Where do I begin...

This past month has to be the most stressful time I've had in quite a while. There's a large gap in my posts because I haven't been doing anything really automotive related, or at least motor sport or enhancement related. Instead, I've had crazy other things going on: I recently just moved, been having some lady problems, been trying to purchase a truck, and worst of all my daily driver started to have some issues. The other things aren't automotive related, so we'll just cover the daily driver since its the closest thing automotive I can write about, since I know you guys don't wanna hear about other lame crap going on.

As you can see in the photo above, the pulley is out of my 4-door, thanks to master technician English. Mr. English removed the pulley to find that the keyway is broken, along with the crank key and timing gear. Looks like the pulley bolt came loose at some point and caused havoc, and I've been driving it like this for lord knows how long. This was the biggest snag we ran into with the 4-door while attempting the timing belt change, as there were a few other surprises on the car as well. I guess 175K miles on a car can bring fourth some interesting things.

Luckily for me, I have great friends. I called around to a lot of my local Corolla brethren only to hear that while at one point they did own a replacement pulley which may have worked, they eventually discarded it. I actually used to have one as well before I threw mine away. One nice fellow, has been a photo contributor on here (Wes Hamachi) was kind enough to bring by a silvertop 20v pulley to see if it will work. Unfortunately, it did not. As you can see, the 4AF pulley on the left is shorter than the pulley on the right, (the 20v). It isn't just the number of grooves for the belt, but the spacing was different as well. I still appreciated the gesture, and took Wes out to eat (I owed him some money too from Vegas. Doesn't everybody?)

After realizing that my deadline was approaching (Mr. English wanted to have the car done by Thursday) I started calling around to local salvage yards that have parts ready to go. They all wanted around $75 for the pulley. While I could have easily driven down there to buy it and not broken a sweat doing it, instead I chose to hit up my local pick your part. The Stanton yard had about 4 different 4AF engines which were the exact ones I could use the pulley from. I also lucked out by finding one that had all of the drive belts already taken off making my job that much easier. After impacting the bolt and prying the pulley off, I left the yard taking some happiness in the fact that i saved about $50 on the pulley over going to the other "ready to go" salvage yard.

So now, the pulley is in Mr. English's hands. I'm moved in, and just bought a can opener today. Life seems to be looking up.

I'd like to try to end my blogs on a happy note, and I think we all know nothing makes me happier than AE86's! (except maybe titties)