"Come here and check this out", Dale waved me over to where he had just removed the pinion. "No wonder this bearing burned up, some moron just let the old shim pack fall into the oil feed channel". He was pulling them out as he explained, "Heck, looks like he just shoved 'em in there".
"Probably worked fine all those years as a bracket car, just didn't like being put back on the street", I nodded.
He had three spools on the bench, the one that came out looked to be standard weight, and the other two appeared to be lightened quite a bit more. I was comparing them when he commented, "I'll probably just re-use the one that came out. The other used one I bought from you, and the new one is for the AMX, but it appears to be a different series."
"Don't you need a different one, going from 4.56 to 4.10", I questioned.
"Naw, Summit Tech assured me that these Motive gears were compatible with what I already have."
Setting the pinion depth, he ended up using all the shims that came in the set-up kit plus several of the old ones. He had to re-use the old ring gear bolts, because the new ones appeared to have a shoulder to them that bottomed against the spool before they were tight. I could tell all these little problems were beginning to frustrate him, but when he put his checking bearings on and dropped the spool in, he really blew a gasket. "I knew I should've bought Richmond gears! These fit the other spool! I guess we should consider ourselves lucky we have one, or I'd be crawling through the phone to strangle that Tech!"
"How much more were they?"
"About ten bucks!" He chuckled, as he rubbed the back of his neck, "gotta cut costs where you can!"

I decided to fire up the grill and cook some more of the meat Rachael had sent with us. If it sounds like I didn't spend much time on the wiring Thursday morning...well, you'd be right, eerily similar to my writing...when I want to, it goes well, when I don't, it just doesn't!

Boone and Dad were in a similar state of mind, they would go around front and work on Darren's Charger for thirty minutes at a time, but invariably they would find themselves out back talking to us, or harassing Dale. Finally, just before noon, the delivery trucks started showing up, and we not only got our overnight order, but the order I placed Friday, from Phoenix finally showed up!