Around this time two years ago...

When we set out to find me a car, I insisted that it should have an automatic transmission. So my dad and I were on our way out to look at a '91 Escort or something when we drove by a farm with a nice looking Topaz sitting out front with a price painted on the window. We decided to stop and take a look at it. We noticed it had a V6, automatic transmission, it was in solid shape, and the price was fair. We were sold.

We didn't even look at the Escort that day.

Anyway, it wasn't long before I got tired of the automatic transmission. There are lots and lots of reasons I was tired of it, but for the sake of time, I'll condense it by saying that automatic transmissions are boring.

I wanted to make my car a five speed.

It was probably about now two years ago that we were trying to find a Tempo or Topaz with a V6 and a 5 speed transmission. Let me tell you, it's not a car that you run across every day... or every week, or even every year. Ford simply didn't make too many of them. But I'm getting off-topic. Anyway, with the help of the internet, we were able to find an elusive specimen out in Pennsylvania and seal a deal on it. It was quite a specimen. It was teal in color, and made of rust. It had a rough life.



After the whole ordeal of swapping transmissions, I decided I was pretty much done with cars. Seriously. Working on cars is a huge pain in the neck. And a pain in the hands, back, feet, eyes, chest, and occasionally shins.

Then I realized that owning a car requires that you occasionally must work on it.

I thought I was done doing anything related to my car and that transmission. Well, here's what I get for thinking. The shifter rod snapped (remember how I mentioned that the donor car was rusty? Yeah.) So I spent the better half of yesterday afternoon taking apart my console and then under the car taking out the shifter assembly to fix the broken rod.





These parts were a huge pain in the butt to put on my car the first time. My car was made to take an automatic transmission, so the heat shield and other various parts did not jive well with the shifter rod. It was a huge mess with lots of sparks and cutting and pounding and such and such. This time, those bugs were ironed out. That made things go a lot smoother.

I still hate working on that car.

I'd still like to get a high-overlap camshaft and put it in.

Me and my car...the ultimate enigma.