Monkey mechanics, murphy, and my bad century so far

[Joe Stewart]

I had a strange occurrence in my G20 last week (and still continuing).

Car has been fine, wife calls me Friday says she hears a grinding sound.
After having her check wheels, lug nuts, no leaks, etc., I decide it's not
major enough to leave work and just have her drive the car home. (Mistake.)

Flashing back: When I put the (used, LSD) tranny in the G20, the drivers
side tranny mount had stripped threads. Thinking that I have never seen this
particular mount go bad, and thinking that it wouldn't get that much stress,
I used some JB Weld on the bolts, and put a helicoil kit on my list of
things to do when I have time/money. (Mistake)

After several months of driving, the JB weld failed. Turns out the entire
motor mount there was left dangling. This caused the entire engine and
tranny to fall back. Well, it fell back enough to push the drivers side CV
boot into the frame. (1 CV boot kit needed). In addition, apparently the
extreme angles it caused wreaked havoc, and 3 of the 6 additional boot
clamps decided to pop off. (3 clamps needed.)

Bought a helicoil kit from Pep Boys, of course the size I need is the most
expensive size they have (at least they do have it) and of course they do
not have the correct size drill bit in the cheap bits, just the nice ones.
Bring the tool home, and of course the drill can't fit between the radiator
and the tranny. So I have to take out all 4 mounts, and slowly drop the
entire engine and tranny as far as they will go. Not easy to do. Then of
course the stupid helicoil tool doesn't even last all 3 bolt holes without
failing. Luckily I returned it for a full refund.

I order the CV boot for the one that was torn, get the clamps, etc. Of
course I think this will be a quick job so I didn't start until late
(mistake). Start and realize they gave me the wrong CV boot. Further
investigation reveals that the monkey mechanic forgot that he needed to
order a NX2K (LSD) boot instead (mistake). This one has to be ordered so I
have to wait an additional day.

Get the boot in, put it together, don't take the car for a test drive.
(Mistake). Get in car to go to work, loud noise. Take the day off work. Wait
until late to take the car apart again (mistake). Realize that the noise is
because I didn't tighten the axle nut completely and the bearing has
separated. (mistake). Tighten axle nut, hope it works better, leave for
work. (Mistake) 1 mile down the road the noise is so bad that I can't hear
anything else. Come home, carpool with wife (mistake, but another story
altogether).

So now I still need to get a wheel bearing put in, and of course it's a
press fit so I can't really do that part of the work myself.

I'm hoping that at some point this project will head in the proper
direction....

-Jay