Possumblog

Springtime!

(This post goes for a long ways--if it cuts off at the bottom, remember to press the F11 key twice to clear things up.)

But I get ahead of myself--first off was to get Oldest up out of the bed and to school to take her test. I am still a bit sketchy on exactly WHICH test this was, but it was a pretest for one of the standardized tests she'll be taking later on--I think it might have been the pre-SAT--the only thing I was sure about was that I had to get up early, and she had to get up early, and we both had to be to the school building by 7:30.

Which we did, remarkably enough.

After which, it was off to the hardware store! YAY! The garage door was still unrepaired, and although we had just about gotten used to going out the front door, the lack of an operable garage door (even if we can't park in the garage) was a big inconvenience. So I got permission to make that the morning repair project. Little did I realize just how much of the morning it was going to take up.

Got to Home Despot, strode manfully back to the garage door doodads, looked, looked, looked, ahh--springs!

Oh.

Ummm.

Drat.

For some reason, during my haste to leave that morning, I had neglected to bring along a representation of the spring I needed. I had no idea what to get.

I figured maybe a pair of hundred pounders, but had no real way of knowing.

::sigh::

Back up the stately heights of Talladega Hill, where after parking the lovely Volvo, I ran in the house, out to the garage, and retrieved the broken end of the spring from the safety cable, then sprinted back out to the car (manfully, of course), and set off down the hill again back to Home Duhpot. Once more, manfully strode, got to the spring display and...

Hmm.

Well.

Uhhh--well, it's too big for an 80 pounder, and a bit too small to be a 110 pounder. Well, it won't hurt if it's a bit stronger, but...

Only one 110 pound spring. Not a single other 110 in the entirety of the store.

::sigh::

Down the road to Lowe's.

Walked in, feeling much less manful than earlier, wound up having to ASK where the garage door stuff was. Pitiful. Just pitiful. "Well, if we have 'em, they'll be over yonder on aisle 17."

I refused to ask where they would be if they didn't have them.

On to aisle 17, and upon arriving, the heavens parted and light shone down and angels swelled in song, and there they were--95 pound springs. I grabbed two and headed to the cash register, once again confident of my manly male masculinity.

After donning my disguise of an ancient wheezy Volvo, it was back to the house with me and time to start trying not to poke out my eye with flying springs.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:

I am a moron. Do not attempt to replicate anything I do, because you might could get killed or even injured, and I have no way of paying off you and your lawyers. So don't even try to change the springs in your garage door.

But, if you do, it's handy to have a garage door opener hooked up already to help you lift the door. I got one of the kids to push the button while I helped hoist the thing up. "WAIT--WAIT! WAIT TILL DADDY SAYS GO!" After it was up and, it was handy to have a couple of Vise-grips to clamp on the tracks to hold the wheels in place. I thought I was being all bright and genius-like for thinking of this, but when I opened up the instructions, it said to do the exact same thing.

Broken spring off, new spring on, test, works fine. Old, unbroken, but no longer matching spring off, new spring on, test, works fine. Finished! Actual time of repair, about fifteen minutes. Time of repair with travel time--close to an hour and a half. Moron factor=75 minutes.

Now then, that done, it was time to go help do laundry, except the lure of the open garage door was too great of an inducement to working on the car instead.

So I did that.

The headlights still had one niggling thing that needed attention--the rapidly flashing turn signal over on the passenger side was very bothersome, so I needed to fix that, and there was the issue of exactly WHICH light was supposed to be flashing. I found out from my various online sources that the upper, clear light is the always-on marker, and the lower amber one is the turn signal. Which is not the way the lights came wired from the factory, which is, in fact, the exact opposite.

So I opened up the hood, and grabbled around for the connector on each side, opened up the clip, swapped the two wires, and clicked it back together. Also made sure the wires were shoved all the way down into the connectors--plugged them back up, and hooray! No rapid flash! And the amber ones were flashing! Apparently, the signal light on the passenger side had a couple of wire connections that were just barely touching--enough to get a bit of light, but not enough to provide full resistance. But now they work just fine.

But what of that filthy engine?

I had some engine degreaser I had bought a while back for when I was selling Moby, and never got to use it. Hmm. An oil-covered B230F just doesn't look nice--maybe a spritz or two of this stuff...

Despite the stupidity of spraying the engine compartment of an old 240 (which in their dotage have the electrical finickiness of British-made cars, meaning it isn't one of the better ideas of 'things-to-do'), everything thankfully worked out just fine.

Pulled over into the grass so as not to stain the driveway, popped the hood, covered the distributor with aluminum foil, sprayed the foam on there, got the hose, and...

"DADDY! Ashley says she's through and wants you to come get her!"

But! But!

"Okay."

Off to school--extra time to soak probably wasn't a bad thing anyway, considering just how much oil was everywhere. Picked up Oldest, took the car up to Sam's to get some gas, got back in--"Hey, you wanna drive back to the house?"

It's been a while since she'd had a turn behind the wheel, and since there was no one else but us, it wouldn't have the added stress of trying to protect her tender psyche from a carload of backseat drivers. I hadn't told her I was going to let her drive ahead of time, though, so the sudden nature of the request put her back a bit. "UHHHH..."

"You want me to get us down to the service road and let you take the back way home?"

"Umm, sure..."

I'm actually glad she said yes--the main north-south drag through town is daunting even for a geezer like me. We went back down the hill and onto the side street, swapped places, and we were off.

Thankfully, not off the road. She did pretty good, but still has that tendency to hug the edge of the lane. She made it home fine, though, and so did I. I still think I need to have a big STUDENT DRIVER decal for the backend of the car, though. She's still a bit unpredictable in her movements, and I could tell several folks on the outside were a bit unnerved when she would stop short or turn wide.

Anyway, she was tickled to drive some, and I was tickled to be back home where I could finish my cleaning chores. Sprayed the engine down and saw things under the grime I didn't even know existed. Cranked it, and oddly enough, it fired right up. Thank goodness.

Still not quite clean, however. And I was all out of foam. Meaning?

Back down to the foot of the hill for more dingderned stuff. And paper towels. We'd run out, so I thought I would be considerate and get another crate of them. And figured I could probably pick up some engine cleaner while I was there--alas, twas not to be. STILL had to go by the parts place. And stand in line. Forever.

It was running up toward noon, and I was still putzing around with the stupid car, and we had the Fall Festival at church to get to and I needed a shower and, and, and...

Whatever.

No use to get too stressed out about it--aside from the fact that someone was not quite happy with the lack of laundry help.

Got back and spritzed everything down again, and this time did the underside of the hood, which had a fine coating of baked-on hydrocarbons. Most of which remain unto this day. I don't think I have ever seen such tenacity by mere oil.

ANYWAY, it was time to put up the toys and go do hayrides.

NEXT: HEY! RIDES!

Posted by Terry Oglesby at October 24, 2005 11:32 AM