My older brother and I changed a clutch in a 74 Bronco in the foothills of the Sequoias when I was 15 and he was 17 years old. We had to walk and hitchhike from outside of Springville to Porterville to get parts.

The Bronco was only a couple years old and was never driven hard. My brother drove up the side of a hill one time on property we owned there and on the way down the clutch just turned to mush.

I'd already done a clutch or two by then, but my brother had never even seen one and I'd never messed with a transfer case. We borrowed tools from a rancher who lived about a mile away. He was nice enough to lend us the tools, but we paid dearly by having to listen to him tell us how "stupid city boys" are every time we asked him for one. I kept trying to tell him we weren't your average city boys, and that we lived on a small farm with cows and beef cattle and chickens and critters of all kinds, and that we both worked with our father building custom cars, but he never heard a word of it. He just kept on crapping on us.

We didn't have a clutch alignment tool so all I could do was eyeball the clutch and tighten the pressure place and hope for the best. It took all of one day to get that transmission stabbed into the flywheel. We were lying on our backs in the dirt pressing it over our heads. No jacks, no nothing. The transfer case and transmission are mighty heavy on those.

I'm sure the old rancher was laughing his rump off at us thinking we never get it done so it was a huge pleasure to drive up to his house to return those tools. He still couldn't muster up a "Good job" for us though. After we thanked him again he started in on us "dumb city boys" and my brother and I just chuckled and drove away.

I really wanted a Bronco bad until then. After that, not so much.