Possumblog

Where was I?!

Not that it matters.

Oh, yeah--weekend stuff. I fixed the leaky Focus first thing Saturday, for one thing. As I mentioned the other day, it's amazing how much information there is out there on the Internet--I typed in focus water floorboard and got back a ton of hits and quickly figured out the problem was more than likely the area around the pollen filter/fresh air intake on the passenger side.

I found several sets of instructions as well as a copy of the TSB addressing the problem, but until I popped off the cover, I wasn't quite sure why it was doing what it was doing--namely, every hard rain would cause a bucket of water to collect in the passenger side floor. I had already dried the carpet once, and ran water all down into the open cover on the driver's side, but never found the problem. Which is, the fresh air intake points straight up and the only thing that keeps (or is supposed to keep) water from running down the windshield straight into it is a small gutter molded into the underside of the cover. Too much water, and it overflows and pours right in.

So, I popped the cover off (and broke the tab next to the cover on the driver's side--oops) and taped off the windshield to keep goo off of it, and ran a bead of Permatex Ultra Black gasket juice all around the windshield side and the airbox groove. Very nice stuff--it comes out smooth and easy, although it is messy if it gets on your hands.

Wiggled it into place, popped it in, squished the bead of gunk down and put some weights along the edge to make sure it sealed good. Then, once more pull up the carpet and put towels under the pad to soak up some nice musty rainwater and left it all pulled apart so it would dry out.

Verdict? Worked like a charm. We had two big thunderstorms roll in Saturday afternoon and neither one caused any liquidy intrusion.

Overall, I have been very pleased with our Focus, but I think I would be much less so if I was having to rely on the dealership to fix the things I've had to fix on it. Again, thank goodness for the Internet.

Then, pears, then mowing, THEN the rear headrest installation on the Volvo--this will be posted over on Revolvoblog later on today, so I won't bore you with the technical details here, but suffice it to say that after spending about five hours in various other strenuous outdoor activities during the morning, and another hour spent inside of a very hot car, that the effort required to reinstall the lower seat cushion at the end of the project was very nearly enough to bring an end to ME! But, I did get it finished, and it looks nice and neat as a factory job.

(They ARE blue, by the way--they just look dark due to the shadow. But they match like they're supposed to.)

Anyway, everything fit right except for the rear speaker grilles, which were too big to fit in the space allotted, and now will have to be replaced with something smaller. MORE MORON FUN!

Went in and drank a lot of fluids and managed not to pass out, then got my shower and cooled off. It was a very long day.

Sunday was very nice, mainly because there were no meetings or anything else I had to go do between church services, so I got to 1) actually read the entire newspaper, and 2) take an actual nap in which I actually took off my actual suit and actually went to actual sleep in my actual bed. Which was probably not a good idea, because I was supposed to lead singing that night, and my throat was scratchy and then my vocal cords felt all constricted and everything, so every single song came out squeaky and coughy. It would help if I would relax a bit beforehand--I'm thinking maybe drinking a big bottle of Nyquil would help. It IS medicine, after all.

Ashley stayed to go to the teenage devotional/meal/gossipfest afterwards, which meant we had to go back and get her later. "We" meaning "me". ::sigh::

And that's pretty much the high points, although it doesn't sound nearly so tiring in retrospect as it felt like in real time.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 16, 2005 09:16 AM