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I know that I blogged a while back about the clutch being the solution to all problems Chevelle-related. This is the Chevelle’s engine. On an engine stand. Not in the car. Being disassembled by my brother. One would be lead to believe that, perhaps, the clutch was not the only issue with the Chevelle. One would be right about that.
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Clutch installed! That should take care of all our problems, right? I’m hopeful, but I’m also experienced, which makes me cynical as well.
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The clutch in the Chevelle gave up the ghost. My brother has no fear of tools or lots of dirt. Kind of a shame that the orange thing is going to get all filthy, but it must be done.
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My brother was pulling the clutch on the Chevelle. That little piece of metal with the teeth and the read paint on it is a tool he made so he could remove the flywheel. It took maybe ten minutes to make the tool, but that was SO much easier than when we tried to do it previously without one. Sometimes the littlest things make a big difference.
...Yeah, just, uh, move that thing! And that other thing!
Monday was the big car scene shoot for “8 Wheels of Death,” the zombie movie I’m in. Before I became one of the cast, however, I volunteered the use of my and my brother’s Chevelle for use in a scene. After having had to reschedule the shoot once due to fears of rain, we finally got it all together on Monday night. My brother was a hero, taking a half day off of work and trucking the car down there while I left work and immediately headed south to meet with him at the shoot.
Here some of the crew decided camera and mic placement for a key scene in which someone gets killed. Good times, right? I know! They even got some fake blood on the dashboard! And, there was a shot where an admission ticket had to be used, and they had left the prop at home. My brother said, “There are tickets on the dashboard,” as that’s where we often “keep” drag tickets after a racing event. They used one of them, and now I have a fake-blood-stained ticket as a souvenir of the whole thing. You gotta love that.
It was fun. It was big fun! I can’t wait until the actual acting shoot that’s coming up in a little over a week!
It makes the workday just a little bit better.
Even though the filming for “8 Wheels of Death” got postponed, I was still jazzed about getting the Chevelle running again, and I wanted to take it out for a little bit of a test drive. Driving it to work (which is way too friggin’ long a drive to be making every day, honestly) was a perfect way to make sure everything was working okay. I haven’t driven this thing to work in at least a year, maybe two, and I haven’t driven it at all for any real length of time yet this year. It was pretty kickass, I must say. I’d like to do it again. I just hope it keeps running for another couple of weeks so we can get the shoot done on it!
Finally up under its own power again!
Last night I got the Chevelle running again, but there wasn’t much time to drive it, as the weather turned sour very soon after I got it out of the garage. The back window leaks like a sieve, and I don’t like tearing everything out to dry it off when this happens, so it wasn’t until tonight, when I was *supposed* to do the filming for “8 Wheels of Death” that I got to drive it another little bit.
What? The filming? The filming I’ve been working toward all week? Yeah, that didn’t happen. The forecast was for 50% or better chance of thunderstorms all day, so I didn’t take the car to work so that I could drive it straight to the shoot, which is some distance away. However, by about 10am all rain had stopped, all the clouds blew over, and it looked great. I wouldn’t be able to make the shoot if I had to go home and get the car first, though, so it was a loss when we canceled it early that morning. Figures, don’t it?
Anyway, I decided to go to my photo club meeting instead, which was awesome, and I decided to drive the Chevelle there, which was also awesome. What this meant, however, was that there was precious little time left in the day (uh, night) by the time I got done at the meeting, so what you have here is the Chevelle sitting in my driveway after I got home from the meeting. It’s a little cool, though, isn’t it? It ran great tonight for the little bit that I drove it, and for that I am stupendously grateful!!!
Tomorrow I hope to return to more interesting and well-conceived photos. Until then, I hope you at least find some of this stuff amusing. Maybe?
Tuesday night was more work on the Chevelle. This time my brother came over to help. I did a little work on the wiring before he got there, and then we went to work on the brakes. I guess the good thing about the wiring burning up is that, while I was looking the car over under the hood, I noticed that the driver’s front brake hose was being rubbed through by the wheel when it was turned full left. This, as one may surmise, ain’t good. I got a replacement hose, and that evening we replaced it. My brother is bleeding the air out of the system here. It’s another shoddy photo attempt, but I was too busy and too wiped out and too dirty to mess with the camera any more than to do this one. Actually, aside from some completely random shots of the road on the way to work that morning, this was the only picture I took all day, the only one that was consciously composed, which says a lot about how busy I was and how crummy my composition is when I try *really* hard and I’m tired.
I like to do a little light reading while I'm working on the engine. Come on, you can't tell me you don't!
Monday night was back to work on the Crispy Project – getting the Chevelle ready to film the zombie killing scene for the local no-budget movie “8 Wheels of Death.” I had to really crank on it if I was going to get it done by Wednesday night. That book on the air cleaner has diagrams of where the wires go. When they get all burnt up like this you gotta go back to the original plans and figure out where the shiny new wire goes to replace it. I don’t have all that crap memorized. I’m good, but not that good.
This picture is utter crap, but I had to really work on the car, and getting this taken was the biggest photo accomplishment I had in me that night.
Some burned wire snippets, some carb cleaner - the makings of a beautiful evening, I tell ya.
Yeah, it’s more burned wire, but see what I did? So how I “changed it up” for you? I put the wires ON THE GROUND(!!!!!), and then I *gasp* PUT A CAN OF CARB CLEANER NEXT TO THEM!!!!!! AND THE WIRES HAVE CRUSTY, GOOEY, CUT-UP ELECTRICAL TAPE ON THEM!
I know, you’re shocked. See, that’s how I am, always out there on the creative edge, thinking, planning, creatively creating. Yeah, it’s all in the composition, and the lighting, that too. You’re welcome.
(Any semblance between this carefully orchestrated image and the leftovers of an hour spent pulling filthy, burnt wiring out from under the hood of a ’67 Chevelle is purely coincidental. No part of this blog entry is based on real characters or events, especially if those events make those characters look like mechanical gastropods.)