Does a Hot Rod Mac Need a Bell Housing Shield?

I used to be a big drag racing fan in the olden days. WAY olden, obviously, back when you could drive to an old air base runway outside of Abilene, Texas and see your friends race their everyday cars. If you were lucky, there’d be an actual dragster or two. The spectators would park their cars along the drag strip, so you’d get a great view. They didn’t use starting lights, either, but a real human flagman, all very dramatic. I remember Hot Rod Magazine had ads for protective shields the big boys installed to keep from being loosing their manhood to exploding clutch parts. The thing is, maybe I need one on my Mac.

This is it here. You can see from the flame job that it’s the real deal. But about an hour ago, there was the most awful vibration coming from the beast, and I wondered if the big Maxtor was going to send shrapnel through the plastic case. I banged the side a time or two, hoping to make it settle down, and when that didn’t work, I shut down and opened it up. The main hard drive seemed to be, um, loose … that is, I could actually lift up one side of it (urk). Now, I’ve never replaced a hard drive in this machine, so I don’t know how they’re mounted in the B&W G3, but it looks like all the drives sit on one big metal thingie.

I suppose the drives are fastened from the bottom, but I didn’t want to unplug everything and lift the whole tray out. What I did do was remove what seemed to be the only screw (just one?) holding said tray in place and determined that with a little tug, the whole damn shootin’ match would have come out in my hand. How revolting. So instead, I wiggled and pushed, moved things this way and that, and at some point the mounting tray acted as if it liked where it was. What’s more, the Maxtor didn’t lift up on one side any more, which is weird, because I never even looked to see if there was a drive mounting screw missing or whatever. Maybe there’s a special tab or slot or mysterious thingie underneath that grabs when everything is shoved together right. What the hell do I know. Since I seemed to have stumbled into a state of immaculate configuration, I re-installed the lone screw and closed everything back up.

Right now it’s running OK, but I think it could be smoother still. After I post this, I’m going to get in there and wiggle some more. The mounting tray, not my own sacred posterior.