trying to steer me right…literally

i need to learn to stop procrastinating…

…but i suppose i’ll get to that tomorrow.

as this is being written i’m mid swap-out on a power steering pump. this will be number FOUR since i’ve owned the car, but one of them was poor planning and one was poor from the get-go. hopefully fourth time’s the charm.

(so the little bit above was scrawled out right before JAB came and picked me up and ran me to austin, i won’t spoil the surprise but i get to through most of this again on monday…)

so, last time i swapped out the power steering pump (which was partially my fault as there was a leak i should have been watching more carefully and it just drained and burned up, but fuck it – it has a lifetime warranty) i thought all went well but i noticed a slight noise a few days later. not so much you could hear it in the garage, but if you were in the drive-thru lane (where your engine noise bounces off a brick wall less than a foot away from itself) you could hear a slight grinding if you turned the wheel…but it was hot and i didn’t wanna deal with it, so i let it ride. as time wore on, the noise got a bit louder, than a bit louder, than started happening even when you weren’t turning the wheel, and yesterday hit it’s peak of annoyance and scariness and i was thankful to make it home as it almost sounded like i had a new layer or noise going…

…and i was right. the power steering PULLEY had joined the party:

(on the bottom is what was there, on the top is how it SHOULD look)

so that explains the rattle from hell!

problem is, while the pump is common enough that the autozone in my little town had TWO in stock the pulley is a “dealer only” part so an indy bmw mechanic i know got one for me rush and we went and picked it up (hence why JAB came and got me earlier) and then i got back to the house around three and put everything back together, even fixing some bent tabs the splash guard screws into along the way. all seemed to be going along swimmingly – and then i fired it up…

…”swimmingly” swam away real fast then.

upside – it idles smoother than it has in forever
downside – i still have no power steering

noisy as the old pump was, i still had power steering – so i know it’s the NEW (read: REBUILT) pump that’s the cause. my big fear? that it locks up and shreds the belt and leaves me stranded…which it has ample opportunity to do this weekend as my work schedule doesn’t afford me the chance to deal with this until monday at the earliest…

we’ll see where this goes…