The Manic Mechanic

I poked and hammered a bit more on the truck this evening, plus sanded and polished the gouges out of the taillight. It aint perfect, but it's at least it's less heinous than before:



I guess it's not bad for a bit over an hour's worth of work. I should invest in a good set of body picks.

Can someone remind me why I go through these motions here?

In other news, we had some pretty severe weather roll through here around 3pm-ish. Several inches of rain, high winds, lightning, power outages and tornadoes. Only minor damage here at the homestead, with downed branches, scattered odds and ends in the yard and the rose arbor knocked over in the garden. I'll get to all that tomorrow I guess. The arbor had been heavily staked in place, it basically was shaken to pieces. Rusty hardware too didnt help.

I'm in a bit of a cranky mood, so I will spare y'all the details. I feel the need to take some time off and gather my thoughts and feelings, but doubt it will do much more than waste vacation time.

Blah. The weekend cant come soon enough.

A shout-out to danthered who, tonight, helped me see the light.

In other news, in yesterday's rainy nastiness mom got rear-ended at an intersection near the road the house is on. She was not hurt. A quick survey of the damage it looks like the bumper fascia, the energy absorbing spacer, the metal beam w/supports and the muffler will need replacing, along with painting and miscellaneous hardware and the license plate frame. Fun. At least the man who did it was courteous and concerned and took responsibility. Some would have tried to turn it around like the worthless motherfucker that hit me last year. Cars can be fixed, though, loved ones are not replaceable.

Speaking of Mom's car (an '00 Dodge Stratus), it has been actually trouble-free mechanically, as in nothing broken or any problems whatsoever except for a burned out tail light until a couple months ago. That is when the heater control broke. You could no longer set the temperature and it was 'stuck' at the coldest setting. Problem turned out to be a small lever arm that a cable connects to to set the temp. The tip broke off, and the cable disconnected, and gravity moved it to the coldest position. In the meantime I blocked it up in the highest setting so mom will have heat in the car. The fun started when I went after a replacement part.

Turns out there is a service bulletin out on this problem. It seems there has been an issue with this little two-dollar part breaking. In turn, the heater box which this arm is attached to has been redesigned, using a different style of arm. SO! Instead of being able to replace the little, cheap plastic arm in a few minutes with something that could have been simply beefed up in a redesign, instead the repair entails an entire, redesigned heater box with attending components at a cost (to me) of over 240 dollars, requiring the entire dashboard to be removed from the car along with the steering column, console and everything attached including wiring, instrument cluster, radio, EVERYTHING. I have to blow the airconditioner, dump the coolant, in short spend an entire day tearing down and reassembling this stupid car because of a FUCKING TWO DOLLAR PART.

That aint gonna happen. I am simply going to take off that little arm, fashion a new 'tip' for it and put it back in, hooking up everything and going with it.

My other issue with the car is the paint. A section of the roof and the trunk lid have suffered from a nasty fade due to insufficient clearcoat. My guess is that the car might have been retouched after delivery after probably getting scuffed in transit (this happens more than you know, to all makes), and this repaint did not hold up. When the body work is done (I will do everything but the painting) I am not sure if the car will hang around much longer. I have the sinking feeling that it will collapse into a heap like the Bluesmobile once it made it to Daley Plaza.

Some days I hate cars. Like some days I hate coding. And test equipment. Today was a day I hated all three.

I hope tomorrow is better.