And if YOU thought YOUR day/week was bad?? Read on...

The question on the day...

What in the hell is the world coming to?

Here's a list of things to make YOUR day a little better by listening to a ***** session of things that MORE THAN likely WON'T happen to YOU today, but have happened to me in the past 36 hours:

1: My shop's dumpster caught on fire. Wonder how that happened? Yup, that's right. 20 foot flames, 1/2 the cars in the lot covered in soot. And those that didn't get soot, got fire truck foam!!! Who want's to drink from the fire hose??? YAYYY!!! Ohh, in the bottom of the dumpster we found a pile of charcoal from a BBQ grill. Now the question HERE is what fruitcake neighbor of mine was STUPID enough to throw out HOT charcoal in MY dumpster??? And on that note, how many licks DOES it take to reach the center of a tootsie roll pop?? The world will never know.....

2: Bright blue and white 97 eclipse GSX AWD Turbo. 4G63 J.spec Cyclone engine with a big 16G turbo, and everything else you can think of, all done right by myself or the other guys at my shop. Gets backed into 15 minutes after the guy drops it off by a guy who stopped in to ask prices on turbo kits. Takes the front end off the car, of course in my lot. That next day at 12:40 in the afternoon I went to get parts at the local store, came back to find the stereo and DVD player gone with less one drivers side window. Note: There's a ROOFING CREW on the building next to my shop 35 feet from my parking lot with 6 workers on the roof. No one saw a thing. Security camera went dead in the rainstorm 4 days ago. Alything ELSE want to happen to this car? Cocktail bomb anyone?

3: I have a migrane from this point on..... so it gets even better. If you DON'T know what chronic migrane sufferers have to deal with when we GET migranes let me explain it for you. Try this: Imagine your head hurting SOOOO badly that you "honestly" believe that if you DRILL a 1/2 inch hole in your head with a cordless Makita it WILL feel better. And you actualy have your employees TAKE THE DRILL AWAY FROM YOU when you TRY it. Litteraly, I mean to the point where you draw BLOOD. Have tried that. 4 times. So... lets make my headache that hurts so bad I'm throwing-up a little WORSE shall we????

4: Sent an Acura Legend out for an alignment after I replaced the trans/clutch (month plus job, parts wait etc... had to drop the steering rack/sub-frame) Alignment shop calls and tells me they "kinda think they might have messed the splines up on the steering shaft when they put the rack back up again". Guys, the rack was IN right. There's a slip spline, and the bolt only goes ON the shaft ONE WAY. You needed to align the TIE RODS to the RACK. "Ooopps." 3 1/2 hours of RESPLINING the rack by hand later.... (note... I have no vision in my right eye right now)

5: Guy comes to get above Acura while I'm out getting a bolt set for the steering shaft/rack. Drives off with it.... WITHOUT the alignment on it or rack in it all the way (due to the fact that I brought it back to MY shop to fix the rack), and does so without paying/seeing me/seeing ANYONE at the shop. Note: $1,900 he owes me for the job!!! (minus the alignment). Guy got 1/2 a mile away and realized the steering rack was 1/2 out of the car still. Didn't bother to ask if it was done, just came and got it out of the lot using his spare keys. Then calls me and tells me I owe him a tow and front end repair because he's sitting stuck on a curb with the steering wheel spining free in his hands. "You idiot... That's kinda what happens when you drive off with a car when I've got the steering rack bolts in my hand right now." His reply: "Ohhh." (note... I have restored the vision to the right eye with medication. The left won't work now. Head is swelled up 1/2 an inch. Fitted Snap-On ball cap does NOT fit anymore.)

6: Ferrari calls. Parts for the '81 308 GTSi I'm working on have arrived. Yup. You guessed it. Wrong connecting rod bearings. (I'm throwing-up again.)

7: My '93 Honda CRX II VXi (or "del Sol" as the US calls it, but this is a true Jap import, right drive and all) spits out a clutch spring on the way home that night. Not uncommon, happens often after a race weekend. Just usualy I can HEAR it. And I usualy STOP DRIVING when I hear it. No, I can't hear because my head hurts, so I drive it with the spring between the flywheel bolts and the pressure plate. Yeah. Have to torch the heads off the flywheel bolts to get it off. (Note: I still have my migrane.)

8: Forgot to mention!!!!! SUNDAY!!! The start of this GREAT week! (pre-Migrane!) Autocross @ Pine Knob in northern Detroit! Got my butt handed to me by my co-driver who had never driven a right hand drive car in his life... ever. Whooped me by 4 seconds. (he cooked the brakes in his 240 SX the day before at an open track day at Gratton, asked if he could co-drive with me)

9: Finaly get over the damn headache. Come home EARLY (9:00pm) to mow the lawn. No gas in the mower. Go out to the Chevelle in the garage. Have fuel in THAT! Good. Disconnect the 3/4 inch A-N fitting going to the fuel block. Turn the pump on. Not enough battery voltage to turn the pump over. Chargers are all back at the shop. Didn't mow the lawn. The grass is now blowing off the back window of the house, and I SWEAR I can see a herd of Elephants back behind the shed right now. Right next to the herd of gazelles.

10: Leave the mower out while I'm trying to milk gas out of the chevelle. Left the gas cap off. Started raining. Went inside. Eat food. Remembered the gas cap and the mower outside. You get the picture.

11: Ohh this is precious.... Get THIS: One of my guys has a GREAT idea. "Let's make Tim feel better (due to his headache, the Acura, the clutch, the mower, the fire, etc...) by coming in early tomorrow and WASH THE SHOP FLOORS for him." "Man, they SURE ARE DIRTY, I'll use this new Gel de-greaser in a spray can that he got for washing down realy dirty engine parts." Yeah. It's gel petroleum based, NON-water soluble, stinks like hell, and is HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. I nicknamed the stuff "Engine NAPALM". The only thing that loosens it up is mineral spirits. It's now all over the showroom floor, and he's using mops to fling the stuff from wall to wall with water on it to no avail in removing ANY of it. I find this out at 10:00 am this morning (ok, so I'm an hour late to work, it's MY shop, I can do that) when I land on my ASS walking through the front door. I am now saturated in the stuff. I clear out everyone and EVERYTHING (tools, racks, cars, engines, and anything that could move) in the shop and move it all to the parking lot and the alley out back, open ALL 4 of the bay doors, get the fans out and blow through the front door to make a cross breeze, get the Halon bottles out of the race car and hand them to the guys (as well as every extinguisher in the place), put on the respirators, and wash the floors down with mops and 4 gallons of mineral spirits. NOW, you can wash the floors guys. Thanks for trying. Please don't try again. Go put the halon bottles back in the race car, thank GOD I/he didn't burn the friggin place down.

12: I have a migrane again due to the fumes.

13: Go into the bathroom to puke.... YOU GUESSED IT!!! They tried to wash the bathroom floor too.

14: Insert above in the bathroom now....

15: Ordinance officer drives by. Sees everything in the lot/alley and comes up to see what's up. Writes my guy a ticket for me for having 1/2 a machine shop outside in the lot and alley (1/2 a dozen torn apart cars/ engines/ racks/ tool boxes, etc...). He tells the ordinance officer "He's in the bathroom puking right now because he's got a migrane from washing the floors with mineral spirits." I don't know why he said that. If I had my way, He'd be slowly rotating on the lathe as I skinned him alive with a carbide burr.

16: Fire marshal shows up. "What's this about washing the floors with mineral sprits?" Sorry Fred. My guy used pertoleum based NAPALM style de-greaser on the floors to try and speed up the cleaning. I wasn't here yet. Little did he know that all he needed to do was use greased lightning and the floors clean right up. I have a LOT of wax on them, and they would have come clean with a sponge mop. They always do. Give him a break, he's new and he was trying to help. Had to get that stuff up before it caught on fire, and mineral spirits evaporates faster and is 1/2 as flamable than the napalm he sprayed down 1/4 inch thick. Situation averted. Excuse me, I have to puke again. Fire marsh laughs, leaves. While I'm puking takes my guy over to the MSDS sheets where it PLAINLY says "Use ONLY in a petroleum based solvent tank for heavy cleaning." And "Warning, highly flammable. Do not breathe vapors." But the BEST PART of the MSDS sheet, and I SWEAR IT.... "DO NOT USE ON FLOORS!!!!!" No B/S. It said DO NOT USE ON FLOORS. Both in the MSDS AND on the side of the can!!!!

17: So..... The shop still somewhat smells like mineral spirits. It's gotten a lot better. Lost a FULL day of work. I STILL have no clutch in my car. We have everything back in the shop now. Popped the roof vents open and turned on the fans to run the rest of the vapors out, and by 9:00 tonight it was almost gone completely. And it's only Wed.

So......................

If you're sitting in a cubicle wondering to yourself how much WORSE IT CAN GET????? I'll send my guy John over to your office with a few cans of de-greaser, a clutch with no springs in it, a bottle of "instant migrane", an idiot Acura owner with no steering rack and a love for repair bill thievery, a mower full of water, a dead chevelle battery, a wrong set of connecting rod bearings for a 308, a lawn 10 feet deep with a herd of elephants in it, a DVD player thief who's still evading capture, a shattered DSM side window, and a dumpster on fire.

That should make your day a little brighter!!!

Tim the Stick
Unleaded Racing
Wyandotte, MI (Detroit)