Intake and Exhaust

I am not sure about everyone else reading this, but I can recognize certain Alfas by the sound they make as they drive by. I remember when I worked at Garcia Alfa Racing I could tell if what just pulled up was an Alfa and also what model it was. For some reason a GTV6 was especially telling in its exhaust note.

There is something special about an old Alfas sound. Modern regular cars do not often share the same qualities. The best car I can think of for sound right now is perhaps an Infiniti or Nissan. They have spent countless hours tuning the exhaust to be just right. I must admit that I have added those vehicles to the list I can identify by sound. Of course I cannot tell one from the other but I can certainly give you a brand. Sadly their exhaust note just isn’t right. It sounds processed. It sounds contrived. It seems obvious they put the sound there. It did not come about naturally.

In an Alfa the sounds are there because they are meant to be there. I cannot speak for the new Alfas but the ones they sold in this country I know all about. Have you ever seen the inside of an Alfa exhaust? You want to know why they sound so good? The answer is two fold. First it is because performance was paramount. The second is because Alfa is cheap.

Performance comes from tuning the exhaust. A lot of people think that the key to exhaust performance is reducing backpressure. That is true but only up to a point. You see certain amounts of backpressure are key to low-end torque. But if you want top end power you have to find a balance and get that pipe as free flowing as possible. Well anyone can tell you our cars are not torque monsters. If you want some grunt you have to wind the stink out of them. Rev it up a bit. See how far you can bury the needle in the red before your ego gives out or the engine gives up.

So what is inside an Alfa exhaust that makes it so free flowing? The answer is nothing. Perhaps you have seen commercials for flowmaster or other fancy exhaust systems. They use baffles and the redirection of air flow to quiet things down while producing the desired sound. An Alfa exhaust is more like the silencer on a gun. Take a tube, put some perforations around it and put it in a box full of steel wool. You take out some of the sound but you leave most of the flow. The realities are somewhat more technical than this but you get the point. Other companies use weird contraptions to make their exhaust sound a certain way or to make their exhaust note just plain disappear. Alfa said screw your ears and get that gas out of the engine as fast as you can! The end result is a nice burble and an excellent noise response to your right foot.

The cheap aspect to the Alfa sound comes from the background of the company. No, not the background we read about in books with all the racing and engineering and design. I am talking about the lack of money, the poor craftsmanship of many of the parts, and the general cheapness of materials. I have a receipt for my spider that shows the original owner had to get a new exhaust for the car less than five years after the original purchase date. What? Five years?!?! That is absurd. But if you think about it, it all makes sense. If they made the exhaust out of thick, heavy gauge, high quality steel all the sound would be lost. Or perhaps the note would not be as sweet. Instead they cobbled together an ill-fitting exhaust using recycled rusty cans and left over pencil shavings. The welds cracked the moment your drove off the lot. The seams rusted out the first time your drove through a puddle. Sure the materials were awful, but nothing sounds better than metal so thin you can read through it. When the engine screams for more we can hear every last word!!

Now let us get away from exhaust for a minute. Why is everyone so obsessed with exhaust? I blame emissions and American V8s. People are obsessed with exhaust because they have forgotten what a proper intake noise sounds like. I mean seriously, which is better a nice exhaust or the snort a set of side draft webers makes as it tries to suck a small animal down into the engine? I think we will all agree the snort beats the fart any day. So where did the snort go? Well it got buried.

In the history of Alfa they have slowly lost that wonderful intake sound due to burying it deeper and deeper in the engine. First we had carbs. If you take off the filter and look down the throats you can see the inside of the engine. You cannot get much closer to the action than that. Fire it up and you can hear what the engine is thinking before it even happens. Each cylinder has it’s own throttle body and gets tuned for it’s individual needs.

Next came SPICA. Not much change in sound here. Perhaps there was a little less popping through the intake, but in general you have the same aural pleasures.

So now after years and years and years of listening to an engine from the front and the back, Alfa slaps on Bosch FI to bring things up to date. Is Bosch the problem here? No. I happen to like the computerized fuel injection for its reliability and general ease of maintenance. The problem here is how Alfa went about implementing things. Instead of using a set of paper-thin filter elements or an equally thin sheet metal filter housing, Alfa slapped on a massive aluminum intake plenum. Are plenums bad? No. They are great for engine breathing, the bigger the better. But does it have to be so thick? I think not. Rather than a thick-skinned aluminum casting which absorbs all the wonderful Alfa music, we could have easily gotten away with another sheet metal box. And where did all the individual throttle bodies go? Now we only have a single throttle on the far side of the plenum.

But intakes alone do not an engine note make. A great deal of the sound comes from the engine itself. The solid lifters make a nice rhythmic tapping sound. On Bosch cars you can hear the fuel injectors fire with a nice rapid click. If your engine is worn, a piston slap or something worse might make your car somewhat unique.

I think the key to engine music is the ability to hear the engine in all its glory. It just is what it is and just by chance it is a sound that touches our souls. We live in an era when engines are hidden by plastic covers. Sound dampening panels and insulation blankets deprive us of our engine notes. Long, well-built, thick walled exhausts are scientifically designed to muffle an engine without hurting performance. What is this world coming to? I don’t have the answer, but when I get especially depressed about it I go out into the garage and fire up one of my cars. A few blips of the throttle releases sounds that make my heart flutter and life feels good again.

Side note: American V8s are mostly exhaust note rather than intake. My reasoning is the long runners on the cast intake manifold muffle the intake sounds somewhat. It is then coupled to a carburetor with a single or maybe two butterflies. I will take individual runners and throttle bodies any day. I have heard that small blocks with webers are incredibly intoxicating to listen to. When I find one, I will let you know.

Second side note: Why do Ferraris and Small blocks sound so different? The answer is in the crankshaft. Ferraris use a flat plane crank meaning the throws are 180 degrees apart. This gives it a fundamental quality like two four cylinder engines back to back. The result is a beehive sound that makes the engine scream even when it is not working hard. The American designed v8 engines of yore all use a cross plane crankshaft. The throws are 90 degress apart. This causes a harmonic to form in the exhaust that cancels out every other cylinder. Now the term “lazy” or “loping” makes more sense when used to describe these engines. Even when at full tilt they sound like they are barely working. That is because we only hear half the song!

Concourse and Poker Run

What is it with the rain? How many years have we consistently had wet concours events? I am getting tired of the wetness! Maybe next year we will have a backup location with a roof!

Other than the wet weather we had another excellent concours this year! The turnout was still acceptable even though the rain made for many no shows. Let’s see. We had my spider. We had the Durning’s spider. We had the Broussard’s spider. And we had a brand new car!!

No it was not a brand spanking new car freshly arrived from Europe. It was a new car to the group. While driving around town the day before, several of us stumbled upon a Giulia Super just like Mike Hemsley’s! It was almost identical in trim, engine, condition, etc. The biggest difference was color! And the even better news, the owner lives in the area! Now if only we can get him to join the club…

Hey maybe we can get this fellow to join if we give him a trophy! In what seems like a new tradition, the new guy took first prize. I seem to remember a 164LS doing that a few years ago. But hey, based on the competition the right car won both times! This blue Super was just fantastic. Of course having Mike Hemsley as a judge probably helps too.

Our other judge was a member who not only loves Alfas, but he also loves BMWs. He is the local BMW club’s president of all things!! So to take advantage of this joint member we invited the BMW club to our concours and the rally the day before. No one stuck around for the concours, but the door has been opened for joint events in the future! Perhaps one day this event will be as big as our annual rally in Jackson.

Speaking of rallying, we had one. A poker rally. on the day before the concours. Oh yeah, it rained. The day started off with so much rain we almost called off the poker rally for safety reasons! On the course were two low water bridges that could have been flooded! And of course debris is always an issue on back roads in the woods. Despite the weather we managed to get everyone underway. And we even had a few guests! Jeff Cobb joined us in his Lamborghini Espada. Chappy and Mickey came in a hot little miata. And finally, we had a new comer in a wonder Sunbeam Alpine. He was the bravest of them all. Some of the parts to the top and weather seals are still missing from his restoration. Among the actual club members we had the Broussards in their immaculate spider. Trying to keep Jeff from running him over was Marshal and son in his spider.

The winner was Chappy and Mickey. I have no idea what their time was. But I do know they had the better hand. Was there a big prize? Nope. Did everyone have a great time? Yes!! I think next year we will invite more groups, hold the rally earlier in the morning, and have a big prize for the winner. How does that sound? Yeah, I like it too! Not only that, but Ed wants to do the same for the concours. We want more cars, more clubs, more judges, and bigger prizes. So if you have any suggestions for how to make these events bigger and better for next year, let me know!! Till then, keep your car shiny and your tires warm.

Lemons Race

On May 1^st and 2^nd I got to go racing for the first time. I thought racing was about going around the track as fast as possible. Turns out it is really about tracing electrical faults, and watching for mechanical failures. Track time is only half of the story.

There is a new racing series in town: 24 Hours of Lemons. The concept is simple. You get a bunch of racers together and you put them in beaters and you send them out onto the track and see who it still running at the end of the day. The details are important but simple. Your racecar must cost $500 or less. The price must include purchasing the car and all the race prep except for safety. You would be amazed at what is considered a “safety item.” Unfortunately safety upgrades will only make you so fast.

I was lucky enough to be a part of “Team Danger Ranger.” We had a ’95 Ford Ranger pickup with a tiny little 2.3 liter four. It had a nice five speed but was so slow we only used first through third. Lets just say the truck was well seasoned. This was its fifth or sixth lemons race. Previous to this weekend the truck had been a flawless performer. At the last race there was metal bending incident and the truck decided not to run so well as a result. A light freshening of the engine ensued and that is where the trouble began.

The people who took the engine out of the truck and the people who put it back were not the same people. On top of that, there was no labeling of any component and no service manual to speak of. I was not able to be on either team, but I know things must have worked out because the truck was ready just in time for Friday practice.

Practice went well. It was the second time I had driven the track and the first time I had been out with other cars. Talk about nervous! The number one rule for me was not to go fast. It was to not bend any metal on or off the track! I think it was a success!!

Saturday came bright and early and we were ready to race! On day one the race went for a bit over 6 hours. On day two the race would continue for another 7 hours or so. We fueled up the truck, went to the drivers meeting, and got the truck onto the grid. I was not scheduled to run until much later in the day, and was dying of anticipation.

Our first troubles came in the form of charging issues and a dead battery. A dead battery can be dealt with using a push start, but a lack of charging will leave you dead in the water.

The truck came in and we dove into the electricals trying to find an answer. We found two things. First there was a wire that had been cut through on one of the frame rails. The second problem was a missing tickler wire for the alternator. Some time in the morning, after running through several batteries, we finally found a temporary fix for the missing wire and were back in business. Of course full power is not always a blessing.

When I got into the truck the plan was to run until we needed to refuel. While there was a fuel gauge, I was told the truck would let me know when we needed to refuel by stumbling and sputtering. The first thing I noticed out on the track is a massive set of invisible bumps in turn five. I tried going tight, going wide, going down the middle, decreasing radius, increasing radius. Nothing seemed to help. Since there was no smooth way around the corner, the fast way was best.

Our truck was slow. Crazy slow. A touch over 100 horses slow. The scary part was not watching myself get passed by all the fast cars. The scary part was finding safe ways to pass all the cars slower than the truck! It looks so easy on TV. In real life it is not so simple. When I get it figured out I will let you know!

The next set of troubles was a flaky oil pressure sensor wire. Every time I went around the corner four the oil pressure would drop to zero and sit there for a few seconds. It was consistent and slowing down seemed to make it go away. I figured we must be burning some oil and it had dropped to a level that missed the pump pick up under high cornering loads. I pulled into the pits and the crew checked it out. The level was fine. They wiggled the wires a bit and sent me back out. I know they had faith everything would be ok, but I was really nervous about destroying a “newish” engine. A few laps later and the fuel stumbling started so I came in for real and we did a driver change and fuel stop.

If I remember correctly the truck had to be towed back to the pits the next time. It was dead. We found a blown fuse and sent the truck back out. I cannot remember how long we were back out before there was another blown fuse. This time it was a fuse we could not find many replacements for. Ever heard of a “maxi” fuse? It is a huge blade type fuse. We blew our last one and sent a driver to the store for some fuses and a shop manual. Meanwhile the competition kept making laps.

After consulting with a track mechanic and friend we decided the problem was in all the left over wiring from when the truck was turned into a race vehicle. Apparently part of the race prep was to start the truck and begin unplugging things in the engine compartment until the truck died. If something was not necessary it was unplugged and removed. The end result is a huge mess of dangling wires and connectors. Combining to make things worse was a leaking power steering pump reservoir drenching everything with oil and gunk. A couple frayed wires in the mix caused an immediate short.

To solve the problem we very carefully started clipping off connectors and taping up the ends. Not only did we eliminate the blown fuse but, we cleaned up the engine bay of all the loose junk. By this time the competition the racing was over for the day. We took the opportunity to refuel for the morning, change the tires, and make our temporary repairs more permanent. When racing started in the morning we were ready!!! Unfortunately, the track was not. Just like our concours this year, there was rain. It was only a little drizzle so they started the race behind the pace car. Around the same time we figured out one of the fuses we cannibalized the day before was for the wipers!!! Rain-x is awesome, but Marshal is a brave man for staying out as long as he did.

When his stint was done we fixed the wipers and sent out the next driver. This day was much easier to deal with. The rain was the only thing slowing us down. And the rain would not have been so bad if it had actually rained. Or maybe it would have been better if the rain had stopped. In reality the rain fluctuated from drizzle to storm to drying all day long.

When I got in the truck towards the end the track was drying rapidly. A few laps in the rain started to come down harder. Later a fellow driver suggested I had the worst situation to deal with. If you go out in the wet and it dries, you can go faster and faster and typically the corner has more grip than you expect. When things are getting wetter each time around, the track becomes unpredictable. The grip you had just one lap ago is sometimes there and sometimes gone. It can be frustrating and exciting at the same time.

But in the end it was not the rain or the electricals or the fuel that brought me into the pits. There are some things that are not meant to fail on a vehicle. I have heard of bolts shearing. I have seen pistons go through blocks. I have seen vehicles catch on fire or spin end over end. What stopped the truck was new to us all!!

Remember turn five? The one with the invisible bumps? I asked Marshal about the bumps. He said, “if you hit the bumps you are doing it right.” After those words I drove right over them and gave it no thought. I am assuming all my more experienced teammates did the same. Over the course of two days of bumps the truck finally cried out for mercy. At first the problem showed up as a vibration. Then it started to crunch going into third. And finally the steering was not right and the truck would go in whichever direction it wanted. We are talking full lock just to go straight!

I pulled into the pits to a confused crew and shut off the truck. I explained the problem and we started looking for an answer. One look under the bed and we knew our day was done. One of the leaf springs had sheared off at the axle. Yes, sheared off! At the axle! We did not rip a mount or bushing off the frame. We did not twist anything. We ripped a ¼” thick piece of spring steel into two! And later when we changed the leaf springs as a pair, we discovered the other side was sheared in the exact same place! The only thing keeping the axle on the truck was the limiting chains, and the shocks. Oh yeah, the gas tank helped keep the axle centered. A few more laps and it would have been a hot truck!

In the end we finished 23^rd out of 36. The guys behind us must have been really slow or broken down more than we did! With a new set of springs and some revised wiring, the truck is ready and waiting for its next race!!!

Random thoughts

First random thought: Why do lifetime parts never look as cool as rebuildable parts that break down every once in a while? Is it impossible to make a really cool car part that actually works? I suppose Ferrari is doing that now, but I do not see them turning 100,000 miles all the time with out a single break down and limited maintenance. Now Toyota on the other hand, they built soul-less Japanese crap-box cars, but they sure do work! During this gas pedal extravaganza I have had the chance to check out some of their gas pedals. Not cool. Boring is too exciting a word to describe the pedals. And yet my Alfas all have awesome gas pedals. In fact I cringe when I see those stupid screw on covers that tuners put on their pedals. If the pedals were functional and sexy to begin with, the kids would not have to mess with them.

Second random thought: Just found out the other day Alfas are actually reliable!! Or at least they used to be. I was talking to fellow Alfa owner Marshall St. Amant about the reliability of the Milano and Spider and he scoffed at my numbers. I was quite proud of the fact each car had done a minimum of 10,000 miles between breakdowns. He immediately offered up the fact his GTV6 bought from new back in the day did over 75,000 miles without ever leaving him on the side of the road. That is not to say it did not need occasional “maintenance” at an inopportune time, but it never left him stranded. Not bad for an Italian car from the 80s!!

Third random thought: This has been a really sad and depressing month for cars. On the national level we have the whole Toyota gas pedal thing. Sure, I do not like them, but every car company deserves a chance. Problems that are really hard to solve and cause damage to the company’s image are not good. Better get a solution quick!! On the more local level we have my Milano incident. The details are contained elsewhere in this newsletter. On a following weekend Brad Way was having great difficulty changing some seals in his spiders brake system. Why are robust and long-lived seals always hidden behind really delicate and expensive parts that refuse to come off the car? Going back a couple weekends I had to replace the water pump on our Jetta, twice. The first one was great for about a month. Then it started weeping. Brand new water pumps do not weep!! After a thorough investigation to make sure I did not do anything wrong, it was confirmed the water pump was not leaking, it was weeping from the weep hole. Oh well, at least it is an easy item to change. The Germans really thought this one through. Other car companies could learn from them. And finally, this past weekend, Marshall’s racecar had a breakdown that put it out of commission for the foreseeable future. Seems like there is some really bad car-ma floating around right now. You have been warned!

Fourth random thought: Getting to work on a modern car is really an eye opening experience. Automotive engineering has come a long ways since the last new Alfa graced these shores. While not all of it has been good, some of it has been great!! For instance, the advent of “lifetime” fluids and extremely long oil change intervals has made maintenance chores much lighter. In fact, I am even considering incorporating some of these modern fluids into my own fleet. Of course modernity comes at a price. While my Alfas will happily drink down whatever I put in them, the VWs in our garage are pickier. While doing the water pump changes I learned about a proprietary coolant called G12 used exclusively by VW. It is purple or pink depending on if you get old G12 or new G12+. Either way it is neat stuff. Other owners have found this antifreeze makes internal corrosion of aluminum engines a thing of the past. And to make sure you have the right stuff, VW has added a chemical that turns the purple goodness into brown badness if someone tops up or mixes in the wrong stuff. Not sure what that does other than sell more G12, but it is neat to be able to know for sure you have the right stuff and nothing else.

Another interesting feature of a modern car is how things are sealed. My Alfas have gaskets on the water pumps. Each time you change the thing you have to scrape off the old gasket and clean the mating surface on the block. Not so on the modern VW 4 cylinder. Their water pump seals to the block using an o-ring that fits in a hole in the side of the block. There is nothing to scrape off. There are no gasket sealers to apply. If you are not changing the fluid you can pop the old pump off and shove the new one on and lose less than a quart of coolant! Amazing!!

And what is up with the timing belt intervals? The factory has no set mileage to change the belt!! The shop manual says 90,000 miles tops. Common knowledge among enthusiasts is 60,000 miles. That is double our old v6 Alfas! To top it off, you do not have to take half the car apart to do it either.

My only complaint so far is the strange fasteners. I am sure there is a really good engineering reason for using a torx head on many of the fasteners. All I know is I need to buy some extra tools. The other side of the coin is the really awesome hose clamps they use!! Have you seen the ones you remove with just pliers? You simply squeeze the ears and wiggle it off. How simple is that!! And VW even paints little arrows on the hoses to show the correct orientation of the clamp to the hose to the fitting. Wow.

Ok, enough random thoughts. Go get a beer and get greasy with your car.

And then there were none

When Bonnie suggested we visit the Abita Brewery again for the first time in several years, I was very excited. Last time, we did not take the tour. The club only ate in the brew pub. This time, I was not going to let that happen. I emailed the brewery and asked many questions. I went back and forth with the PR lady about times, size of group, age restrictions, shoe requirements, and what to expect. Everything was laid out perfectly.

What could make a trip to the brewery even better? A caravan of Alfas!! We have some new members and some non-members who were just as excited about the event as I was. My racing buddy, Marshall, wanted to go. One of our newest members, Brad, was so excited he was going to make a weekend of it with the wife. (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more…) A neighbor who chased me home, and happens to own a really nice stingray Corvette, was nervous about being the only American car there but knew deep inside that a little beer would smooth out all the tensions. And finally, my neighbors across the street were planning on attending just for the chance to visit the brewery.

As the day for the trip approached, it felt like Christmas! There were visions of purple haze and turbodog dancing in my head. I told all my friends and neighbors how exciting this was going to be. I even found some time to wash the Milano for the trip. Then, as the midnight hour approached, my caravan began to fall apart. My long time drinking buddies could not make it because of work. Marshall was going racing as long as the weather held up. And who can blame him! Racing always trumps beer in my logbook. My corvette buddy got his weekends switched up and had to work on Saturday. The afternoon before, I got a call from Brad and found he had some emergency family issues and could not make the trip. And that very evening, my neighbors bailed because work came up.

My caravan was down to one. Not much of a caravan any more, but the car was clean and gassed up for the trip. We left bright and early and made our way to the brewery, but we never made it. Early on, we noticed a light fuel smell. At the time, we were behind a pickup truck hauling an ATV. We just assumed the smell was coming from there. Over a couple miles, the smell faded away. Everything went fine for the rest of the trip until about 7 miles from Abita. I looked down and noticed we were nearly out of gas. When we left we had ¾ of a tank. Alfas get great gas mileage. I should have been able to make it there and back on a single tank. And as I continued to glance from the road to the gauge and back, I thought I could actually see the needle going down. This is not good!!! Of course at this point, we were not any where near an exit. It was miles to the next exit, and when that exit came up we took it!!! Of course, there was no gas station to be found either! So ,we just found the closest empty lot and pulled in. Our first call was to Andy and Mike. Being this close, I figured I could get some help from them changing whatever hose was leaking or fitting that had come loose.

Before help could arrive, Britt and I popped the hood and found fuel everywhere!! The whole engine compartment was soaked. It is a wonder the whole car had not burst into flames. Even with a leak of this level, we still could not see any obvious leak. So I had Britt stand back and watch while I cranked the car. As soon as the fuel pump got power, fuel came spurting from one of the injectors. Britt screamed for me to stop. Even from inside the car, I could see the fuel spraying. So, for the second attempt I had Britt crank the car while I watched. It seemed obvious to me that the injector itself was leaking. There is no amount of hose that will fix an internal injector seal failure. We were finished!

My next call was to my favorite towing company. My usual guy politely asked if it was the green one or the black one. I told him it was the black one and where we were located. He gave us an estimated wait time and headed out. In the mean time, Andy and Mike showed up just long enough to take some pictures and commiserate. There was nothing they could do to help and we were only keeping them from their beer so they went on their way. The thought of joining them and getting a tow later in the day ran through my head, but there was no telling what the wait would be in the afternoon and the truck was already on the way.

If you ever break down in the Baton Rouge or surrounding areas, be sure to give Davis and Sons a call. They are really nice people. On the ride home, we stopped for snacks and commiserated about how it had been over a year since my last tow. If you do the math, that is 10,000 miles without a hiccup. Not bad for an Italian car old enough to vote with well over 200,000 miles on the clock.

Later that day, Britt and I gathered up the neighbors and played a round of disc golf. The next day I went to the races to watch Marshall burn rubber. When the weekend was finally over, I was not pleased with my little Milano. Even as I write this, the problem is not fixed. I ordered one of the few correct Bosch injectors left in the country and dug into the problem. Further investigation on a cold engine in my own driveway, and not some random parking lot, revealed the injector to be fine but the hose was dead. I pulled the system apart and found two hoses of the wrong flavor. One had failed, and the other was on the way out. With all Alfa projects, you find other things needing repair while you dig around. Several other hoses were the wrong flavor, and another pair was correct but so old they could go at any second. I went to the auto parts store and got the right hose and began fixing things. I had some trouble getting the hose on several fittings and had to go get some more. The second time I went, I had to argue with the little punk behind the counter that there was actually a difference between “fuel” hose and “fuel injection” hose. I even went so far as to explain to him the reason I was here was because someone had sold me the wrong hose previously and it had failed in less than three years. And when I could not find any fuel injection hose clamps, the kid pissed me off even more. They were not in their usual location so he had to look it up in the computer. You know what happens next….. “What is it for???” OMG, WTF!! It is a FUEL….INJECTION…HOSE….CLAMP…. What do you think it is for? At this point I took my hose, paid for it, and stormed out of the building. Sadly, my dependable NAPA was out of FI hose clamps but would have more on Tuesday. Well, Tuesday is not right now so I went into the next town over to find an auto parts store that could satisfy my needs. When I finally found some, I bought a box in every size they had!!!!

With correct clamps and fresh hose in hand, I set about finishing the job. There was one fitting I just could not get the hose to go over. Why is this so hard? I kept tearing the hose over and over again. Sometimes you have to stop and see the forest for the trees. A quick glance told me the answer. The answer was obvious. I had the wrong size hose!!! It was exactly the size I had asked for. It was the same size as was marked on one of the old hoses I removed. Chances are, someone had actually made this tiny hose fit in the past and I had just been stupid enough to try and repeat the mistake. Not this time!! I have not fixed the problem yet, but it always goes faster the second time. I bet those hoses go on a lot easier when they are the correct size!!

My final thought to this whole debacle is redemption. Sometime in the next couple weeks I am planning on making a “lost boys” run to the brewery. I am taking as many from my caravan as I can muster, and if we all break down on the way, so be it!! We will walk if we have to!