I was in my garage, standing on my left leg with my right
leg held in the air like a flamingo, swearing and trying to locate the piece of
shaved aluminum I had just stepped on while walking barefoot between the two
cars which reside in the garage. I know
better. Better than to walk out into my
garage, which is a workshop on the right side and standard garage type car storage
on the left, without shoes on. But hey,
I like to live dangerously. Or I was
just being lazy, one of the two.
You see, I have a bench top drill press in my garage. As its
name suggests it resides on the top of a work bench, back right corner to be
exact. Equipped with a stepped drill bit
it is a formidable tool for the garage workshop. It was a great deal. Free shipping. And by free shipping I mean it was actually
free, as in it cost the same in store as if I had it shipped to my house. The only logical conclusion one can come to
is people who buy this same drill press in store are paying too much. Like I said, great deal.
I was drilling a few holes in an aluminum bracket I had
fashioned for mounting something on the kit car, taking special care to apply
the right amount of pressure and cutting fluid to create long wavy ribbons of
aluminum as the drill bit stepped from one size to another. Once finished I examined my oh so sophisticated
L shaped two-hole bracket, debating whether to paint it black or let it live on
wearing nothing but the shiny aluminum color it came with. Before I could finish the thought of paint or
no paint I grabbed the hose from the wall mounted shop vac to suck up all the
bits of aluminum scattered about the drill press and immediate surroundings on
the workbench. I hit the on button and instantly
knew I’d made a dire mistake. Instead of
being sucked into the hose, aluminum filings and cutting fluid went flying,
bouncing off the work bench, the peg board behind the work bench and ending up
who knows where, all over the garage.
Shop vacs are never called shop vacuums. I surmise this to be so because it sounds too
formal and even seems funny to write. I
wonder what F1 teams call them. Probably
something like - negative pressure evacuation tool effective for use on solids
and liquids – aka wet/dry shop vac.
Anyway, shop vacs can be a vacuum or a blower. All one needs to do is change the hose
location from one port to the other. It
is critical to know which port the hose is connected to before bringing the appliance
to life with the on switch. I had skipped this short and easy yet quite
critical step.
After I got a hold of the offending piece of metal in my foot
and promptly pulled it out I started thinking about some of the other less than
brilliant things I’ve done over a lifetime of working on cars in one and two
car home garage shops.
When I first got into autocrossing quite a few years ago I did
what all honest armchair drivers lacking any real-world experience competing
against those who do possess actual
experience do. I blamed my lack of pace
on the car. In one ill-fated attempt to
fix the car, an EK Civic Si, and bring it up to my clearly superior driving
abilities, I installed a rear sway bar. Installed
meaning it was attached to the car when I was done. Not installed in a manner which would produce
consistent handling improvements.
Without getting into the gory details of torsional bending spring
constants, moment arms and expensive spherical jointed end links, let’s just
say it didn’t. Didn’t work that is.
Well, that’s not entirely true. In high
speed sweepers and fast offsets it worked and then some. Hello snap oversteer, it’s good to finally
meet. I’ve heard all about you, none of
it good. In medium speed corners there
was little to no change. As it turns
out, spherical jointed multi piece end links won’t do any good if you don’t
know how they work. And let me tell you,
they don’t work when set up in bind. Who
knew?
A few months later I had the same Civic up on jack stands
and was in the process of installing new shocks and springs. This was, of course, being done in the name
of going faster and hopefully taming the inconsistent oversteer the car has
exhibited since the sway bar install.
Stiffer springs, adjustable shocks and a lower ride height will definitely fix the handling problems. Definitely.
However, the result could best be summed up in one word. And that word
is meh. Sure I could feel a difference
owed to the stiffer springs and there was even a perceptible change when
running the shocks up and down their adjustment range. But the actual handling? Meh.
Turn in was dull. Grip wasn’t
much improved either. Rotating the car
with lift throttle or heavy trail braking did work in certain situations. Unfortunately most times those situations occurred
when I didn’t want the car to rotate.
All in all I was a little underwhelmed.
Apparently when a suspension is taken half apart, and that
half replaced with new non-factory parts, the alignment needs to be reset. Who knew?
Alignment settings can affect the handling characteristics of a car just
as much as shocks, springs and sway bars and I never had the car
re-aligned. Hence the meh.
The silver lining to this series of car modification faux
pas is that I learned from them. The
front sway bar end links on the kit car?
They’re fucking perfect. Ride
height, toe and camber settings? I’ve got
those. You want to see them? The part that keeps me up at night is
wondering what missteps I’m making now that will seem like common knowledge
looking back on them from fifteen years in the future.
