While I’ve scratched the inner-machinist itch with a small welder, a little tool and die making on a brake lathe, and my silver-soldering gunsmith work as “Bubba Mischief”, I still pine for the full size lathe and mill that couldn’t possibly fit in my present home. Along with that, since I’m still dreaming, I’d want someone like tubalcain (a/k/a mrpete222) as my next door neighbor.

Failing that, this former shop teacher’s videos are the next best thing, and if you know anything about metalworking you’ll agree that in the age of outsourcing our manufacturing to China and India, these videos on molding, casting, model making, and machine work are a national treasure.

(clickable photo)

At the first junkyard automobile recycling center, the pickings were slim. I scored an intact passenger’s side headlight with a broken aiming hardware. I bought it anyway because then I would be able to drive at night with two headlights, instead of being “revenue enhancement fodder” for the county’s finest. I figured that I’d just cable-tie the thing in there roughly aimed the proper way and look for a better one. Meanwhile, I’d still be able to drive past dark.

At the second junkyard automobile recycling center, I found a hood, a intact headlight, and an intact side marker light. I had already determined that the passenger’s side fender was salvageable and there was almost no damage to the front bumper.

I installed the hood first, as it made a reference for the rest of the front-end. I would have to get the hood latch lined up properly and the hood gave me a good target. Then I did a little frame straightening with a borrowed hydraulic bodywork tool and the BFH. I only needed to fix the front-end and hood-latch area, wheel alignment was not affected. Then the headlights and such just bolted in. No pictures, I was too busy. All around I think I spent 25 hours or so shopping and beating panels.

Costs:
first (broken) headlight $23
Second headlight $23
side marker light $8
hood $42

Total ~$96

If the prices seem cheap, they are. It helps much if you go to a “u-pick it, u-pull it” type of junkyard. It also helps if you have an old enough and common enough car such that they end up getting to the yard in the first place, unstripped.

I’ve still got to attach the front grill, and I’ve got to paint that new hood, but at least I’ll not be meeting officer friendly.

Insurance? Well, it’s an old enough vehicle that I don’t keep comprehensive coverage on it. It’s a personal gamble that I’ve won already many times before. I’ve already had this car for two years or so and saved more than this repair in insurance payments even counting in my labor.

Yea, I have a beater and as soon as I get all of god’s mistakes fixed on the thing, I’m gonna have to try this. It’ll look a lot better than a rattle can primer camo job.

Details here, and no, I don’t think this Corvair is a beater.

Photo stolen from the linked page (but he says that doing so is OK), and I reduced the size/quality via gimp.

Rough steps for moving a WordPress blog to a new server, while also moving the blog out of the root and into a subdirectory such as /blog/

Before starting, make sure you have the needed essential mod_rewrite skills.

1. Turn comments off on old blog
2. (Optional) Navigate to SK2.2 plug-in interface panel and flush all the spam out of your MySQL database to save a bit of space.
3. Using the backup plug-in, backup your entire WP database, and save it on the server. Include those needed SK2.2 tables in the backup
4. Download entire backup of your blog to home PC, including server backup file.
5. Create /blog/ subdirectory on new server
6. Upload files to new server
7. Uncompress your database backup and upload WP database to new server using MyPHPadmin.
8. Edit and upload (overwriting the old file) an updated /wp-config.php so that the new blog will query the proper database
9. (Assuming you don’t already have some special stuff in .htaccess), rm . (your old) htaccess;
10. Close your browser and other web tools. As root, edit your local PC’s /etc/hosts file to point to your new server. This should override worldwide DNS for just your machine.
11. Go to http://standardmischief.com/blog/wp-admin/upgrade.php and do an “upgrade” (might not be needed, but I did it)
12. Log in to blog, and go to http://standardmischief.com/blog/wp-admin/options-general.php . Update the both the WordPress address (URI) and the blog address (URL) field to http://standardmischief.com/blog/
13. Navigate to http://standardmischief.com/blog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php . Update your permalinks
14. Add “If you can read this message, the server switchover is working”, type post. Also add a test comment.
15. Do a “chmod 644 /blog/.htaccess”
16. Do whatever is needed to properly create the root .htaccess, and then also set the privileges to 644.
17. Test blog, test mod_rewrite. Make sure your feeds are properly redirecting with the proper 301 code.
18. Once you are convinced things are working, edit your DNS records on your domain to point to your new blog
19. Remove that line in your /etc/hosts file (/etc/host is the file in Linux, it’s different for different OS).

I don’t know what’s in this stuff, or why its not sold everywhere on the planet, or why people keep telling me that they no longer make the stuff because of EPA regulations, but it works. It seems to dissolve rust. It’s fully an order of magnitude better at penetrating than olde water displacing number forty.

Once I had to move a lot of studs off of an engine block to transfer them over to another block. I’m not exactly sure why the rebuilt block didn’t come with the whole 10 bux extra worth of studs. I would have even ordered and paid for them if I had the documentation that told me what I needed. If you ever do an engine swap, you will burn up an amazing amount of time running around to pick up this or that, but it’s not like I could have ran out and bought new studs at the local, convenient, 24 hour, metric weird hardware emporium. So I either had to reuse the studs I had, or overnight them from someplace like MSC (also recommended, a mecca of pure unobtainum).

I used the Kroil, let them sit for 30 minutes, and then put on double nuts locked together so I could back the stud out. The short story was that I got every single stud out intact for reuse.

Tonight, I tackled Toyota half shaft number 4. I should have tried the Kroil first, but I thought I had my magic mojo in the silver slapper I had rented. About to give up in frustration, I gave it the holy sprinkle drenching of Kroil, and stepped out for a brainstorming half mile hike. I attacked with the prybar when I got back and actually made some progress. I reattached the silver slapper and finally got the damn thing out. The bearing was rusted pretty well to the steel casting it was mounted to.

Besides hardware stores, lots of shooting supply mail order places carry it too. I’ve used both the liquid and the spraybomb cans and they work equaly well. Try Froogle.

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Extra tags, for Google’s sake: driveshaft, half-shaft, camry, repair

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Although it’s not a complete step-by-step, the driver’s side half-shaft was covered in my blog here.

I’ve done other makes, and they have been removed via some hex bolts, or roll pins or even just yanking hard, without even disassembly of the suspension. Toyota sux in this regard (though I think they get the rest of the car pretty much right).

Unless you have arrived here via a search engine, this is going to be a boring post. It’s also most unchristmas-like, despite the date, so you have been warned.

–below the fold–

Anyway, I’ve never been a fan of the speedy boots, and rebuilt driveshafts are pretty cheap, so I decided to go that route.

The first thing to do is get the car up and on a jackstand. Remove the wheel, the driveshaft nut, then the brakes, and then the brake disk rotor. By unbolting the lower control arm, you can pivot the strut away from the car and get enough slack to remove the driveshaft from the center of the wheel (steering knuckle). (That’s about all the detail you are going to get, this is not a how-to here.)

Now comes the PITA part, removing the other end from the transaxial. There is a specal type of snap ring keeping the shaft in place, you don’t have to remove it before you pull the driveshaft. In fact you can’t, because it’s inside the transaxel, inaccessible There is a special tool, but I did not find it promptly because I was searching for “driveshaft” and not “half shaft”. It was also just days before Christmas, and I was not able to find it locally, and I was not going to attempt to have it shipped.

If you are swapping out the driveshaft, at this point it’s to your advantage to remove the large clamp around the inner CVJ rubber boot and remove most of driveshaft. If you think you will ever have to reassemble, put witness marks on the driveshaft, so you can reassemble exactly as before. Now you have just the stub in the transaxial. If you’re lucky, and especially if you have the car up on a lift, you can use an assortment of prybars and pop that joint out with a bunch of luck. I recommend a slide hammer. After swearing and prying a full day, I broke down and tried to locate one. I was able to borrow this tool, by putting down a c-note as a deposit. I used the single hook tool on one of the ridges on the side of the driveshaft stub and got that puppy out in about three slaps. It’s easy with the right tools.

Getting the new one in was fun. Coat the end with Dexron and align the snap ring so the opening is facing down. Wiggle while sticking it in, so the teeth engage properly. There will be some resistance, but it should be easier than prying the damn thing out. I’m ashamed to admit this, but when it got stuck on me, I got out the BFH.

Normally I have a bit more finesse than this, but it was late and I am claiming fatigue. I tried to insert the male end without Dexron lubrication, and also apparently my snap ring got snagged. I got stuck about halfway in. Because it was a hassle getting it out in the first place, I figured it would be tough to get it back in. I got the thing jammed. It was pure heck getting it back out too. The snap ring and my BFH really tore up those spines.

After careful inspection, the inner spines on the transaxial seemed to be OK. Some engineer over at Toyota likely spec that part to a higher hardness. I ended up making up a frankenstein driveshaft consisting of the inner undamaged part of the old driveshaft attached to the rest of the new part. I used a heavy duty handcuff sized zip-tie to replace the metal clamp that is usually used to hold the boot attached to the driveshaft. I’ve used the zip-ties before in this way, and I know that it works very well. The best part is that no special tools are needed.

Reassembly is the reverse of removal (heh). Actually you kinda need three hands here when you go to attach the lower control arm. I had a helper on the pry bar, forcing the lower arm down to it’s full travel so I could ease the strut over, engage the studs, and tighten the screws. That’s the only tricky part. I put a new rotor in and tried to replace the front pads, but I found out that they did not have the proper holes for the anti-rattle springs. The old ones were only slightly worn, so I reused them.

The other PITA part of this job is the dust screen that’s on the back side of the rotor. If you are not careful, you will bend it, and then it will scrape on the wheel rim when you reassemble it.

I used a 10, 14, 17 and 30 mm sockets, extensions and ratchets. A few pry bars that did not work, a slide hammer that did, can of brake cleaner, new pads, rotors, a zip-tie, a little Dexron, and a ball peen hammer. You also needed a torque wrench that goes up to 217 foot-pounds, if you want to do this job by the book. I should not have used that 3 pound sledge (aka BFH). I got the procedure by accessing Mitchell “on demand”, and printing out the proper pages. It’s just barely adequate. I wish I had the factory manual.

If you drain the transaxial, like the procedure tells you to, you will need a 10 mm allen head socket, and a funnel attached to a long piece of hose to refill.

That’s just about everything I wish I knew before I started, so there. You’re welcome. I haven’t been able to find anything good online (especially regarding the snap ring) If you’re facing the same thing, I hope you end up finding your way here first.

(Update: I did the other side a bit later. I had a heck of a time because the bearing was seized on it’s holder. Kroll to the rescue. Read all about it here.)