Rebuild

The following is a scene from a future
episode of Jeopardy:
Me: Alex, I’ll take Painful
Experiences for $1800.
Alex Trebeck: The answer is: 523
Me: How many days did my Westfield rebuild last?
AT: Yes! Pick again.
Me: Painful Experiences for $2000
AT: The answer is: 4 times
Me: How much longer than planned did
the rebuild take?
AT: Yes! Quickly, pick again. We have time for one more before Final Jeopardy.
Me: Anesthesia for $2000
AT: The answer is: Bombay Sapphire
Me: How did I cope with my Westfield rebuild experience?
AT: Yes!

When the Westfield was hit on March 24th 2003, my initial hope was that I would finish the rebuild and engine swap
by early August. However, it simply never occurred to me that it would actually take until late August of the following year! But it did. I was a magnet for Murphy's Law and experienced one heartbreaking delay after another until August 28th when the Westy was finally able to drive around the neighborhood under her own power. Sure, the drive was only one mile and for some reason the alternator wasn't charging the battery, but she made it! She had finally reached the stage where it was possible to get a ticket. And not just a parking ticket, but a moving violation!

My intent had been to blog the rebuild, or at least relay the whole sordid rebuild story, but to be honest my heart just isn’t in it. Therefore I have instead chosen to simply list the forty things I’ve learned during the course of the project in the hope that I better prepare some other poor fool who undertakes a similar endeavor.

Don’t be the first on the block to install a particular type of engine unless you either have your own metal fabrication shop, an unlimited budget, or are a masochist – but preferably all three.
The likelihood of a part fitting your car is inversely proportional to the sum of the price and the distance it must ship to reach you.
The farther away you are physically located from a vendor, the more likely you are to have a problem and hear the response “That’s odd. We’ve never come across that one before.”
General Motors isn’t the only company that expects its customers to perform the final quality control testing.
Just because a manufacturer knows their instructions are wrong, doesn’t mean they will tell you about it before you have figured it out for yourself.
The more volatile the fluids within a pressurized system, the more likely you are to have forgotten to tighten a hard to reach fitting.
Paranoia is good. It prevents you from making mistakes. Confidence is bad. It prevents you from being paranoid.
If an engine map is from an engine that is supposedly in “virtually the same state of tune” as yours, then it won’t work. At all.
If an electronics vendor sells two mirror image parts, then they will send you the wiring instructions for the version you didn’t order. That means things will operate backwards. Backwards isn’t good. Backwards is hard to diagnose.
Just because you have a Ford part in your hand, and the Ford parts computer states that the part number stamped on said part was superseded by a new one, don’t expect the new part to actually be the proper replacement. Particularly if the new part is a special order.
Going through 1.5 gallons of fuel after idling for a total of 10 minutes and driving 3/4 of the way around the block means you are running *just* a bit rich.
It’s measure twice, pay to weld once. Not measure once, pay to weld twice, kick yourself repeatedly.
If logic tells you to permanently remove an existing part when adding an aftermarket component, but the person who answers the phone at said aftermarket manufacturer tells you repeatedly that you don’t need to remove the part, don’t believe him. He answers phones for a reason.
If an aftermarket part advertised for its simplicity comes with no instructions and doesn’t come close to fitting, then that means the manufacturer mistakenly thought “easy installation” was the English phrase that explains major surgery is required.
“Friendly deals” are only friendly for the seller.
If an expensive to ship part comes from another continent, then it will arrive with damage to a very inexpensive subcomponent. Shipping things back for the free fix will take longer and cost more than paying a local shop an exorbitant hourly rate to correct the problem while you wait.
If you order thousands of dollars in parts in April, then don’t expect the majority to arrive until December.
When a vendor says that lagging parts will ship “any day” they don’t necessarily mean any day that year.
Paying extra to air freight a part from another continent guarantees that the shipper will forget to include the required customs documents, which means the part will spend a relaxing extra 1-2 weeks in customs. The vendor needs to make this error at least once more before learning from his mistakes.
Just because a part is designed to continually handle high pressure doesn’t mean the components that come attached to that part are designed to withstand the same pressure. They are not. And they will break. Dramatically.
Parts that are designed to fit with very tight tolerances will arrive either horribly loose, or require extensive machining.
When unexpected machining is required, the harder the material, the more you must remove.
Regardless of what time of year you start a lengthy project, you won’t complete it until the onset of Winter.
If very complex electrical gremlins have you completely stumped, then it’s a ground problem. But more specifically, it’s a problem with the very first ground you checked (apparently incorrectly) 2 weeks earlier when the problem first arose.
If you expect the unexpected, then it is no longer unexpected, so you won’t bother to expect it. Therefore, expect everything.
When things don’t fit, there is something to be said for picking up a very large hammer.
When there is only one right way to do something, but a lot of ways to do it wrong, the odds are that you’ll redo it a number of times before you finally give up and hire a professional.
The amount of money saved by not buying the proper tool for the job is exactly one-fourth what you will spend when you replace the part you subsequently damage.
The harder it is to install a part that comes with neither instructions nor diagrams, the more likely it is that the part arrived damaged or missing a key component. You will not have this epiphany until you have invented at least two new profanities and drawn your own blood.
A rivet tool is designed to break within 10 rivets of completing the job.
A critical fastener that hopelessly disappears in the bowels of the engine bay will always magically reappear within 10 minutes of you returning from the store with its replacement.
Paying a premium to expedite an order/outsourced repair will guarantee that an unrelated problem will arise within 2 days of the delivery/completion. The length of the delay resulting from this problem is directly proportional to the premium you paid.
You always overpay when taking free advice from a self-proclaimed expert.
“Professionally Engineered” doesn’t mean correctly engineered, it just means the part is expensive.
When you unexpectedly find a vendor who offers replacement part for your oddball application, they will send you the wrong part.
Overseas vendors will always charge your credit card immediately for an expensive item if the exchange rate is flat or moving in your favor. They, however, will wait an impossibly long time to charge the card when the dollar is plummeting.
When an order takes so long to fulfill that you move your residence, don’t expect the vendor to update the computer with your new address in anticipation of future shipments. He instead will simply write it on a piece of paper and lose it in a pile on his desk. You will discover this when a future shipment never arrives because he used the address in his computer.
Murphy was an optimist.
If at first you don’t succeed, then you probably did something wrong.
Complete strangers who live thousands of miles away and whom you will likely never meet, will bend over backwards to help you if you are both crazy enough to own the same kind of car.