It's Never That Easy

I have all weekend, two vehicles, and the cash I need to fix my car. It's a 1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, the problem is a worn out bearing on the air conditioner compressor. The car still runs, but if I don't change the bearing soon, it will seize up and the car will be disabled wherever that may happen. The repair shouldn't be difficult, I just need to take off the belt, remove the pulley and bearing, put the new bearing on, and reassemble everything. Simply removing the compressor and clutch and replacing the entire thing would be easier, but I don't have three hundred dollars for the part, plus the fee to recharge the system. Of course, I know everything won't come out as planned, it never does, but I have plenty of time and enough extra cash to handle any unplanned repairs.

Immediately after getting off work, I head to the O'Reilly Auto Parts and picked up the A/C clutch removal/installation kit. My heart jumps into my chest when the clerk tells me the rental fee is one hundred seventeen dollars and change, luckily I'll get it all back when I return the part. Still, I'm nervous handing over my card, I could be out a hefty chunk of change if I lose any part of the kit. I ordered the bearing I needed the day before. Because of it's exact specifications, it's impossible to find in this town, so my last stop before going home is to pick it up. The bearing was twenty five dollars, bringing my total cost up to a mostly refundable one hundred forty-three dollars, not bad so far.

I get home and pop the hood. Looking in, I see the compressor is on the bottom of the engine. Of course, nothing I work on is ever easily accessible. I need more room to work, so I take off the coolant reservoir and drive belt, and reach in. There's a useless piece of plastic trim in my way, so I try to remove it. It's held on with special connectors, obviously designed solely to piss me off, so after fifteen minutes of pulling and twisting, I get out my wire cutters and cut the piece of garbage off.

Now that I have the room, I need to assemble the clutch removal tool. There are about twenty pieces in the box, an unreadable chart, and instructions that were poorly translated from some unidentifiable Asian dialect. Time for some deductive reasoning. I need to generate a pulling force on the spindle, and a pushing force on the clutch. I find an attachment that screws onto the clutch, and another piece that screws into the middle of the first piece and would provide the required combination of pushing and pulling forces to remove the clutch. I attach the removal tool, check for snugness, and begin pulling. Although it is taking more force than I had anticipated, things appear to be going well. The clutch is slowly working it's way off the spindle. Maybe this repair won't be so ba... FUCK! The removal tool, and the two wrenches I was using with it, go clattering to the ground, my fist slams into a random piece of metal and the horror of what just happened becomes obvious to me before the ringing of metal fades from my ears. Screw threads are small, and don't hold up to the pressure of pulling tools very well. Every time I've ever used a puller-type removal tool, I've managed to break something, this case was no exception. Upon further examination, I find that it's the tool and not the part that is stripped. I caught a break on that one; I can return the tool broken at no charge. If the threads on the clutch were stripped, I would have to replace the entire compressor. I look in the box again and find an acceptable replacement, another stroke of good luck, I would hate to have to drive all the way across town for a new tool kit.

I crawl back in the engine bay, install the new combination of widgets and start again. This time, the clutch comes off cleanly. Now that the clutch is off, I look in and see a lock ring, a stripped bolt, and absolutely no way to grip and remove the pulley. I have three problems, I need lock ring pliers, an unknown type of pulley remover, and I have to figure out how to remove the stripped nut from a free-spinning spindle. Worst problem first, I need to find out what type of removal tool I need for the pulley, and where I can find it. I get on the computer and search the Auto Repair Reference Center provided by the public library. A quick search yields one vital piece of information, the part number of the tool is J33023. A Google search provides a picture, and a series of phone calls reveals that the part is completely unavailable outside of a GM dealer's repair shop. Sonofabitch! I'll deal with this in a while. I need to make forward progress, so I go to Advance Autos, the closest part store, and get the lock ring pliers. While there, I ask if they have an acceptable replacement for the J33023. Of course they don't, and I'm getting irritated at the clerk's patronizing attitude so I take my leave and decide to bring my problem to the source.

I have exactly fifteen minutes to get across town before the GM dealer closes their shop for the weekend. I make it, only running one red light and cut off one vehicle in the process. At the shop, the guy at the counter has no interest in providing assistance, neither does the guy working in the shop. The employees obviously only have quitting time on their minds, so I head back to the parking lot. Looking across the lot, I see that I've been noticed by several salesmen. I jump in my truck before the group of salesmen stalking me through the rows of cars like a pack of wolves, attack me with their cheap financing and cash back promises. Once safely in my vehicle I start thinking, maybe I can make a tool that would work. From there, I make my way to Autozone because they have the best selection of removal tools, the staff is more helpful than most, and I feel like I burned some bridges with my impatient attitude back at Advance Autos. Once there, I tell the man my problem, and he pulls out a selection of tools that might work. We both decide that I'm screwed, but maybe a combination of two of the tools would work. We also solve the problem of the stripped nut.

It turns out that the nut belongs on the outside of the clutch, but is impossible to see without a mirror, and since none of my numerous manuals makes any mention of it, I didn't realize it was there. In the process of pulling the clutch off, I pulled it over the nut, stripping off the corners. That is why the first puller stripped when I was removing the clutch. If the nut was destroyed, then the clutch was too, so I have to make another purchase. I leave Autozone with two puller tools, a new clutch, pulley, and magnetic ring. (They don't sell A/C clutches individually, fucking figures.) My checking account is another one hundred and thirty dollars lighter, twenty-six of which is refundable.

Back home, I have to figure out how to get the rounded nut off the spindle. I can't spin it off because the spindle turns when I turn the nut, and I can't grip the spindle because the clamping of the pliers would destroy the threads. Finally, I decide that if I don't remove the nut, the compressor is useless, so I'll risk trashing it with some brute force. I drag out my air powered impact wrench and air compressor and turned the pressure all the way to the maximum safe setting. Air tools are powerful, that is one of the reasons they are so effective. When I press the trigger, the wrench jumps violently in my hand exactly like my wife when she hears the piercing sound. She's outside to bring a bucket of warm soapy water for me to wash my greasy hands, parts and tools, but she won't stay, she hates being around me when I work on the cars, I can't blame her. On top of that, she's pissed off now because I made her spill soapy water on her pants.

After squeezing the massive air wrench into the cramped engine compartment, I can barely fit my hand in with it. I manage to engage the trigger with one finger, the wrench screams, the nut comes off and falls to the ground, wrench trailing behind. I inspect the site of the violence, expecting the worst. The nut came off cleanly, if there's any collateral damage, I can't see it. Seems like I finally caught a break.

The lock ring pliers make quick work of the lock ring. Things are looking up, now I just have to get the pulley off. I disassemble the two removal tools, and reassemble them into one super-tool. I had hoped that I wouldn't have to replace the pulley, just the bearing pressed into it, but the newly assembled removal tool only has one place it can attach to, the process of removing the pulley is going to destroy it. I really don't care anymore, I have the replacement parts and already spent the money, this pulley is going to come off if I have to cut it off.

I start the process of removal, two hooks grip the pulley, a threaded shaft pushes on the spindle in the middle, much like the first removal tool. As I crank, I notice the tool warping, and gouging the outside edges of the pulley, whatever, this sucker is coming off. A boom and clatter marked the moment when the pulley finally separated from the compressor body. I bend over and pick up the pieces, the tool is scrap, the pulley is scrap, but the disassembly process is almost complete. Now there is only the original magnetic ring still attached to the compressor. I was forced to buy a new ring with the clutch anyway so I pry off the old one with a screwdriver and place the new one in its place, followed by the new pulley-bearing assembly. I need to press everything on so I look back to the A/C clutch removal/installation kit and decipher which parts I need.

Looking through the kit, I see that the part I need is the very same one that I broke earlier, go figure. I pack the kit up and head back to O'Reilly Auto Parts. The clerk tells me that I can get another kit at another branch a few miles across town, but I have to return the one I borrowed and borrow the other one at the other store. We complete the return process and he informs me that they will return the money to my account in three to five business days. Great, that plus the fee for the other kit means I'll be out two hundred thirty dollars for a few days instead of a few hours. For those keeping track, there is now about three hundred sixty-five dollars missing from my checking account. I've got it, I just hope my paycheck comes in before my mortgage is automatically withdrawn.

I run across town, grab the kit, run home; I want to be done with this already. I throw everything together, tighten the installer tool, everything looks good. I put the belt on, call out the wife and announce that she is about to witness my efforts end in great success or epic failure. I set the air conditioner switch to off, and start the engine. The distinctive whine of a bad bearing is gone, so it's at least a partial success. Next comes the big test, I set the A/C to Max Cool. Immediately, a loud clicking is audible from the compressor. I turn off the car and look for something to hit it with, if I can't fix this car, I can at least teach it a lesson.

I take a step back so my anger can subside, it may only be a small problem after all. My wife tries to reassure me and retires to bed. I tell her I'll be in shortly. My first idea is maybe the clutch plate isn't fully engaging and I just need to tighten the clutch. I reach in with a wrench and give it one more turn. Suddenly I hear a hissing sound as the front seal fails, and the coolant escapes into the air. In that instant, all of the work of the past twenty four hours became for naught, the only option is to start over, or live without air conditioning. All of the effort I put in so I wouldn't have to discharge the system could have been avoided if I had known that in the end, the system would be discharged one way or another. I'm never more disappointed in my lack of prescience than when I work on a vehicle.

This piece of crap car needs a new door handle, new catalytic converter, the rear defrosters don't work, and it's leaking coolant and oil; now, there's no air conditioner. Tomorrow I'm going to the dealerships and I'm going to look for a new car. There comes a point when giving up isn't an admission of failure, it's cutting your losses on a bad investment. As I mull over the events of the weekend, the hissing sound is a perfect metaphor for my mood. The tension that's been building in me since the start of this project begins to flow out of me like the pressurized refrigerant inside my air conditioning system is flowing out of the front seal of the blown compressor. One thing is for sure, now that I know how difficult it is to work on a car's air conditioning system, I'll never to do it again, the price is worth putting the hassle on somebody else.