Ya made me smile sir
Laughter is always the best medicine
(Apologies that this ended up being somewhat of a loooong post since I tried to address all the subjects as well as including info about the Caprice problem.)
I totally understand the need of the original part(s) when fabricating and would have no problems sending the original pieces if necessary.
Also I already gave up any thoughts of attempting to repair or even fabricate a new line myself. I'd need to come up with the proper tools and learn the skills, and sometimes ya just gotta say: "This would be better left in the hands of those who already know what they are doing."
I just figured that if the person I'm meeting this weekend already has a good used line, then there wouldn't be a need for you to do the fabrication work to build that line, and you are already giving me something
Of course, like I said, once I can pressurize the system, it may very well turn out that I may need some other lines, so don't worry, if you really want to work, I may still have a job for ya. lol
About the recorder, I actually think that's a pretty cool idea
I attempted to do a little mental "visualization" in an attempt to see how well my mind might accept it.
I've found that the easier it is to *imagine* going through a situation, and/or doing various things, the less likely I will have problems with the same things in reality.
For example, that's how I *knew* I wasn't ready to try driving again for many years. Because I would try to imagine going out, getting into the car (this happened to be the same Caprice mentioned before) and then driving it somewhere.
Well, I could imagine getting in, sitting down, putting on the seatbelt, looking forward out the windshield, then *boom!* strong feeling panic/fear/confusion, brain lock-up/seizure *splat*.
So yeah, definitely *not* ready to drive if I couldn't even handle trying to *imagine* starting the car and getting out of the driveway.
Over time it got a bit better, but not a lot. It wasn't until one day when I happened to be thinking about how much different I had been years ago when I was very much an outside person that enjoyed things like going places, driving around in the sun with the top down that it dawned on me that I was *not* having any problems thinking about what it was like zooming around with the top down, which I used to do all the time in my FIATs.
Tried imagining getting into a *FIAT* and driving it, and... Surprisingly little problems. No Game braking crashes.
Still wasn't something I was likely able to just up and do in reality, *but* I knew that it was *theoretically possible* since, for whatever reason, my brain wasn't having a crash/panic response when a fiat was used in the equation rather than the caprice.
(Ahem, maybe I should mention that while I have done a fair amount of brain research, a lot of that kind of stuff is still basically voodoo and I only know how to work with, or around, with what happens without actually understand much of the *why* that's behind it.)
That was several years ago and plenty of stuff had to be done/fixed in between then and now, but that's what started me in the direction that eventually led me here and I still use the same sort of visualization/imagination technique as a tool to help give me an idea of how well my brain naturally responds to things.
A side bonus to being able to work towards going through everything involved to be able to actually drive a FIAT ended up helping fix some of my mental limitations with some other cars as well, so I can drive cars like the Caprice in low pressure situations (like the middle of the night when there's little or no traffic/distractions), although it's fairly uncomfortable and I have some glitches like I keep finding my hand grasping thin air, trying to grab the shift nob that isn't there on a car with an automatic. I do better in cars with a stick-shift because my "mental habits" match up with the controls better, so I don't have to slow down or consciously *think* about how to do things to compensate.
Back to the recorder, as soon as I tried to visualize/imagine using a voice activated recorder I got a quick mental image of being out there in the dark (I work a lot at night) working and talking to the recorder then flash vanishes and I get a mental picture of a little recorder sitting on top of a chest of drawers. Which is actually the last place I remember seeing the little recorder we have and the only place I can imagine it being.
Unfortunately, that memory of where the recorder *was* is from like, years ago. House is totally rearranged since then, and no idea where to even start looking for that sucker.
So the first step is finding the recorder so that I can get past that point where I'm stuck mentally.
You asked about the problem with the Caprice, well, I'll go ahead and explain, but the biggest problem is being somewhat mentally stuck in a similar way as with the recorder.
Of course, you never know, sometimes the biggest help I can get when I'm stuck is if somebody happens to say something that ends up sort of getting me around a given mental block/barrier/glitch. So it's certainly worth a try
The overall situation is somewhat embarrassing and the result of a bit of a chain of stupidity on my part. There's is definitely some ignorance and hindsight involved.
The Caprice is suffering from low oil pressure. Possibly *no* oil pressure, but it's hard to tell since it doesn't have a real gauge. It just has the basic "idiot light" where low and no just result in the same red light turning on.
What happened was that I'd driven the caprice to the store in the middle of the night to pick up something for the FIAT and pick up a quart of ATF since the Caprice was a bit low.
Got home, grabbed a funnel, and put in the tranny fluid.
So far so good, but here is where things started to go awry.
Went to put back the funnel and noticed a bottle of "magical mystery oil". One of several I was given from a garage that someone was cleaning out.
Well, the Caprice had been running a bit rough... Why not add a little bit of this stuff that my grandpa (Who had been an incredibly good professional mechanic) always swore by?
Says "add to gas or oil" etc on it...
So, of course I put some in the gas and oil.
Drove the car a bit to "kill two birds with one stone" by seeing if the tranny fluid had helped make the car shift a bit better, while simultaneously getting the MMO i'd added good and mixed into the gas and oil so it could get into the system and doooo it's magical stuff.
Figured it would actually be a slow process when/if it actually did anything useful, but having always seen that stuff in the shop as a kid I must admit I had a bit of a childish sense of excitement and was really kind of looking forward to and hoping to see something actually happen right away.
It does say "magical" right there on the bottle right? lol
As it turned out, I was just about home, something *did* happen. The oil light came on.
Uh oh! well, no panic. Somehow the oil dipstick had gotten lost a few years ago and then replaced by a dipstick that was too short, so the only way to know if it got too low was if you started getting an occasional flash from the oil light. It'd been unlit for so long since the last time it'd come on (just before the last oil change) that I'd actually become worried that the light itself had gone dead.
So pulled up to the workshop, found a quart of oil and added it.
Started car again, oil light stays on.
Shut 'er down quick, searched around, managed to find a second quart of oil, threw it in.
Car didn't want to crank. Car smelled "hot" (if that makes sense). Still not necessarily a reason to panic, as when this car used to be driven regularly on the highway it would sometimes overheat and not want to start till it cooled down a bit.
Got it started, oil light still stubbornly on, engine running a bit rougher than it's usual roughness. Didn't want to rev right (not that I'd go slamming down the pedal on a car with low/no oil pressure, just a few quick light blips to gauge response and verify that slightly higher rpm didn't bring the pressure up to kick off the light.), sounded a bit *funny* (non-specific funny). Shut er down...
At this point, the "mechanic part" of my brain finally sort of kicked in and became active.
Engine had been "a little rattly" but didn't really sound like rod knock starting. Some of the *funny* sound could potentially be the very beginnings of main bearing issues, but not enough to jump to that conclusion.
Went and pulled the dipstick. It showed a little low.
That meant it probably had about 2 quarts *too much* oil.
Ironic, considering I'd just added 2 quarts from assuming it was too low.
So I loped inside and did a search for "added magical mystery oil" "low oil pressure" and learned that it thins the oil/alters viscosity.
Also, that it's strength at breaking down/loosening up/dissolving junk built up inside cruddied up old badly maintained engines and such can be a problem if the stuff that got loosened up clogs the oil pump or filter.
So that's the whole background story of what happened with the car.
The engine could be somewhat toast due to bearing damage from low pressure, could have clogged pump pickup/filter, etc, or the combination of too much oil to the point where it's hitting the crank and too low oil viscosity could explain just about all the unusual symptoms as well.
I decided my best bet was to drain all the oil and change the filter. That seemed like the best and simplestway to eliminate the largest number of variables.
Got the car up on ramps, and that's basically where I got stuck.
Seems like the engine should be run at least a little bit to get the oil and junk warm and stirred up so it'll drain well and bring sludge with it. But especially now that the car is on ramps and the engine/pan is at an angle, the crank has to be drowning in oil at the rear, so it seems like "step 1" should be to siphon off two quarts of oil. then run it a little and finally drain/replace filter/refill.
I have a little vacuum pump and I also have a very long narrow hose I recently acquired with a (apparently completely useless) fuel siphon kit that had a spongy squeeze thingy (doesn't have a one-way valve so I couldn't figure out how to use it) that I could run down the dipstick tube.
So I go to get the hose and... *stuck*. Last place I remember seeing it was on a bench and it isn't there or anywhere in the area, so every time I go to work on the Caprice I get re-stuck not being able to figure out what to do until I find that hose thingy.
Same sort of thing with the little tape recorder. Got the mental image of where it *was* and my brain just can't get past/around that point unless I can find the item in order to eliminate the mental barrier/block.
Trying to get around something like that is sort of like trying to get a word out that's "right on the tip of your tongue" so you can finish a sentence. It can be somewhat maddening.
Anyway, I dunno. If you have any sort of comments, suggestions, or if you have some of that "psycho" part you mentioned available, maybe even just adding a bit of chaos might not hurt.
