By David Barlowe

I can remember seeing Rube Goldburg drawings years ago, but never knew what happened to him. I have discovered that in 1984 he was working for GM designing Corvettes. That is the only explanation that I can come up with to explain how they are put together.

I finally got around to pulling the engine out of the Corvette that I am junking out. The manual gives 45 steps to remove the engine if you are not pulling the transmission at the same time. I wanted to pull them together so some of them did not apply. Of course this meant there were other steps required.

One of the first steps was to remove the windshield wiper motor--it went downhill from there.  C4 Corvettes do not have a rear transmission mount; instead they have a traction bar that goes from the transmission back to the differential. The bar has two bolts on each end with nuts on top which are impossible to reach. Of course you can't remove the bar until you remove all of the exhaust and you can't remove the drive shaft until you remove the bar and you can't get the bar down with the drive shaft in place. (Thanks Rube!!)

The engine won't clear the steering rack with the crank pulley on, so it has to be removed. The engine has to tilt at a high angle consequently the distributor has to come out so that it won't hit the fire wall--and of course the distributor won't clear the top of the firewall without a lot of prying. Once all of this is done there is nowhere to attach a chain to the engine to lift it.

I did finally get the engine out and now I am beginning to wonder why I started this project in the first place. Enough of my complaining--now to figure out where all those wires go to. Which ones I need to keep and which ones I can throw away.

Note from the Pubs Chairman: If you have other evidence of Rube’s influence, let us know.