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Neon work begins

My uncle agreed to help out with fixing the Neon's oil leak, so we got started on that the other day. He has plenty of extra garage space and lots of light, exactly what I lack. ;-)

The car is a huge pain to work on. Nothing is convenient. Of the maybe 30 nuts and bolts I removed last night, about 3 of them are what I would call "easily accessible". The rest require some odd combination of extensions and swivels, then once you finally get a socket on the head, you only get one or two clicks of the ratchet at a time. Most things are tight enough that you couldn't get an air ratchet in their, either. It's like the car was designed in such a way that it would be put together, driven until death, and nothing would ever need replacement. Oh, and it uses the Evil™-style hose clamps, the ones that require pliers to open. I think those will be replaced.

I'm thinking it might have been easier to just pull the whole engine. :-P

Next we need to remove the crank pulley, then the timing belt and associated parts, then it'll finally be time to start getting the head off. I really hope we can get all of this back together. ;-)

Onward, with pics! I didn't bring a regular camera with me, but I'll probably bring one today when I go over there. Excuse the blurriness.