More ramblings

The Tracker's busted with a cooked clutch so I guess I know what I'll do this weekend... Seems the Boy, on the first day of his summer road trip got it buried out on the Bonneville Salt Flats. He drove too close to a drainage area, (he didn't know, nothing's marked) and dropped the front wheels right through the salt crust into the water below! So girlfriend Lily had to do the rocking and revving while Noah dug and pushed and pulled until he got it extricated.

Getting free managed to get the clutch slipping pretty good and the boy didn't think to readjust the cable to the proper place afterwards. San Francisco's steep hills heated it up again and he basically learned to deal with it for the rest of the trip.

So its cooked. I've got a used pressure plate, throwout bearing and pilot bearing out in the shop, just no clutch disc. So sometime early this week I've got to get that on order someplace.

Now the question is- do we take out the engine & tranny as a unit and swap the clutch outside the car or just drop the tranny from under the car? And do we put in the recently purchased spare engine or hold it in reserve and put back in the smooth running but cracked motor? Getting the tranny out from under will be tricky, (we've done it before) because the dang thing's long, nearly 4 feet long from bellhousing flange to tailshaft. Reason being, the 4WD transfer case is integral and hangs off the back of the transmission. So its going to be a weekend of wrenching and in the mean time I'm carpooling him to the Job Corp and home again afterwards.

Now its late and Jay Leno's Tonight Show will be on in just a little while, so I'm quitting. Its Monday night so its time for Headlines, my favorite bit of television all week. I'll miss anything but Headlines!