November 27, 2024

Well, this 3D-printed piece of shit was too small…

Waited like four days for it to arrive, and it was way too small. Shame on me for NOT USING THOSE CALIPERS I PAID SO MUCH FOR. I should have measured an existing spark plug to make sure. 

Yet, here we are.

What do we do? 

Well, friends, we remove plug #1, and we call our obliging child downstairs for help.

ME: “Okay, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to get under the car and turn the engine manually using a wrench. I need you to put your thumb over the open spark plug hole and tell me when you feel air come out.”

KID: “Are you serious?”

After providing some rubber gloves to the kid, we found what we believed to be TDC, moved the plugs around, but the car would not start and we got some very worrying carburetor backfires. 

KID: “Why is stuff exploding out of the engine?!?!”

Oooo, here, I made a chart:

So, how did we eventually find the actual #1 plug? We looked at old images from when I first bought the car and trial-and-errored it.

What a colossal waste of time that was. 

Kudos to my kid for finally figuring it out! She’s pretty good at puzzles.

On a positive note, I also got a new front license plate (an actual plate is not legally required for collector cars in WA) and license plate frame, and a new steering wheel that I’m not sure I actually like! 

Tell me what you think!