a new home, a new project

Peanut now resides at my house here in Seattle. I'm renting a place for a while until I can afford to buy a house with a nice big garage for Peanut and the panel truck. The garage in this place is just barely big enough to hold Peanut, but it has a nice long driveway for Peanut and the panel and my uncle's Pontiac that I'm driving around.

I had Peanut moved up here by a truck hauling company that was hired through the moving company that brought the rest of my stuff to Seattle from Boulder. I seem to remember it was somewhere between $700-$900, but I could be wrong. Steve Hanberg from the "oletrucks" mailing list was kind enough to keep Peanut at his place for a month or so while I was living in temporary housing. So when the car hauler showed up at my work with Peanut, I fired her up, drove to the ferry, and took her over to Steve's house on Bainbridge Island. Peanut got to hang out there with Steve's old Suburbans until I moved into this house. Then I took the bus down to the ferry and got Peanut. We had to jump start Peanut after sitting in the rainforest that is Steve's back yard for a month, but she started back up just fine when the ferry got to Seattle (I was worried that I'd have to get a jump start on the ferry, and the ferry workers said that they'd just push Peanut onto the dock if she wouldn't start).

The panel truck is now paid off, and the guy who's holding it for me is looking into some shipping options to bring it up here from Northern California.

Today was the first day I've really done anything on Peanut since getting her back to this house, save knocking off another hornet's nest that was hiding in the grill. I blame my own laziness, plus not getting home from work until 7 or 8 or even 9, plus lots of travel on weekends, but really it's just laziness. But anyway, after looking at my finances, I decided that it's worth my time to attempt to examine Peanut's head gasket myself. I had considered taking Peanut into a shop to just get it done, or following my Dad's advice to get the engine pulled and rebuilt, but a) that's far too expensive for me to afford right now, and b) I'd want to make sure I got a good recommendation on an engine rebuild shop, which could take a good long time to research. So, I'm going for it myself. The worst that can happen is that I can't figure out what I'm doing and I have to get it rebuilt anyway. Actually, no, the worst thing that can happen is that I do something really stupid and ruin the engine forever, at which point Peanut becomes a parts donor for the panel truck. So, as long as I don't do that, I'm good.

So anyway, today I just took a bit of time and cleaned out the engine bay with some engine cleaner, shop towels, and a hose. I also wanted to make sure that she would start -- she did, but it took some doing. I had bought a battery charger that was capable of providing a 50-amp kick for jump starts, but that thing didn't provide enough juice to crank the starter. I think I'll return it and get the 75-amp version. So I hooked up the Pontiac to Peanut with some jumper cables, and after plenty of cranking and some squirts of WD-40 down the carb, she coughed to life with a nice big blue cloud of smoke. I let her warm up a bit, then drove her around the block to dry off the engine. The weather calls for rain in the morning tomorrow, but a party cloudy afternoon, so the plan is to start tearing into the engine after lunch (which will be shortly after I wake up, really). I plan to take copious notes and lots of photos, since I've never done this before and have no idea what I'm doing.

Should be fun!