Divine Intervention?

So I'm officially broke. This project hasn't beggared me.  Everything else has. It isn't 'the expense you weren't expecting' that wrecks you, its when 5 or 6 expenses you weren't expecting all kick in the front door in the same week.

Blown controller board in the refrigerator, AC drops dead in your commuter car (At the start of summer, dammit!), wife needs new lenses for her glasses she has put off buying for a year, your son needs a replacement tablet you've put off buying for four months....etc, etc, etc. It all landed at the same time.

My wife, who has great sympathy for my trying to move this along tells me, sorry, you must pause until the end of the month. We go into low consumption mode on everything we can until the next check clears and we can breathe again. Don't even buy beer. Yikes!!!!

So imagine my frustration when I see that I need to spend a lousy $120 to execute a series of steps which must be done in dependent order to take the the project miles down the road toward a running engine:

Start with:
'firewall permanently installed' which leads to
     'chassis electrical installed' which permits
          'cooling system permanently installed' which then allows
               'engine off of the stand' to
                    'install flywheel and transmission adapter' so I can
                         'replace engine support mounts' then
                              'add engine support bar' so I am able to
                                   'crane engine into compartment' to permit
                                        'bolt engine, adapter, and support bar to transmission & body' and then
       'Drink a beer!'

Unfortunately, I'm stuck at 'chassis electrical' without the ability to buy a couple-of-few parts. Which is just ridiculous. Once I pass 'cooling system permanently installed' everything else is downhill requiring barely any additional purchases or even much work: It's just bolt-in, then. It is a classic: "For want of a horse shoe nail."

Then I had my divine intervention moment last night.

Exposition: I was gifted with some cash for my recent birthday, and at church on Sunday I felt the prompting to pitch 1/3 of it into the offering plate. *I don't ever put anything in the plate.* All of my family's contributions are transferred right to the church's account.

Now why would I do this? I'm already broke, and this money was *mine* for my birthday. But I felt the nudge, and though I'm slow and stupid in spiritual matters, I took the hint and put in.

That night, I had my epiphany, and I know who sent it.

The dilemma with getting hung up on 'chassis electrical' is that I have to wire up the tail lamp housings again after having moved it all out of the way while the engine compartment was under heavy rework. Once it is back in...but that's where I have to stop: The tail lamp housings have been completely ruined by UV; literally crumbling away, so they have to be completely replaced.

The lamp housings are held in place by nuts INSIDE the body that thread on to bolts embedded in the plastic of the housing. Once the 'cooling system permanently installed' is done, I can't get to those nuts. To gain access there, I have to take the whole cooling system apart, which is a seriously pain, and also the Achilles' Heel of my design. But how often do you REALLY need to get in to those battery box compartments once the battery is moved to under the rear seat? Almost never. Still... It would really ease the mind and make maintenance a lot easier if you could get in there. But the lamps are held on by nuts on the INSIDE. Again, the bolt heads are locked into place by having the plastic cast around it.

Bolt holes for tail lamp assemblies which are nutted on the inside. What if it could be nutted on the outside?

This seemed ridiculous to me. Why COULDN'T I find some way to make the parts switch ends? Flip the bolt head and nut ends....No. That still won't work. Either end is still locked by the plastic cast around it, whether it is the bolt head, or the nut. Either way, you'd still have to get to the INSIDE to remove the fastener that is still free to turn.

I took the UV damaged units I have (if they get banged up with experimentation it doesn't matter since they're being wholly replaced...when I can afford it again) and brought one over to the bench. I used a sharp utility knife to trim away the plastic flashing that keeps the bolt in place in the molded hex socket in the lamp housing. Then I flipped it over and with a nailset and hammer, drove out the hex head bolt. If I rounded out the hex socket in the plastic housing, the bolt could turn. But the nut would still turn inside, so that's no good...



That's when the Spirit whopped me with the epiphany bat: I have ALREADY BOUGHT the solution to this problem: Nutserts aka Fastenalls, e.g. aluminum rivets that have a threaded inside diameter. Install the rivets in the lamp housing mounting holes in the vehicle body and now you have a nut that WON'T TURN on the side that you can't get to when the cooling system is installed, but you can drive a bolt from OUTSIDE into the nutsert. Remove 4 bolts from the outside, the whole lamp housing comes out. Free access to areas previously inaccessible.

At first, I thought, "Well, that let's me move ahead to the next step! Hot Dog!" Then I got whopped again coming back the other way: This doesn't just let me make the next step, it fundamentally changes the maintenance character of the entire design.This single $4 retrofit changes everything, both during the initial installation, and during the all subsequent installation steps, as well as any maintenance that needs to be done in the far future.

After having re-laid the tail lamp wiring harness back into its original clamps, I've discovered that there is enough slack on the cable that when you pull the machine screws, you can pull the assembly out of the hole and reach in and not even strain the cable or bulb fittings.

This was a trivially inexpensive change that produces an enormous butterfly effect. Talk about a 'Still, small voice...!"