Before you know it, seven years pass. It has been nearly that long since I purchased a deceptively decent-looking 1974 Buick Apollo, quite similar to my first car, advertised at Hemmings.
I keep this series going to encourage those new to DIY restorations to take a crack at it. After more than $5,000 invested, what began as a “5K Challenge” car had been running well enough to take regional road trips, but despite the money spent and many skinned knuckles, it’s been on my lift since February 2022.
Why would I do such a thing? Old cars are meant to be driven, right?
The answer is “it depends.” My goal for this car has also been for it to serve as my rolling classroom, to help me get over my fears of being a first-time restorer and novice mechanic. To a large degree, I’ve met that goal. I have a 1999 Miata to flog on backroads when I want some cheap thrills.
What I did not anticipate, however, was how failing with a relatively minor-seeming repair would lead me to realize an important lesson that applies far from the garage.
Five months and counting…
Gearhead Yoga, Parking Pawls, and Flight Attendants
During the pandemic, my Thursday evening yoga practice moved to Zoom. One benefit of yoga, physically, has been my ability to contort myself in a car while seated upside down on the floorboard, legs over the driver’s seat, as I cram my head under the dash. My arthritic spine thanks me later.
Little did I know a more subtle and important benefit would happen. Our teacher, Kerry, shares a short mindfulness lesson with us early in class, as we begin to warm up for the stretching and strength-building ahead. One week she noted how a woman on a crowded and tense flight summoned an attendant for some small need. It took a while for the flight attendant to arrive. Just before barking at the airline employee about how awful things had gotten, an epiphany struck the passenger. Instead of barking, she apologized for interrupting the harried woman and thanked her, personally, for what she’d done on the flight thus far to make it as pleasant as possible.
Instantly, the attendant’s face went from wary to grateful, and she and the passenger talked for several happy minutes. A weight was lifted and the passenger’s need got addressed speedily. The lesson? Try to turn frustration into gratitude.I began to try this with humans, and the effect resembles a magician’s spell. But would Kerry’s lesson work on me?
What evils lurk…
Trying the Technique on the Toughest Person of All
My Buick’s parking pawl looks undamaged, but it does not hold the car in park, no matter what I’ve tried. I replaced the spring, checked the fit of the rod that engages the pawl, and kept the bottom of the transmission off while doing all this work. While I was at it, I realized that the car needed new universal joints. Getting the correct size for the front of the driveshaft proved tedious, involving calipers, guesswork, and lots of searching around local parts stores. When I got a good fit, I saved the empty boxes for next time!
The delays taking off parts and re-installing them multiple times infuriated or depressed me for a while, until I recalled Kerry’s story of the passenger. A few worn parts, some hard to source, are not my fault. Would I rather be stuck by the road with the driveshaft sitting on the ground, something that happened once to a friend’s 1974 Dodge Dart? So, I would tell myself, “every time you do a chore again and again, you are turning it into muscle memory. Soon you will be able to remove a driveshaft or install a universal joint blindfolded. Be grateful for the lessons.”
While dropping needle bearings everywhere, I taught myself to install the joints with my shop vise, then lubed them properly, reinstalled the driveshaft, and went back after the errant pawl, learning along the way how to adjust the car’s shift linkage. When a flimsy plastic tab that holds the shift-indicator needle in the dash broke, as plastics in modern cars do, instead of screaming, I took the dash out for the nth time. Why count at this point? Just call the number “N” and be done with it! Using a pin vise from my scale-modeling supplies, I drilled a tiny hole for hooking the little spring in place. It’s better than stock now.
Even when I learned that the parking pawl could not be replaced without pulling the transmission, I decided to be grateful. Now at least I’d isolated an issue to its probable cause. Pay a shop? Maybe, eventually. Meanwhile, parking the car in gear is not an option as it is with my manual-transmission Mazda. I’ll keep a chunk of 4×4 wood in the Buick’s trunk as a backup to the emergency brake so the car does not roll off. I can also park it on level ground or against a wall (Yay, Malaise-Era 5-mph bumpers with thick rubber pads).
One Over-Torqued Bolt
As I finish work under the hood (at least until I add a heater) I’m focusing on upgrades, such as finned valve covers, plugs and wires, and a dipstick from the parts car I found in South Carolina. Yes, the cheap aftermarket one that a prior owner had installed broke, with the end of my dipstick falling off.
Tom and Ray were right!
Remember how the Magliozzis warned us about that, on their wonderful and sadly goneCar Talk radio show?
Lessons in avoiding frustration were just starting. One justifiable, rather than cosmetic, upgrade to the car had been a new transmission pan with a drain plug. Transmissions notoriously spill fluid everywhere when dropping the pan, so lots of gearheads add a drain to the existing pan or switch to a pan with a drain. Summit Racing sells sturdy-looking aluminum pans for my car’s TH400 transmission, so I ordered one to the tune of $130.
I installed it with an upgraded gasket and new filter in the transmission. Yes, I was proud of myself. Too proud.
On the final bolt, tightened to the spec of 10 foot-pounds by the manufacturer’s instructions, the pan cracked. I felt it rather than saw it. Looking up, I saw the pan was ruined, a fault-line running from the bolt hole down the side of the pan.
A test of mindfulness.
It would have really been easy, even on a Sunday when Summit’s phone lines are closed, to “scream” at them IN ALL CAPS through their text-messaging service. Instead, heeding that lesson from Kerry’s class, I texted what had happened and said how sad it made me, because I like the product and so appreciated all the other items I’d purchased from them over the years for the car and others. What might we do next?
In five minutes, I had their customer-service person thanking me and sending me a return authorization, under warranty. I got a full refund, and for now, my stock steel transmission pan is back on the car. Maybe later I’ll tap it for a drain plug. Steel lasts.
Ultimately, breaking aluminum pans and fixing a balky transmission “well enough for now” provided a life-lesson to take outside the shop into our imperfect, angry world.
Coda: Let The Good Times Roll, Even When The Car Won’t
The Buick is back on the road with the old steel pan back. After filling the transmission and changing the oil, I fired it up—no leaks!—but it would not move in any gear. Instead of yelling, I pulled out an assembly manual for 1973-1974 Apollos and got very clear instructions on how to adjust the shifter linkage. Again.
And it worked. I drove a few miles to check shifting. Before a friend retired to Florida, we masked up (I had COVID early this year, despite my vaccination and booster) and took the car on a rip-roaring trip down the backroads. He’d been my passenger on many adventures when I had my first Apollo, in the ’70s and ’80s.
Life is short, burn some rubber.
The airline passenger’s approach will fail sometimes, though I find it fails more often with people than with mechanical items.
Parking pawl? No dice, but it’s better. Time to make adjustment n+1 to the column shift and the linkage.
Humans? A UPS clerk who replied to my “How are you?” with “I’m here” answered my admittedly chirpy “better than the alternative!” with “not really.” At least I tried, and by being pleasant, I got a real smile by the time I left the UPS store.
Outside, the sky was tumbling with storm-clouds that said something to me about the need to look at the sky. You can fix a car easier than a life. Two days later, a tornado ripped through a spot a couple of miles from that UPS store.
Life is short, but a restoration can be done. Just keep at it.
So what frustrations repairing things have you dealt with, creatively? And have you turned frustration into gratitude, like the lady on the airplane?
Joe Essid is a part-time farmer and writer based in Goochland County, Virginia. You can follow his exploits atTractorPunk.blogspot.com. A version of this column appears there, a bit more philosophical than mechanical in tone. He teaches writing and writes about itat the University of Richmond. Catch up on previous parts in his Apollo restoration project.
