Well its been an absolutely crazy year so far and it keeps getting weirder.
First the good news, there's plenty, thankfully.
Welding school is going great, you know this when your stick welds look a bit like tig or mig
I had no idea that was even possible: bonus!
I'm nearly there with this 3 run hori corner weld thing, still slighly changing my angle over the travel which is undesirable...
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But due to studying I got myself a job to pay the mortgage and bills and as a storeman packing orders I start at 3 or 4am and knock off around 12pm most days, have a shower and get changed to go to school. Meaning I'm absloutely feeling flogged most of the time
I need to defer the Cert3 light auto as the contact hours are daytime only, meaning 6 months at this job and to finish welding. Go hard!
Then I'll find a nighttime job and knock out Auto next summer, 6months, 7 days a week
Or thats the plan.
Really want that cert3, it means I can charge to work on cars for starters, or get paid to.
Since I cant rebuild an engine at school for some strange reason (mainly theyve been burnt by too many dickheads, plus it actually beyond the scope of cert3
) I finally got permission to do so at the Neilzeds, the old school engine rebuilder/head reco guy in my street.
For me this is a major coup as it wasnt possible to do anywhere else either.
Awesome beacuse Neil Jinnette has 48 years experience in the game which is worth far more than my 4 years of web research and 10 or so of reading car mags
Awesome because Neil is letting me do by far the bulk of the spanner twisting, tho occasionally he can't keep himself from a challenge like the usual stuck gam gear bolt...
And I can smash out an hour or so before going to school.
I seem to be paying him in beer!
May just be able to knock out an apprenticeship with him before he retires in a few years!!!
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The engine in question is an apparently blown HG MY08 EJ255 from Dazz's auto wagon, so far so good, heads are off everything looks fairly normal for a 150K subie donk.
There was a little collection of metal in the sump, let just say I hope that was there from original break in, as it was entrapped in a wee cone of gunk on the bottom of the pan.
Its not the first time such a thing has been found in an otherwise OK engine...
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Anyhow I left it there last friday as a bare block on my stand, and we get down to the nitty gritty next week when the bores, pistons and bearings are finally revealed.
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Heads still on here so the next thing that came out was the cams, journals looked well nice ftw...
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Neilzeds Alladins cave, full of huge ex Repco lathes and mills . He's got so many old school toys inc a National non computer TIG the size of a filing cabinet
Neil started at Repco as an 18yo in '67 when they more or less had a campus in town that took up two sides of a block or two (iirc) Bourke St. They had their own school, medical facilities, workshops etc, the workers were taken care of so they never wanted for anything.
In other good news the Baur is running much smoother after I swapped the MAF for a better, less f'd with item probably from a 320i...
Idle is still high at around 1200 rpm but it gets rough and rich if dropped below that to say 900.
So I would suspect an inlet mani leak, which I will have to get around to smoke testing (I say that a lot lol) and I may attack that when I refurb the speedo which need to have the service light batteries changed out - soon.