New clutch master cylinder

So Thursday after work, Will and I pick up the clutch master cylinder from CarQuest. At $80, it was expensive, but the only place in town that could get it overnight. Autozone could order it for $29, but would take a week to get here.

I took the new part home and get ready to install it. I've done this before. It should be easy, right? Unclip the linkage to the pedal, remove two 12mm nuts that hold it to the chassis... and the 12mm fitting that holds the hard clutch line.

...Except that hard clutch line fitting WOULD. NOT. COME. OUT! Soaked it in Liquid Wrench and yanked on it till it was almost stripped. Figured it wasn't coming off, so we need to do whatever it takes. Besides, it was getting dark. Vice grips! Clamped that sucker down incredibly tight... didn't budge. It just sheared off big chunks of the fitting. So, we take a torch and heat the the housing. No luck.

So I get the bright idea to just cut the hose, walk over to Autozone, rent their tube flaring tool and get a new fitting. Except, trying to flare a 30yr old metal hose wasn't a good idea. Just cracked the metal and leaked fluid everywhere.

So, thanks to a tip from a neighbor, today I went to Pep Boys after work to find that they do indeed have various lengths of hard line... pre-flared with the fittings and everything. The only ones they have left that will fit my clutch cylinder are 60" long! (I only needed about 36") So, I took it back to the house, disconnected the old tube and fit the new one. Thanks to my expert bending skills (which I didn't know I had), I bent the tube around on the firewall and made it fit gracefully.

Will and I bled the line and it works like a champ. Got to do a bit of crusing around tonight. I love that wagon. I hope it lasts for a while this time. I think next is a new clutch disk tho...

Now what...

On the way home today, the clutch master cylinder started going out. Leaky leaky! CRAP. Well, it's on order. Will be here tomorrow. Cost: $80. Frustration: Priceless.

Wagon's back!

So I finally put aside some time to troubleshoot the wagon. Back when I was driving it daily, it was getting harder and harder to start and would idle like crap. Long story short, I had suspected the distributor, but wasn’t sure. It seemed related to ignition. I’ve replaced cap, rotor, plugs, wires, and even the distributor points.

It looked like it was getting fuel, but the spark seemed weak. This is based on my “expert” opinion by cutting fuel, pulling a plug, crank the starter and letting the plug arc to the chassis. Realizing this wagon is 30yrs old, I didn’t even bother really “testing” the coil... just replace it. It’s $20, there’s an Autozone 200yds from my house, and if the coil wasn’t the problem now, it probably would be in the future.

While poking and prodding around, we took off the cap again to check the gap on the distributor points. Made sure that was set correctly, put everything back together, crank it... No start. ARGH!!

I’m out of ideas, out of cars, and out of time, so I drop it off at Le-Toy Motorsport - a local Lexus / Toyota specialty shop that I take all my cars to. They’re getting to know me pretty well. Anyway, I call up AAA to cash in on one of my 4 free tows I get per year and have them take the wagon down to Le-Toy. Oh, but when they drop it off, they crack the corner mount clean off the wagon’s fiberglass lip. ARGH! So I need to call them up and try to get some money out of them. Hopefully it can be repaired since I’ll probably never find another one for a TE38.

So I drop off the wagon and the Le-Toy guys look at the car for about... 10 minutes. The spark plug wires or cap (can’t remember which he said now) were on backwards. He turns it around and it fires right up.

I’m guessing that the original problem was the coil since the plug wires certainly weren’t the problem when I stopped driving it. So... I’m happy to be rockin’ the PimpWagon again! I missed driving that thing.