was going into packing and prepping the house for sale. Oh, and keeping the children alive. Just one of those tasks is exhausting, but we were trying to do all three. I thought it would be nice to have my cousin and his family over on a Sunday night so we could hang out before moving day and I could take my cousin for a ride in the newly functional Falcon. The weather was nice, the intakes were singing, and the transmission was shifting oh so smooth, and then it happened. I blipped the throttle to downshift into second, and I heard a couple horrible clanks, the engine lost all power, and I came to a stop. The engine was barely running, and so I shut it off. Then when I went to restart, it refused to fire.
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| Tow trucks are the coolest!!!! |
Eventually the car made it home on a tow truck. Not so exciting for me, but #1 thought it was the best thing ever. He's very into tow trucks. I made friends with the tow truck driver who was terribly disappointed that we were moving the next week.
When I got a minute, I took a look at what might be wrong. The cranking sounded offbeat, so I took a log of the time between teeth on the crank trigger wheel. This crank trigger is a 36-1, which means you would expect to see a fairly consistent time between 34 teeth, and then see one time period that is roughly double the average time period for the previous 34 teeth.
What we see in this data log is roughly the pattern I described above, but with one small exception. during each of the cycles (35 time periods) there were 2 very short periods. This meant that at a certain point in the engine's rotation, the crank was spinning much faster than the rest of the rotation. I figured this meant that the crank was spinning, but the cam was stationary. If the cam were stationary, that meant that on two cylinders (opposite each other in the firing order) with their valves propped open in a similar fashion were causing this recurring fast spot in the cranking. For a visual confirmation, I popped the rocker cover off and cranked the engine. The complete lack of motion in the valvetrain confirmed that indeed, the cam was not moving.
Well it's all fine and good to know this, but it this threw a terrible wrench into my plans for shipping the car. I had already arranged to have the car shipped, but shipping a broken car is far more expensive than shipping a running car. I may have been able to fix it, but attempting to do so would have netted me a furious spouse, at best. The updated quote was $800 more than the original quote for the running car. I didn't really like that idea, so I shopped around and found a broker who said they'd ship it for $250 more than the original quote. This turned out to be a mistake. I waited two full weeks for the broker to tell me they found someone who would ship my car but it would be yet another $550 dollars. I almost feel bad for the guy on the other end, who received a tongue lashing. I ended up going with a different broker who I had spoken to previously, and while the price was the same, he was at least honest with me. And then a week later, covered in sticks and leaves, but all in one piece, the old lady arrived at the party!
So here she is, and here she'll sit for at least a few more weeks. Perhaps after a routine is established in this household I'll find some time to revive the problematic old girl. In the meantime, stay fresh and remember: Without Woodrow Wilson, there would have been no Hitler.
