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I've only now calmed down enough from this weekend's escapades to post this. The buick has been making a clunking noise over bumps on the passenger front end for about a week. i thought it was the strut going bad as it does have 110k miles on it. so we're driving home saturday night on the highway and it starts making a god awful noise so i pull it to the side quick. get out to see the passenger front side smoking. well...it wasn't the strut making the noise. the top caliper bracket bolt unthreaded itself and decided to take a vacation in the middle of the highway. by doing so, it forced the top of the caliper into my wheel. we were a little over a mile from home too. i just walked home and got the other car and left it on the side of the road. i hate this freakin car

the drama continues the next morning with calling up autozone to just get the bolt rather than take off the other one and match it up. they have to order it but they will get it by 12-1. 3:30 rolls around and it finally shows up and it's not the right one. i go back to the car and take off the bottom bolt, go to lowes and match it up (standard 1/2" bolt w/ 15mm head). i could have done that at 8am but instead i wasted an entire day waiting for the wrong part.

this was just the last straw for this car. now looking at a replacement. might be trading it in on an MKX and then selling the wife's civic outright to by a mustang.
 
Sorry to hear that! You received your own confirmation that Autozone is crap and shouldn't even be in business. Sure they sell oil and other fluids, but so does Walmart, for less even. Yeah, most parts stores besides Napa are useless now. They'll tell me they don't have something, I'll go home look it up myself, get a part number and go back and WHAM! There it is right on they're shelf. Used to be that knowledgeable car people worked at these places and knew how to substitute certain car terms for others, often enabling them to find your part though it was called something completely different.

Now you got some idiot teenager behind the counter who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the wall and just shakes his head at you when the computer doesn't show the part! Yes, I am mad bro! lmao
 
they don't pay well enough for a decent guy to work there. they'd rather have some indians write a software program to do the job for them. the only reason i went there is because it is open on a sunday. otherwise i would have gone to where i always go which is a Carquest. i know the guys there and they know me, we have an account with them and everything.
 
I was a manager at Advance for years. I could give you the scoop, but it's pretty much what you've already figured out. What you want to do is find a good parts guy, doesn't matter where he works.

Well, I was putting killer hours at work to save up for my transmission rebuild. Then my wife had a crown fall off and take half the tooth with it last night. $260 emergency dentist visit this morning to extract what's left of the tooth. Now she has a hole in her mouth that they can only fix by putting a multi thousand dollar implant in. I give up.

Kurt
 
I'm now remodeling my garage. As many know I had carpet in there. After 7 years and pressure cleaning it I finally wanted to go another route. I wanted to do U-Coat It but the owner before me tried epoxy floor paint which came up. U-Coat is really for bare concrete and I didn't want to sand the epoxy paint off. I have Race Deck squares but to complete the entire garage I was looking at another $500. Well my wife actually found garage flooring at Sam's Club. It's a 9'x20' roll with 5 colors to choose from. They have several patterns as well. I opted for Brick Red color, I'm also painting the walls green at this time.

I only put half the floor down. I just started so I'm not even close to finishing. This is all I have done right now. Don't mind the bubbles, they have settled and gone already.

Before:
a6ba7cee.jpg


After:
ae6a8216.jpg
 
Kurt, it was $168 a roll. I had 2 rolls shipped to my house for a total of $386. They have 10'x20' rolls in different patterns also. I chose 9'x20' as mine garage is just at 19' feet wide. Much cheaper than the Race Deck squares and U-Coat It floor. I'm happy with it. I'll take more pics this weekend when I do more.
 
So I won my first iRacing Race at Okaynawa in Japan this weekend. It was tough, I only won by half a car length. The 2nd place car started 10th and he gained on me every single lap but I held on at the end. He was from England and talked to me after the race, nice guy.

I then backed that win up with another one on Sunday. My 13 year old son does the Oval tracks, he's got 60 starts and 6 wins. I do the road courses and before this weekend I had never even led a lap (it's hard). A friend of mine showed me how to run this track and it's worked.

I'm the blue / black Mazda MX-5, I have the camera running on me the entire race. On lap 3 I take the lead on the straight away, 1st place swings wide into the dirt. Then I fast forward to the last lap of the race.
 
Man I love Astro performance trannies! My car has one of the beefed up versions and I hammer it all the time with this blown motor and it just begs for more!

Of course, now that I said that next time I go for a cruise I'll blow my T5 into a thousand pieces!
 
Man I love Astro performance trannies! My car has one of the beefed up versions and I hammer it all the time with this blown motor and it just begs for more!

Of course, now that I said that next time I go for a cruise I'll blow my T5 into a thousand pieces!
And of course it'll happen at like 1500 rpm while just cruising...
 
It had clearly suffered from long term fatigue. It was a 10 spline, but I had done multiple hard launches on slicks with it. The design of it is flawed, same as a T-5 and a T-56. The splines are machined into the shaft. The inner spline diameter has to be as wide as the shaft diameter. Er to say more simply, the shaft must be narrowest prior to the splines. Weirdly the output shaft doesn't share the same design flaw.

Kurt
 
i never had problems with my input shaft but i did bend the output shaft on my t3550. i then upgraded to 26spline input and put a larger diameter output shaft in it. it's been great ever since.
 
i never had problems with my input shaft but i did bend the output shaft on my t3550. i then upgraded to 26spline input and put a larger diameter output shaft in it. it's been great ever since.

It's crazy how tailshafts bending never was a problem with wimpy ole T5's but it is on 1500.00 aftermarket transmissions! I once had a 3550 and had a vibration I could never cure. I ended up trading it for a T5 and some cash. I suppose it could have been a bent tailshaft!