I probably shouldn't admit this, but I believe I deserve the "Trottmann
Award" for my valve cover installation. I ordered a set of the black
aluminum covers from Koller Dodge. They ran me around $93 plus shipping.
A simple install right? I'm sitting on the floor turning the screws in for
the baffle plates and all the sudden, "SNAP". All crap, the screw head
twisted off. Ok, no problem, just drill out the screw. Well, this went ok.
This is where I should have stopped and epoxied in a new screw. But no, I
had to try and remove the remainder of the screw with an easy-out extractor.
Any guess what happened? "SNAP", the stinking thing broke off in the boss.
Now I'm really stuck. I can't drill this out with regular bits. This was
the first and last time I ever use an easy-out again!!!
Off I go to see my machinist buddy. He didn't charge me anything, but after
all is said and done, it cost be 4 hours in time (work and rag chewing time)
plus $40 to replace the carbide end-mills that were destroyed trying to
remove the easy-out.
Now I'm back to where I started after drilling out the screw, only with a
bigger hole and the finish all messed up due to being clamped in the vise.
I try sanding down the finish for repainting. This stuff does not sand well
at all; they're powder coated. So now off I go to see my friend at the
coating shop. Well, I wound up having them stripped and re-powder coated.
Here goes another $70, but they do look sweet. Much nicer than the original
finish.
So now they are finally installed. (Pics coming when finished with other
mods.) It only cost me around $210 for a $95 set of valve covers, and an
additional two weeks time.
That's it. Hope I didn't damage my reputation to badly. This was a simple
project gone extremely wrong. Hope some of you got a good laugh out of it.
I know I did after reading the original "trottmann story". Catch you all
later.
Rich - Ashburn, VA
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 11:50:37 EDT