I went from San Berdoo to Kalamazoo, just to get away from you

This year I discovered traveling, and that's been a bad thing for Grace. She gets neglected far too often now. Perhaps the following will explain why my updates lately have been so few and far between.

Pear Lake, Seqoia NP

Pear Lake,Seqoia NP

Monkey Temple, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Balian Beach, Bali, Indonesia

Somwhere in Bali, Indonesia

Dirt Bike Tour, near Tabanan, Bali, Indonesia

Tokyo, sometime around midnight

San Bernadino National Forest

So that's what I've been doing while not working on Grace. Leave your hate mail in the comments section, thanks.

Obviously I haven't made all that much progress, and on top of that I've made another stupid mistake. You know what they say about measuring twice and cutting once? That only works if you measure correctly one of those two times. Turns out I didn't know what I was doing when I measured my driveshaft. Due to a little rust on the transmission yoke, I didn't insert the driveshaft completely so when I measured how much to remove, I was off by one inch. Let that be a lesson kids, don't be stupid like me.

Trans mount finished and installed

Shortened aluminum driveshaft

Shiny!

1.75" of trans yoke protruding from tailshaft housing

The yoke should generally protrude about .75-1" from the seal on the tailshaft housing at ride height. Turns out the yoke was on me (harhar) and I'd had the driveshaft shop cut my driveshaft too short. Not really knowing what else to do, I turned to the slightly delusional but quite helpful and competent TurboFord community. 

TurboFord is a forum I joined in the end of 2003 while plotting to turbo my Ranger. I was a senior in high school, and to me, was the only real reason for the internet to exist besides finding pictures of sweet mullets and ogling the new Mazda RX-8. To this day I still remember an article on a mullet website about a non-celebrity who drove a Chevy Celebrity. Well, I did a little interneting, and I found that article which I'll repost here. 

Although you wouldn't know it from the name of his car, Mark Hansenfuss of Pocatello, Idaho is a perfectly normal person. While not himself a celebrity, Mr. Hansenfuss drives a 1987, sky-blue Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport. An individual well-grounded in reality, the hard-working Sam's Club stockboy has never been one to let his car's fame and celebrity status go to his head. "A lot of people ask me if there's a lot of pressure, you know, driving a Chevy Celebrity. I mean it's not like it's a Dodge Diplomat. I mean, I'm driving a Celebrity here, I'm driving Jennifer Lopez, not Dick Cheney. But I don't let it get to me. I just try to keep my feet on the ground and remember the little people who made this possible." These "little people", to whom he refers, are in fact Hansenfuss's parents, who purchased the car for $1700 at a police auction. Hansenfuss is also renowned for giving his car treatment worthy of a true celebrity. "I change the oil every 3,000 miles. This baby has new shocks, a rebuilt carb, a CD player, a zebra-skin seat cover for the front bench seat, a performance muffler, split-fire sparkplugs, red windshield washer arms, a big "Chevy" sticker in the windshield, and I always use floral scented cat litter to catch the oil leak on my parent's driveway." Hansenfuss added that he has tentative plans to add a sticker to the back window depicting the popular cartoon character "Calvin" of "Calvin and Hobbes" urinating on a Ford logo. 
Although his is the sportier Eurosport model, with a stock maplight, power mirrors and foglights, Hansenfuss would clearly rather have any Celebrity, rather than no Celebrity. "When I was looking at cars, I looked at Plymouth Reliants and Hyundai Excels. Boooooring. It's like 'hey, I'm so Reliable and boring, buy me.' Or 'hey, look at me, I Excel in all my classes at school, I'm such a nerd'. No sir. Not for the Hansenfuss. It's Celebrity for me, or nothing." 
Mr. Hansenfuss has been a mullet-wearer for 14 years. 

I don't know who the original author was, but God bless him (or her). But once again, I digress. The guys at TurboFord were  kind enough to point me in the direction of a driveshaft spacer, to which I will herafter refer to as "the unstupider". The unstupider fits between the driveshaft and the pinion flange, essentially shortening the distance the driveshaft must span. This would have worked smashingly if only the Mustang and Explorer used the same pinion flange. They do not. So now I wait for a new unstupider which I hope will work. Keep those internet fingers crossed.

They built it right

The unstupider

The unstupider doesn't fit, thererfore I am still stupid

In other news, it seems I've purchased a Jeep. I've wanted an XJ for a couple years now and after shopping around I found a good deal on a 98 Cherokee with 172K on the clock. The only hitch is that it is in Utah, so my brother picked it up for me and a friend will drive it down to California for me in a few weeks. I need to fight the itch to modify this one so I can get Grace up and driving and sell the Subaru. Until next time, keep your stick on the ice!

No filter, just my phone and Utah's golden hour

Teach me how to dougie?

For the past few years I've wanted to visit Alaska, but never had the time or money. Finally this year I was able to go.  Alaska is a amazing place in so many ways but car culture isn't exactly booming there, which makes sense when you consider that it is half the size of the continental US and has 5 roads total. That's not to say that there are no interesting vehicles in Alaska. The people, the land that shapes them, and the tools they use to survive fascinate me.

I would gladly live in this, down by the river.

Box by FIAT

The American Dream

NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA BATMAN!

A double decker for two levels of freedom.

As much as I love cars, the ultimate in Alaska transportation is not a car. It's a small plane, and because of that I feel a little conflicted. I have nothing against small planes, and I wish I could love them. I'm just afraid that if I were to ride in one I would puke like cat in a dryer.You see, I'm one of the 15% blessed with motion sickness. Once I went for a spirited drive up a canyon road and had to get out to dry heave. I hear that's difficult to do in an airplane.

Alaskan parking lot

This is not car related at all, but I have to share. Anybody who has spent any amount of time around me in the past few years knows that I love bears. Bears are the best. Bears can do whatever they want and they get to sleep through the winter. Nobody messes with a bear. And for the first time in my life, I saw a bear in the wild. Actually, I saw 8 bears. And it was awesome.

Grizzly Bear; don't care.

So now I'll finally get to the reason you actually came here (I think). This week I gave Grace some much needed attention. I think I spent three evenings with her, working at a leisurely pace but mostly just enjoying the company and a soda, sometimes hanging out with my imaginary internet friends. 

As with most parts I've built for this car I had a rough sketch in my head that I scribbled on a piece of cardboard. You may have noticed I'm a hack with an angle grinder and a welder using third world fabrication techniques but if it works, it works. This week I built a transmission mount. I had the motor mounts finished before I swapped the engine and was waiting until I had the engine and subframe connectors installed to make a tranny mount. With both of those items out of the way, I could finally get the powertrain secured.

Beginnings of a U-channel

My anvil, vise, and brake.

U-shaped

The U-channel is made of some 1/8" mild steel sheet I cut out and scored with a cutoff wheel on the angle grinder. I bent it into shape but using a BBC cylinder head I plifered from Backyard Steve's old pile of junk, a harbor freight C-clamp and a hammer. A real brake would have sped up this process immensely.

smooth like a baby's bottom

I made a jig so I could match the angles on both sides of the crossmember.

The trans mount is about 95% finished. All that remains is a couple holes to drill in the U-channel for thru bolts and this job will be finished. I also started working on the driveshaft this week. If you remember, I picked up an Explorer driveshaft from the wrecking yard a couple months ago. It turns out the Explorer transmission has a different spline count than the T-5 transmision, so I had to switch yokes. I wasn't sure this would work, but I measured the u-joints and they appeared to be the same. I connected the T-5 to the Explorer driveshaft and it seemed to fit. It looks like I will have to have the driveshaft shortened about 3-3.5".

left: Ranger T-5 yoke       right: Explorer yoke

Ranger T-5 U-joint

Explorer U-joint

T-5 yoke from Ranger on Explorer aluminum driveshaft

BONUS!

This weekend I went to Galco's, a grocery store in Pasadena that only sells beverages. I picked up a large variety of diabeetus. One of the best parts about this trip was actually the parking lot. I spotted a massive Cadillac that caused me to break the tenth commandment. No, for those of you who skipped Sunday school, I didn't murder and didn't commit adultery with a Cadillac. I just coveted a little. It was soooo coooool! Anybody have any knowledge of these things? 

The most un-American thing I've ever done. Get hammered and sickled!

the band plays some song about forgetting yourself for a while

It's been a few weeks since I spent any quality time with Grace because I've been living my life on the run, on a different couch or backpacking pad every weekend. I was finally back in town so I tied up the loose ends on the subframe connector job. 

subframe bracket too wide for the subframe

Connector installed with cut bracket

Both sides of bracket spliced back together

Endcap installed on bracket

Cuts in floorpan to create clearance for subframe connectors

Welds tying subframe connector to floor

Removing crossmember material 

Beginning of welds from end of subframe to the tab on the right

Welds extending from the tab to the end of the subframe to add rigidity

The trans mount will connect to these sheetmetal boxes on both sides of the chassis

Vaughn trying (unsuccessfully) to attach a spare tire carrier to his trailer

Unfortunately that's all I have regarding Grace. It will be slow going for the next little while due to a lot of travel and lack of money for the old girl. But I do have a bonus section for you. These are the most interesting vehicles I spotted during the past weeks travels to Utah and Connecticut.

Ford Mustang II Cobra II. It's a bit like naming your son Robert Jr. Johnson II. I've never understood it.
This baby comes from ford's glory days of the late 70s when they were pushing 140 hp out of a 302CID V8.
I found it in Norwich Connecticut in the back lot of a Toyota dealer. It gave me Saturday Night Fever just
looking at it, and I had a primal urge to grow a mustache and find a woman with feathered hair and bell bottoms.

This Plymouth Sedan was found on Center Street Provo, in front of my favorite Pizza place in the world.
This one was love at first sight. She wasn't the least bit restored, and was perfect in every way.

You'll have to forgive the heavy Instagrammy filter, Google automatically applied it and I can't find the original.
This orange shortbed Ferd F-teenthousand is the stuff 13 year old me's dreams were made of. A whole lotta
years later, I still need one. Badly. 

This baby was hiding back from the road in a crappy garage, by a crappy house where one of my
girlfriends in college lived. I was walking by and just about had an aneurysm when I saw this. A
solid axle, leaf sprung, grave diggin', kid hidin', wife hidin', husband hidin' four wheels drive 'murrican
mini van. My buddy lives a block away and recieved a tongue lashing for never noticing it.