errantember

So my house mate Echo is leaving for Japan. We have an agreement that if I could get her car, a 96 Geo Metro getting something like 45-50 MPG, working again, I could use it while she was gone for 6 months or more. This would be perfect, as it's an ideal commuter vehicle for when it's too far for the scooter, but doesn't require the cargo capacity of the 23 MPG CR-V. Since it seemed like a simple clutch problem, and I have a great auto-savvy friend in

trippedbreaker, we decided to do it ourselves.

We'll note that aside from a few very minor fixes, my automotive mechanical experience consists mostly of being unable to properly change the oil on my RX-7 in college.

So far we've:

pulled the engine
pulled off the transmission
diagnosed the problem (spring popped out of the clutch disc)
replaced the entire clutch assembly
put the engine back in
plugged in the 20+ connectors, hoses, etc, back into the engine.

We were aiming to get the engine at least started tonight, but when we were re-filling the coolant, we found two leaks. One was a hose adjustment. The other one, though, is almost certainly the water pump gasket. At first it seemed almost certain we'd have to pull the engine *again*, but luckily after consulting the Chilton's and factory shop manuals, it seems like this is unnecessary. Replacing it will be a big pain, but not nearly as bad as pulling the entire engine again.

Thank. Fucking. God.

Tomorrow I'll be out all day with

caelligh at Enchanted Rock, which will be fantabulously better than crawling around under an internal combustion engine-powered greasepile. At this level of dirtiness, I may not need sunscreen.