Hadders
06-07-2010, 06:52 AM
Yesterday I drove ~150km to visit family and pick some things up that I needed at my new house.
Car looked a little dirty, so I thought I'd treat her to a wash and a wax on the outside, and some leather conditioner and UV protectant inside.
Pop the bonnet to gaze at the baby 2L straight six, decide it's nowhere near clean to be partnered with the exterior. So I grab a spray-can of budget degreaser, lathered it on, then hosed it off. Then I thought "shit, I wonder if that'll ruin the electronics."
Cranked it over, let it idle, all seemed ok. Then it started running horribly, sounded like two cylinders were dead. Went for a drive to try and boil off any residual water - no deal.
It was getting dark, so I had to ditch the car after some preliminary trouble shooting, and borrow my girlfriends parents' car to get us all back home. Caught a bus back this morning to fix the e36, and found that two spark plug recesses were totally filled with water. So I drained the water, replaced the plugs with some new cheapo NGK's, replaced the coil packs, and then pulled one of the coil pack fastening studs straight out of the rocker cover.
So now I've fixed the problem, and inadvertently created more work for myself. A new rocker cover's going to set me back about $75 apparently, which doesn't seem heinously expensive. The reason I'm annoyed is because I managed to strip an inch worth of thread out of an alloy rocker cover with two tenth's of fuck all force on a X-wrench that's only has about an inch worth or leverage. Are these covers made out of structural grade cheese?
Car looked a little dirty, so I thought I'd treat her to a wash and a wax on the outside, and some leather conditioner and UV protectant inside.
Pop the bonnet to gaze at the baby 2L straight six, decide it's nowhere near clean to be partnered with the exterior. So I grab a spray-can of budget degreaser, lathered it on, then hosed it off. Then I thought "shit, I wonder if that'll ruin the electronics."
Cranked it over, let it idle, all seemed ok. Then it started running horribly, sounded like two cylinders were dead. Went for a drive to try and boil off any residual water - no deal.
It was getting dark, so I had to ditch the car after some preliminary trouble shooting, and borrow my girlfriends parents' car to get us all back home. Caught a bus back this morning to fix the e36, and found that two spark plug recesses were totally filled with water. So I drained the water, replaced the plugs with some new cheapo NGK's, replaced the coil packs, and then pulled one of the coil pack fastening studs straight out of the rocker cover.
So now I've fixed the problem, and inadvertently created more work for myself. A new rocker cover's going to set me back about $75 apparently, which doesn't seem heinously expensive. The reason I'm annoyed is because I managed to strip an inch worth of thread out of an alloy rocker cover with two tenth's of fuck all force on a X-wrench that's only has about an inch worth or leverage. Are these covers made out of structural grade cheese?