Reheated Spaghetti

Strange title for this one, but holy geez is it accurate. My buddy Jarred said it best that cars of the '84 vintage were held together by vacuum lines and check valves. My response to that text was that I hate vacuum lines and their families. Those damn things were everywhere. I think I saw vacuum lines hidden in the tailgate - come-on!

I don't know what the hell to do with those things. Do I tape/label them? Do I just expect that whoever buys the parts will reference the Haynes or Chiltons? Do I simply pull the hoses off the hard lines, put them all in a bucket, light them on fire then pee on them as the fire gets too big? I think, after today, I'm leaning towards the latter.

Are you serious? 

I did try to keep them all together, but some of them just had to be zip tied to each other and pulled off the hard line to make room for a wrench.

My goal was to pull off the carburetor today, but yea, that didn't happen. I just didn't have to room with the radiator support being so close and all. In a round about way, one thing lead to another and the radiator support, radiator, and all emission-related nonsense had to come off to give me room around the carburetor.

Dad, firmly thrown under the bus, is quick to proclaim his loathsome, discontent for engineers. They never think about the guy who has to work in it, he would say. I have engineers in my family and while I understand the need for their neurotic-way of considering every minor, seemingly completely useless, detail I can respect his point of view. I now firmly believe that when Toyota designed the 2F in my truck, they first thought, 'let's figure out where we want the 2 barrel carburetor first then build the motor around it and let's put every vacuum line, every hard line, every heater and power steering hose around the carburetor after we mount it to the yet-to-be-determined engine block'. A newly hired production engineer stood up from the back of the 2F design conference room and objected to the designing of the motor around the carburetor and he was fired, his house was repossessed, he lost his newly bought car, and his wife left him. I thank you, unknown engineer who must've considered the person who would attempt to remove the carburetor some 28 years after the build date, thank you for your recognition of future builders - sorry about the loss of the house, car, and wife btw.

Radiator support off and mess cleaned up. 

I was dreading pulling the radiator support, because I did not want to drain the damn thing. Another feat in designing on the radiator drain. It would be nice if there was a hose connected to the drain plug. It would be nice if the drain plug didn't point directly at a frame support. I don't even know why I tried to catch the antifreeze. Once I got the drain plug out, yea, I made a mess.

I'm not going into it, but I made a mess. Thankfully, I was able to position a drain pan under most of the flow, but most of it was lost to the concrete. Out came the kitty litter. I had antifreeze going everywhere under the truck, underneath the garage door - open the door! Make a kitty litter dam! It's flowing around the dam! Damn! Out of kitty litter! I had a rolled up bit of carpet padding nearby I'd been using for dirty parts. Unroll the padding! The padding doesn't soak up the antifreeze! Step on it to try and smash the padding into the puddling, flowing antifreeze. Geez, I hope Angie doesn't come out right now! My head hurts, antifreeze always gives me a headache, it's only been a couple minutes. How much antifreeze is in this thing? Alright, I am done. I am done. We are done for today. I am done, but I'm not done.

I've got to clean this all up. We've got dogs. Neighbors have dogs. And I've got a sweetly, toxic liquid all over my driveway and inside my garage. I had some pressure washer Special Green detergent, a pressure washer would be good right about now, too bad the thing didn't work when I bought the detergent. Garden hose out, it's about 35F by the way oh and it's ridiculously windy too. Water down, detergent down, shop brush making the detergent soapy. Lots of water. It's cold. You know, my TSX is filthy. I'm filthy. My hands are cold. Yup, I washed it.