"I am a _____."
"Moron?"
DING! Give that visitor a prize!
You notice that I bailed yesterday to go to my dentist appointment around 2:00. However, what I did not mention is that my appointment wasn't until 4:00. Why would I leave so much time in between?
Oh, surely by now you can guess. I mean, you already got the fill-in-the-blank part right.
"Junkyarding?"
EXACTLY!
Now then, the rest of this is silly Volvo talk (and will also be crossposted on Revolvoblog), and you can skip out and go read something else now if you want. This might be entertaining nonetheless, for it does contain fleeting thoughts of dire peril. Oh, and then there's all sorts of heartwarming family comedy/drama activity at the end of the entry, so you might not want to hear about that, either.
Now then--still there?
Okay, here we go...
Anyway, I just had to go back and get those lovely blue rear seat headrests I had seen on my last visit. BUT FIRST, I had to figure out ahead of time how they come out, because I didn't want to get there and not have the right tool.
So, off first to my shop manuals.
Nothing. Not a blessed thing.
The factory manuals I have don't have the section about interiors, and the cheapo Haynes book says nothing about them. ON TO THE INTERNETS, where I found out that headrest removal is absolutely no different from any other topic of a technical nature, in that it seems the guys who are most willing to share their expertise are also the ones in most dire need of basic writing skills. Or skylz. It would be nice to just have a simple set of clear instructions.
I did find one obscure post that kinda had the information I was looking for, and it mentioned that there were 10mm nuts holding things together (somewhere) and that it needed two people--one inside to pull the rests upward, and someone in the trunk to release some sorts of clips. Hmm. Obviously, I am only one person. (Despite all the voices in my head.) This might take some ingenuity. Or stupidity.
Anyway, I began planning my raid on Wednesday night, when I got out my trusty 10mm combination wrench and a couple of pairs of Vise Grips. My plan being to use those as my extra set of hands to hold the clips in, while I was inside the junker pulling up on the headrests. I laid the tools in an inconspicuous place (i.e.--in plain sight, being that the garage is a mess) so that I could retrieve them yesterday morning without raising the suspicions of a certain wife of mine, who is not too keen on my ever-increasing forays to the wrecking yard.
Oh, and clothes. This one would require I have better clothes to wear, so before bed I bundled together my jeans and a tee shirt and my shoes, the reasoning being that I could bring them with me to work and change in the restroom before I left. After I got through, I would go home and drop my stuff off, clean up, then change back into my regular clothes for the dental visit.
You know, it's very complicated being a moron. Made more complicated just by the fact that I'm a moron.
ANYway, bailed out yesterday, grabbed my jeans from the office chair--I figured I could put on the tee-shirt and shoes later--changed in the restroom and headed off for the bad part of town.
Stuck my tools in my pocket, walked in, paid my buck, and sprinted to the lovely foreign car ghetto to see what I was in for. Remember, I had only briefly looked at the mounting beforehand the last time I was there, and had no pictures or anything else to study before I got there, so this was going to be an on-the-fly learning experience.
Okay, there it is. An '87, blue, hit hard on the front, and there are my headrests.
Okay.
There they are.
Yep, that's them.
I looked at the mounting brackets in the trunk. Hmm. Hard to see what sorts of release clips they were talking about. And hard to reach, too. Seeing as how they have everything up high on stacked rims, I couldn't reach the brackets at all. Gee, I wonder if I'll have to get IN there!? It was like a swamp, with both spare tire wells full of water. Eww. The thought also flashed through my mind of me, in the trunk, and a sudden gust of wind slamming it, trapping me forever. ::shudder::
Surely there's a better way to do this.
I hope.
And I still hadn't seen any sorts of 10mm nuts anywhere. Back around to the back seat. Maybe if I took the seatback off? The bottom cushion had already been undone and rolled forward, so I looked for something to undo the back cushion.
IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION NUMBER ONE--There are two sheetmetal tabs that form hooks down at the bottom corners of the back cushion. These hold two loops attached to the cushion itself that keep the seatback in place. Bend the sheetmetal tabs up, pull the bottom cushion forward until the loops clear the tabs, and then pull the seatback up hard. It might take a couple of bumps with your hand, but what happens is when you lift up, you are unhooking the clips at the top of the seat cushion from the sheetmetal. After you do that, the seatback will come right out.
It's surpisingly light. And bulky. I leaned it up against the fender and AH-HAH!
IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION NUMBER TWO--Those 10mm nuts? They hide behind the rear seatback. There is no other way to get the brackets off without taking the seatback out and getting to those nuts. Thankfully, they ARE 10mm. I would have been in bad shape if they were 11s or 12s.
I spun them off easily and both headrests were soon flopping on the package shelf. Now then--how do they come out?! Each one is supported by two metal rods that go down into the mounting brackets, and the mounting brackets were still attached and the mounting brackets were too big to come up through the holds where the metal rods went through. If I could just reach through to the trunk, but there was a piece of hardboard material (like the stuff they used to put on the back of TVs) blocking it off. Gee, if that was just out of the way...
WHAT AM I THINKING!? It's a junk car--I can just break that stuff out of the way! So I did. It snapped and buckled and pretty soon I had a nice big area to work with. I reached through and grabbed one of the mounting brackets, still attached to the metal headrest rod, and sorta pulled on it. Pop. Right into my hand.
SWEET!
I finally got to study it up close to see what the deal was with the clip.
IMPORTANT INSTRUCTION NUMBER THREE--these are NOT the kind of clips that PUSH IN. The Vise Grips I had still banging around in my pockets would have been useless, because the clips, which look a bit like the shirt clip of a pen and are made of white nylon (that can break off, by the way), have to be pulled out slightly to clear the notch in the metal rod. If needed, I would have had to put a flat piece of metal like a screwdriver under them to hold them up to remove the rests.
AS IT WAS, they all just came right off. With the brackets loose from the car, they would rotate around the headrest rod, so I just turned the brackets to the side of the rod without the notch, and they slid off with no problem. Two of the clips had already had the little lift tabs broken (again, the nylon they're made out of is fragile) but the clip action itself is unharmed.
SUCCESS!
I proudly gathered up my toys and started to leave. But--but--I wonder if there's anything ELSE I could find?
So, more plundering. I went down the rows and found a few of the round plastic discs that hold the carpet in place, and some instrument panel light bulbs, and two tiny windshield washer valves from a couple of different 740s (these keep the washer fluid from draining back to the jug), and HEY! LOOK!
SWANKY!
I found a nice (relatively speaking--it was nice when it was new) wagon that had the elusive factory accessory armrest in it! Of course, I didn't have the right sized wrench to get it out (I suppose I could have used the Vise Grips if I had remembered they were clanking in my pocket). No matter--I hadn't brought my screwdriver, either. Next trip.
Paid the princely sum of ten entire dollars for my goods and hurried out to the car, because it was now nearly 3:15, and I had to get home, unload, clean up, get re-dressed, and get to the Money-Sucking Pain-Inflictor.
Home, unload, race upstairs, wipe down with a giant glob of cool, refreshing hand sanitizer, dry off, new underwear, office shirt and pants, nice shoes, ready to go, get to dentist's at EXACTLY almost five minutes late.
Swab of numb-juice, try to relax, continue to sweat, needle in the jaw, try to relax, continue to sweat, DRILL! Actually, not bad at all. All done in about twenty minutes. AND, I found out her husband does powder coating and wheel refinishing as a hobby! Just the thing I'll need when I find that elusive set of wheels from a 240 Turbo!
Home, pandemonium of the sort only excited children fresh from their first day of school can produce. They were all jabbering at top volume, all at once. It seems they all had a very nice first day, although Jonathan's schedule is still not exactly right--he needs to swap band and PE so he'll be in the correct age groups for each. So many more papers to be signed! Bus forms, more acknowledgement-of-receipt-of-the-rules forms, lunch menus, show and tell items for Catherine, on and on. And more supply stuff needed.
Looks like with all the confusion, it'll be pizza night. Which is fine, because after all of that, I STILL had a building committee meeting to go to at church at 7:00. Trying to get the contract prepared.
Order pizza, I surreptitiously run to the garage to play with the headrest and massage some gooey vinyl treatment onto them, get busted by Miss Reba, whose exasperation I cannot tell whether it is feigned or real, PIZZA'S HERE!, go get that, pay, get the stuff inside and set it on the kitchen counter, go put stuff away in the garage, and hear Reba say the pizza's missing a piece.
WHA!? Sure enough--a tiny square hunk was gone from an edge. Surely the driver...NAH! Surely not. SURELY they just dropped a bit when they were moving it from the oven to the box. I mean, it was back at the back of the box, not the front, where a guy might be able to just snag a piece. Unless he cleverly rotated it around after he got it. BUT, that COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. That is my hope, anyway.
We called and they told us they'd either send another one or give us half off on our next order. I took the half-off deal, just to keep the driver from having to come back again and possibly not take anything, but LEAVE something awful in the box.
I ate a single slice on the run, and headed out to my meeting.
Meet, meet, meet. Good one, lasting about an hour, and seems like we've got the ball rolling up the flagpole at both ends. Thankfully, these meetings really are pretty good, with none of that silly garbage. Although there is a bit more chit-chat than necessary. Anyway, got everything together to forward on to our lawyer to review. Funny thing--I could have sworn that in some of our earlier committee meetings that someone said we had a lawyer on retainer who did stuff like this for us. I asked last night after the architect guys had left--"Hey, what's the name of our lawyer so I can send him this?" Everyone looked at me like I'd grown another head.
Turns out we don't have anyone on retainer. And all the time, I've been chatting with no sense of irony or guile that "we'll have our lawyer look it over," thinking I was going to have someone to send it to. Luckily, we do have a former member who will more than likely be willing to look it over for us.
Another funny thing was as the meeting was breaking up, the architect was chatting about how prices are going up on materials, and how some subcontractor had submitted a bid on something recently and had it marked as being a price valid for only ten days. "... Ten days! And I just said 'daammmmn'."
He said it almost under his breath, and I'm not sure if the other guys on the committee even understood it (he has a pretty thick Arabic accent), but inside I was just about to bust out laughing. I might have to tell him later to be careful with the damnations and such, it being a church project and all.
Back home around 9:00, told Cat and Boy to go to bed since it was a school night, got upstairs and was met by Miss Reba, who asked, "Did you go to the store?"
"Uhhh, was I supposed to?"
"Well, Jonathan needs a three-subject notebook--"
"I thought we had one!"
"--no--he needs that for tomorrow, and--"
"AND I STILL NEED CONTACT SOLUTION," said Oldest. ::sigh::
Turned around and headed back to the store. At the stairs, Boy told me the PE teacher said they needed to bring spray on deodorant instead of dry. On the list
Store, grabbed items, noted that Thursday evenings are apparently THE time to go to the grocery store if you're shopping for tall tanned blonde girls, paid, home.
What a long day.
Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 12, 2005 10:29 AM