The
Rebuilding of a Ford Fiesta
The
Engine - Phil May
Michael
Hillman
In
April 1982, long before I first met her, Audrey sent a
blistering letter berating the Chairman of the Board of
Ford Motor Company for the quality of Ford cars.
Audrey's letter was filled with clichés such as
"Now I understand why Ford means 'Fix Or Repair
Daily" and 'Why my car is usually 'Found On the
Road Dead.'" This rare display of Audrey's wrath
came abut as a direct result of the catastrophic failure
of the engine in what was then her new Fiesta, and
Ford's response to it.
Listening to her long litany of
complaints, a Ford customer representative offered to
pay half the cost of the repairs, which was not bad,
considering the car was out of warranty. In exchange all
that Ford requested was for Audrey to say that she was a
satisfied Ford customer. Principled as she is, Audrey
refused this request, which while in the short run made
her feel good, nevertheless cost her a bunch of money
since Ford immediately withdrew their offer and Audrey
was stuck with paying the full cost of the engine
repair.
Four years later, while dropping a
horse off at the veterinary hospital where she worked, I
happened to spy her gold Fiesta. Having put well over
300,000 trouble free miles on my own Fiesta, I had
developed quite an affinity for them, even going so far
as to have joined a Ford Fiesta fan club. In the
hospital I inquired about the owner of the Fiesta in the
lot, anticipating that, like me, its owner would relish
exchanging happy stories about it. Having heard of my
inquiries from her staff, Audrey approached me
cautiously, figuring "anyone who liked Fiestas had
to be on drugs."
After listening for several minutes
to my happy go-lucky Fiesta fairy tales, Audrey let out
a 15 minute diatribe over the problems she had had with
the car. She ended with a categorical declaration that
the only thing she detested worse than her stupid car
were people who owned Jack Russell terriers. Her spunky
attitude, not to mention her good looks, got the better
of me, and before I knew it, I was offering to work on
her car in exchange for dinners. Unaware of the chain of
events her answer would set off, she accepted my offer.
As I left the hospital, I surveyed the condition of her
car and greedily rubbed my hands in anticipation of the
meals I could milk out of the deal. All that stood
between us and our fate was for me to figure out how to
break the news to Audrey about PJ, my trusty Jack
Russell.
Two years and about two hundred meals
later, Audrey discovered that I had long since fixed all
the problems with her car and that instead of working on
the car while she was slaving over a stove, I was really
out playing chase the cat with PJ. Needless to say, she
was a tad bit hot at PJ and me. My attempts to remind
her how well her car was now running did little to
pacify her wrath over having been hoodwinked into
cooking me all those dinners by. Threaten with losing
access to her great culinary skills, I succumbed to the
inevitable and asked her to marry me, much to PJ's
dismay.
All went well for Audrey and I and
our twin Fiestas for the next several years. In 1991,
however, as I was bolting a two by four to the broken
frame of my Fiesta, Audrey questioned whether the time
had come to retire it a and buy a new car. In spite of
the fact that the driver's side door had been rusted
shut for two years, and the car filled with smoke every
time the headlights light were turned on, I still
figured the car's best days were yet to come. My well
reasoned rational defense of the car however was
undermined when the two by four broke and the drivers
seat and the piece of plywood it had been sitting on for
the past two years fell to the ground.
With much consternation, I decided
that Audrey probably was right and acquiesced to buying
a new car. Always looking for a way to save a buck
however, I convinced a rightfully skeptical Audrey that
the car should be dismantled and its parts stockpiled
for spares for the other Fiesta. Much to her dismay, I
began dismantling the car in the front yard and just
about everything that could unscrewed, unbolted, or
broken off with a hammer was removed, all of which I
cataloged, sealed in plastic, and promptly misplaced.
After 13 years and 450,000 miles, I
figured my Fiesta deserved a decent burial. So when I
got down to the frame, I called Dicky Seiss, a neighbor
who specializes in septic system installation, to dig a
grave for it in my back yard (Audrey for some reason
that still escapes me, had refused my request to bury it
in her formal garden). Later, Dicky asked inquisitively
if all city folks were that attached to their cars.
"Around here we have a saying, 'When they're done
running, their still good for flushing,'"
irreverently suggesting, of course, that I should have
turned my faithful little car into a septic tank.
Well as things go around our farm,
Audrey got the new car and I got her Fiesta. Now over
the preceding years, Audrey often accused me of not
liking her Fiesta as much as I liked my Fiesta, a fact I
will not dispute. Chagrinned that I had been duped into
cutting up my car, I paid even less attention to her
Fiesta. In spite of this, her Fiesta ran trouble free
for the next five years, and only last spring did it
finally begin to show signs of 350,000 miles of wear and
tear. For several weeks Audrey and I pondered whether
the time had come for it, too, to be buried. In the end,
my desire not to waste a $120 warranty on the rack and
pinion steering unit, not to mention the huge stockpile
of used Fiesta parts I had collected over the years,
tipped the balance in favor of jury-rigging a few fixes.
Audrey reluctantly acquiesced to my scheme, especially
since I assured her that the total cost for needed
repairs was not exceed $200.
My original plan was to simply pull
the engine out of Audrey's car and replace it with the
old engine from my car. Although the old engine had been
sitting around for several years, it had logged only a
couple thousand miles since it had last been rebuild and
should, I figured, do well. I had taken the precaution
of coating it thoroughly with oil, and sealing it in
plastic when it was pulled out back in '91. Stored in my
carpentry shop, it proved rather useful as a weight for
various projects over the years. Unfortunately, the
plastic wrapper received a new tear every time I moved
it. Needless to say, it was caked in sawdust and upon
closer inspection, it was obvious a simple engine swap
was no longer feasible, though I failed to relay this,
and the resultant increase in cost, to Audrey.
The first step was to pull the
engine, which was easily accomplished with the aid of my
Mount St. Mary's rent-a-student, Stas, and my neighbor,
Richard Broadbent. As I was wrapping a sling around the
engine to attach to the bucket of Richard's tractor,
Stas noticed the "Do Not Use" tag on the
slings and question if the slings were safe.
"Sure" I said "I got these slings from a
safety class I took a couple of years back. They were
given out as samples of defective gear that you should
not use, but they work great for pulling out fence posts
... I think they'll hold the engine." For some
reason, Stas refused to climb under the creaking sling
and remove the last bolt holding the engine in. Instead,
Stas and Richard stood back and watched me remove the
bolt, shaking their head the whole time and mumbling to
each other about Audrey needing to up the dosage of my
medicine again.
Once the engine was out I quickly
began to disassemble it. As I was doing so, Audrey
appeared out of nowhere. "Great. I've spent years
trying to make this place look nice, and now I have a
car on stilts in my front yard and engine pieces in the
driveway. This isn't going to take long, is it? I don't
want people to think we're from Thurmont." (See
rule #9 of learning to write)
"No, it shouldn't take long,
maybe a week or two. I want this engine to be right, so
I'm rebuilding it myself." Shaking her head in
disbelief, she replied: "Now that's an oxymoron if
ever there was one."
By four that afternoon, I had managed
to disassemble both engines and, with the help of Stas
and several double gin and tonics, I had intermixed the
parts to such a degree that I was no longer sure which
parts went with which engine. Perplexed, I sought out
the advice of Phil May, who operates an auto repair shop
over on Keysville Road. Phil, as I've learned over the
past few years, has forgotten more about Fords than most
mechanics ever knew.
"Fiesta, huh? They were good
little cars. Made in England." As Mr. May rattled
off the history of the car and his experiences with
their engines, it occurred to me that, based upon my
recent experience with the tractor, maybe it would be
smarter to let him rebuild the engine. The decision was
made academic when Mr. May told me what he would charge
to rebuild it. "Are you sure you haven't misplaced
a decimal point? This is way too cheap." Smiling,
Mr. May said that he thought the price was fair.
"Mechanics charge too much today. At my price, I
can work on this engine at my pace and have fun.
Besides, Kermit Glass said to be nice to you. Something
about your medication not being quite right."
Well, in no time at all, Mr. May had
rebuilt the engine and the drive shafts, wheel bearings,
and just about every other mechanical piece of equipment
I could take out of the car. The way I figured it, I
couldn't buy the parts as cheaply as what I was paying
Mr. May to buy and install them for me. Besides, I still
had nightmares about the last time I had rebuilt the
engine back in 1986. After laboring over it for weeks, I
had reinstalled the engine without part of the oil line,
an error I did not discover, in spite of red oil warning
light shining in my face, until I had run the engine for
several minutes.
When I went to pick up the engine,
however, Mr. May refused to give it to me until I gave
him the oil pump. When I insisted that I was capable of
doing that, he replied, "Sorry, but I've got a
reputation to maintain, and if the engine fails, I don't
want everyone to read about it in that newspaper you
pretend to write for. Besides, this engine looks like it
was once run without oil. Didn't you say you rebuilt it
last?"
Mumbling something about having to
get back and help Audrey do the dishes, I handed over
the oil pump and five minutes later he handed me a shiny
engine, and a bill less than half of my most optimistic
estimate. Once I had the engine back in my hands and Mr.
May had washed his hands of any further responsibility,
the "do not use" slings were pulled out and
Stas, Richard, and I made quick work of putting it back
into the car. Much to my delight, and right in line with
Mr. May's expectations, the engine caught and roared to
life the first time I turned the key. Following a few
minor adjustments, the engine was purring sweeter then
the day it came off the factory floor. Thanks to Mr.
May's craftsmanship, I was confident that the car, for
once, was mechanically fit, and set about looking for
someone to do the body work.
Michael lives with his wife Audrey on
their farm east of Emmitsburg where Audrey spends her
time field-testing promising new herbal remedies to
treat neurotic husbands.
Read
Part Two:
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