Car blues...

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So, my Galant I was driving blew it's water pump. Normally, a water pump isn't too bad of a job. You take off the fan/accessory belts, and it's like 5-10 little bolts that come off and the water pump is off. Hondas are a bit harder, interference engine with a timing belt, but still not bad. My Galant, though, you have to do an entire timing belt job, as Mitsubishi thought that'd be a grand idea to save like 2 inches of room by mounting it behind all the timing belt tensioners and requiring you to take the timing belt and crank pulley off (thankfully Mitsubishi decided to put the crank pulley on with 4 10mm bolts instead of one giant 300+ft/lb torqued monster bolt that's utterly impossible to take off, so I give them some credit there.)

Cars. I really liked cars. Maybe I still do like cars. It's probably an "Aspie obsession" sorta thing. It's at least culturally acceptable for a 21 year old male to like cars, though.

I used to not care about cars at all. When I was in middle school, I'd tell my mom "Yeah, I'm not gonna drive ever, driving is stupid, cars are stupid." But then... I saw Initial D. The anime Initial D. An anime got me into cars. I went from apathetic, to "Oh, this car thing is pretty neat" to full blown obsession pretty fast. Oddly, my motivations for driving weren't the normal ones. I didn't care about driving to hang out with my friends, "freedom" or anything like that. I wanted a fast car because I wanted to be like Takumi from Initial D. I wanted to race. I did seriously want to pursue racing on some level.

When I first tried for my license, I was undiagnosed NVLD. Driving is hard for me. But also oddly relaxing sometimes, too. It's paradoxic. When I first started driving, I'd JAM the brakes on all the time, I'm guessing my visual spatial awareness is crap. I started really coincidentally ramping up my caffeine intake when I started driving, especially on the highway. I get lost super easy, and usually get very lost. But I figured, hey, it's because I'm not trying hard enough, right? Just try harder and you can do anything, right?

My mom was talking with a psych who's an ASD specialist, and he was saying from what my mom told him, I probably shouldn't be driving at all. And now, that I feel bad and don't feel like I'm capable of everything ever, I'm inclined to agree with him. But the genie is out of the bottle for that. I gotta drive. There's no way around it unless I move somewhere else.

Part of me hates driving. Part of me loves driving. I hate the getting lost, I hate the traffic, I hate the highway for the most part. But, I can think of few things more calming than going for a drive on a back road late at night with no other cars on the road. It's one of my favorite things, and a surefire way to calm me down. But to drive actually commuting to places, especially places I don't know, is just absolute hell. But being in a car, especially a sporty car like my Supras, on a back road alone at night, is just heaven. Not even speeding necessarily, just the driving. Maybe that's the Initial D influence on me.


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But that's enough about driving. Driving isn't the point of this post really. The point of this post is cars. Cars, cars, cars. I care more about cars really, than driving. It was why I even wanted to drive in the first place. I wanted this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBCUG4l8gp8[/youtube]

And so, when time came for me to get my own car, I got this:

Lots of miles, but still in good condition for how old it was. I liked it, because it reminded me of the AE86 in Initial D, but cooler looking, and more powerful (though heavier.) I just fell in love with the car, I guess. I saw a few in person and thought they were super cool. And it was cheap. That car was $1500. I thought it'd run quite a while. But, I was an idiot and bought a 26 year old car. And 26 year old cars break. And so mine broke, and I was left carless. Because I'm an idiot and bought a 26 year old car because I liked it in a TV show. Maybe it's idiotic, but hey, people buy other cars to pick up chicks, show status, whatever. So I guess me buying it because it reminds me of a car in a TV show isn't that terrible, right? Anyway, it turns out, well, nobody here cares why and how it exactly broke. So I won't tell you. But it was a hell of a thing to chase down. So now it's in my garage, sitting there broken. It's been sitting broken for about 2 years now.

Maybe a year and a half ago, I bought this:
[img][640:480]http://i1096.photobucket.com/albums/g337/1000_Knives/2011-05-11135306_Middletown_Connecticut_US.jpg[/img]

It was $900. I bought it as a parts car originally. But, I ended up driving it for about a year. Lots of things wrong with it, pretty terrible condition as you can tell. Rust everywhere. Low miles, but terribly maintained. It was only 80K, but was in every way worse condition than the above Supra at 250K. It turned out in hindsight to be good to not use it as a part's car, as on that engine the crank keyway was f****d anyway. Anyway, it broke a few times, but I think there was only like a month or so it was off the road while I repaired it myself. I got tons of miles out of the car, I guess.

I finally sold it to a friend. This friend was supposed to trade me a Geo Prizm with rod knock for it, plus cash. I figured the Geo Prizm would be a fairly easy fix, and if it wasn't, I'd have $300 for it at the junkyard, plus the $375 he gave me for my Supra. So not too bad, right? Well, either the car gave up the ghost, or my friend was an idiot with it (I guess a combo of both.) He blew the motor and gave it rod knock in 6 days of owning it. I figured he was a friend, and the trade would be fairly straight up, so no paperwork was given guaranteeing the trade. So his mother recanted the trade for the Prizm. So I had $375 in basically pocket money for my transportation, that I had used for a brief time to work. So I had much less realistic work options now that I had no transport. I couldn't really sue my friend, as no paper work proving it all. So I was f****d and had no car of my own working. And I'd hit a dead end working on the gold Supra for a variety of reasons (one of mine my mental state, part of lack of tools/parts/disorganization due to a recent move.)

So, I lost my car. The car that gave me a ton of joy, shifting through gears, tires screeching, inline six going. All gone. Nevermind the fact working was hard without it. I lost a big part of me, I guess. A comfort I enjoyed getting into.


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Cars are f*****g hard. There's no way around it. It's hard as hell to work on cars. It is hell. Your hands become a state of perma darkened, with tons of little nicks, cuts and sometimes burns on them. Despite the $100+ you may pay an auto mechanic at a shop, the actual mechanics doing the work get paid around $10 an hour. If they're, say, Mercedes mechanics, maybe higher 10s, possibly $20? It was at one time, what I considered "doing with my life." Why?

Nikola Tesla

This is why I loved working on cars. Why I do anything, for that matter. But it's hard, so hard. I have a friend, who liked pocket watches. He loved watches. It was I guess one of his "aspie obsessions." He ended up going to school for watch making and repair. He f*****g hated it. Why? Because they're f*****g watches. Every part is like a millimeter. It's hard as hell, too. He got one job doing it, got fired because he didn't get along with the owner, and now never wants to touch another watch. That's $20K wasted on school. In my situation, I guess I'm fortunate to not have wasted money on school to find out something is hard as all hell. But still, I got two broken cars in my garage, one car that got more or less stolen from me by my HOA for being unregistered, and I could have just been a normal person for my efforts and just bought a beater Camry and said screw it all and never tried my hand at cars in the first place.


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I don't know now. I've not really done any serious car work in a while. I lost the nerve for it, I guess, after losing my Supra and moving and going through various social and emotional issues. But the water pump going on the Galant has made me get my hands dirty once again. My aunt's fiance is helping me with it. It's going slow and arduous, as cars generally seem to do. But progress is being made. Also, Initial D 5th Stage finally came out this month. It's been a long time since I've seen Initial D, and Initial D is what got me into cars in the first place. It was nice. The opening song for 5th Stage was really motivating to me, too.

So tonight, I finally did a little bit on the gold Supra, after months of not trying at all (actually it ate all my 12mm wrenches at one point, seriously, they slipped out of my hand and fell into the torque converter housing, so work stopped when I ran out of wrenches, yep.) I managed to pop out about 70% of a dent, and I covered over a rust spot under the wheel well with a few rivets and aluminum flashing (I figure doing that might be better than bondo, but more on this fun in a second, maybe isn't going to be permanent.) Not much, a whole engine needs to be put in it. Bodywise, too, it's not great. It's a 28 year old car now, and it was in New England. But, it's nice condition besides the rust. Quite a survivor for my region.

But, poking it over, and seeing all the previous owner's Bondo repairs, why should I bother? It is after all, just some old Japanese car. And we're living in the equivalent of the Great Depression. My dad says "Now is not the time to own nice things." Maybe he's right? I'm debating whether or not I should, well, give up on my dream. Send the Supra to car Hades (the junkyard) and just...not work on cars. Because it's hard, and what's my reward really? But, if I don't do that, should I do more to the Supra than get it barely "running." Or should I make it MY car, like I want it to be? Will I be keeping it forever? I'd like to keep it forever. But even if I get it perfect, I could crash it the day after, and that'd be it. It'd all be for waste. Then again, for all I know, I could pass it on to my son. It could be worth money someday, just like 1st gen Camaros are now (1G Camaros were considered unclassy redneck cars, but are now pulling in serious money.) But we do not know what the future holds. Looking at the body work, I could bondo it and it'd last a few years, but ideally I'd like my repair to last forever. But again, the future is uncertain. Bondo would cost me like $20, the other way (welding) would cost significantly more.

I dunno, it's pretty pointless to write this giant wall of text and do what I generally do and make myself look like an idiot on Wrongplanet. I doubt anyone can give me much advice. Basically the point is, do we hold on to our dreams, or do we abandon them in the face of "real life?" This is the question.

i like the fact that your cars all have real rubber [high profile tires] on reasonably-sized wheels, instead of those ridiculously ginormous wheels with little [low-profile] rubber band tires on them.

Ive always loved the old supras.I drive one of these the Infiniti M30 *Nissan Leapord in Japan*[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49WR6G-WtZA[/youtube]

Yeah, even if I went for aftermarket wheels, probably the most thin tire I'd buy is a 50 or 45. On the gold Supra I actually got Bridgestone Potenzas put on before it broke, so all the more incentive to get it running again. Bridgestone doesn't make any Potenzas in 195/60/R14 anymore.

Also, the biggest wheels I'd run on a MKII Supra are 16s.

I was the proud owner of a 2.1 DOHC 1991 Honda Prelude... (yes, note the 2.1) ah, that was a great car, it was driven to die by the former owner and rusted to hell but I love every metal inch of it.

Now I drive a Honda CR-V. I've always driven Hondas except the Nissan Sentra that was my very first car. Oddly enough, all of my cars have been bought for me or given to me by my dad. I'm lucky for that.

Hope you find a new set of wheels soon friend, it sucks to not have a car but one gets used to it (I went from 2004 til this year without).

CRVs are nice. i've driven one since 1997.