Carpe Extorqueo

Today is Chuck Norris's birthday.
If you have five dollars and Chuck Norris has five dollars, Chuck Norris has more money than you.

The weather here is just short of perfect. We hit 82 this afternoon, have virtually no breeze, and the humidity is 13%. More of the same for the foreseeable future.

Which makes the invading hordes happy. It's easy to spot the interlopers, who are typically wearing baseball clothing with the logo of a team from the midwest. If driving, they're identifiable by their propensity to cut across four lanes of traffic to make a left turn instead of a right at the intersection. "Frank, I think it's the other way." In restaurants many of them are well into Phase Two of their descent into intoxication, having started at the ballpark.
Spring training.

Chuck Norris turned 74 today.
Chuck Norris once round-house kicked a horse. Its descendants are now known as giraffes.

I needed a day off, a day of total distraction, and I got it.
I was at the rental store at 7:30 picking up an engine hoist, and shortly after 8:00 had it in place over the truck's straight six. Greg, two doors down agreed last week to give me a hand, and without his help this morning I'd have made a mess of things. Maybe lost limbs. He worked for GM for 22 years, both in dealerships as a service manager and at GM HQ as an engineer. In his spare time he built and raced dragsters. So for him this was deja vu.

You can pull the engine from a VW, even with the body on, in about 45 minutes and three wrenches. It took all morning to get this engine out of a wide open front end. Turns out the transmission has to come out with the engine, and that requires taking the top half off of it so it will clear the cab floor. Once the whole thing is out the tranny has to come off (150 lbs), then the clutch has to be removed, then the flywheel has to come off, and then you can take off the bell housing. Crazy!
(I didn't make any comments about the engineers who worked at GM).

Happy birthday, Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris has a bearskin rug in his house. The bear isn't dead, it's just afraid to move.

We discovered some things amiss, including a broken throw-out bearing and missing bolts, but I don't think there's anything that can't be fixed or replaced. Greg left about 11:00 and by noon I had the engine off the hoist and on the stand where it will rest while I tear it all apart. All the parts were tagged and bagged

OK, here's the thing: I've never done this before. Yes, I disassembled a VW but that car is tinker toys compared to this thing. There ain't no stinkin' bell housing on a VW; those German engineers figured out how to incorporate it into the transmission case. They managed to design a car with about half the parts and pieces this thing has. I told Greg that when he goes back to MI for the summer he should just plan on returning to help me get this thing back together, or I'm in real trouble. I am in WAY over my head and have a whole lot of learning to do if this truck is going ever see the road under its own power.
Something about fools rushing in. And the need for discretion to mitigate valor.

Today is Chuck Norris's birthday.
When Thomas Edison invented the telephone he had three missed calls from Chuck Norris.