What Did You Expect?

Let’s talk about cars and expectations, shall we? I know this is not directly connected to writing novels or mother nature, but hey, April is a month of renewal, and what I’ve been encountering over the last few months has culminated in what I expected to be a renewal of sorts. Key word here is expected.

Last August, I took a break from restoring one of my 80’s sports cars to make a major (and much needed) repair on my daily driver. I EXPECTED it to be a simple, straightforward repair. I figured, ‘while I’m in there’, I might as well do some upgrades, as one would expect.

The repair was to correct an overheating issue that I attributed to a blown head gasket. In this endeavor, I made the choice to upgrade the heads to lighter weight, performance aluminum heads, and well, I got trigger happy and ordered an affordable set, expecting there to be no issues and the repair would go swimmingly.

Yeah. There’s that word again.

Here’s the thing: I got both heads installed with no issues, but it turned out, I had unknowingly ordered the wrong style, and nothing else lined up for correct installation. This is the part where I messed up. I did not do my due diligence before ordering. Did not do the research needed. And that’s where the cookie crumbles began to snowball.

Without getting all technical here, because nobody really needs to know the subtle differences between vortec and non-vortec style heads, let’s just say I had the new cylinder heads all bolted down and torqued and looking seriously sexy. This is when the dawning realization began to settle in. Upon initial installation of the ‘old’ and ‘factory’ intake manifold, nothing lined up. AT. ALL. Bolt positions and intake ports were nowhere close to mating correctly. What had I done?

I was now at a crossroads.

Do I abort? Do I power through? Aborting the process meant uninstalling the aluminum ‘go-fast’ heads and reverting to a possibly cracked set of iron ones, just with new head gaskets. To do so would, in hindsight, have been the wise choice.

Nobody has ever accused me of being wise.

“I can make it work,” I thought. I believe I even said it out loud a time or two, just to convince myself. It was then that I decided to begin in-depth research. But, to make it work, I would require a different intake manifold. Fine. Back in my youth, intake manifolds were a dime a dozen and rarely required any type of trigonometry to install.

Oh, how times have changed. Especially since I intended to retain the fueling system unique to the third-gen F-body that was my 1987 Trans Am GTA (yes, the GTA definitely needs added to the trim package, because that made it cooler). Turns out there are very few manifolds that accept the tuned-port injection system of yesteryear. Only one, in fact, and because there is only the one, the cost was nearly that of the cylinder heads.

Fine.

I bit the bullet and pulled the trigger on it. Progress continued in getting the car back on the road, and fall was setting in, to be quickly followed by winter, and I wanted it to be done and out of the backyard by winter.

This is where my friend and nemesis, the exhaust manifold, paid me an unsettling visit. He was a sneaky rat and came in with promises of bolting right up with no issues.

Spoiler alert: There were, indeed, issues.

They did bolt to the head in the fashion they were designed to, Mr. Manifold did not lie about that fact. However, in conjunction with the way the spark plug holes were in conjunction to said exhaust manifold, made it impossible to install half of the plugs. I was in too deep at this point. The only remedy was, of course, to drop even more money into a set of exhaust headers designed for my new specific configuration. These came with their own sets of challenges, but they were minimal at best. However, winter had set in, and I was only able to continue work sporadically, on days when the sun had warmed the metal enough to work comfortably around.

Long story short, I also required a new set of fuel injectors, new pushrods and guide plates for the cylinder heads, a new chip made for the onboard computing system to account for the changes I had made to the engine so it would run properly, and a mini-reconstruction of the exhaust system.

And finally, in April of 2026, the car started and drove onto the driveway proper, under its own, new power.

I did not expect the project, a simple head gasket replacement, to take so much time and money. And because I did not expect this, I did not plan for it, and when you don’t plan for the unexpected, the unexpected WILL show up and knock you around a little bit, all-while laughing at you.

Today, in the middle of April, although there are still a few things left to sort out, the car is running. I haven’t really pushed it yet. Not sure I trust it that much. But it runs.

Which is more than I could say a few months ago.

Around the same time, I started sending out queries to literary agents for The Witch, Margaret Barclay. I went into that expecting things to move a little faster than they are.

Turns out, that’s another thing I probably should’ve done more research on. I’m starting to get the sense this isn’t going to be a quick process. And I’m planning for that now.

I expected this car to be a simple fix. I expected this next step in writing to be a little more straightforward too. So far, neither one has gone the way I thought it would.

And still, through all the pitfalls, I will continue to work on both.