The Captain’s (B)log

Some things I’ve learned lately. I try to keep learning all the time, whether I’m making an active effort of it or not:

1) When you’re under your car doing an oil change, and you push up on your driveshaft just for fun, and it flexes upwards a few inches, no, this is not normal behavior. You need to get it fixed.

2) The distributor cap and rotor on your car are not hard to change. Do it now.

3) Sadly enough, sometimes Windows XP works better on laptops than Ubuntu, if the laptop is more than four or five years old.

4) The people working at Autozone don’t know jack shit about cars 90% of the time. Don’t insult them, just prepare yourself to talk to someone who doesn’t know the difference between a greaseable u-joint and a non-greaseable u-joint (even though the names are pretty self-explanatory).

5) Consolidating your loans is pretty easy, as long as you remember your government pin-number (that you haven’t used for years).

6) Whenever you get a new cell phone plan, even on contract, you have a federally-mandated 14-day “buyer’s remorse” period in which you can return your cell phone and cancel the contract without any repercussions. Don’t listen to the salesperson if they say “no, you don’t” — oftentimes, like the Autozone employees mentioned up above, they don’t know a damn thing.

7) Make sure the spare tire in your car is properly inflated, or else you may find yourself changing a flat tire one day that your car has developed, only to find the spare you just pulled out of your trunk is flat as well.

…and that’s about it for now.

…that really sucked.

I’m usually a very upbeat person — most stuff doesn’t get me down, no matter how bad it is.  I always try to look for a good side.

However, when I have a day when just everything goes wrong, and then everything I do to make it better goes wrong, sometimes even I feel like just giving up.

Apparently, the overheating with my white mustang is somehow connected to engine RPM! Yeah, doesn’t make sense to me either. If I just sit there, my car starts overheating, but if I put it into PARK and start bringing up the engine speed, it starts cooling off.

Beats me as to why, but I’m happy that I can at least cool it down if I get stuck in traffic, now!

All done putting in the new water pump on my white mustang! Only took about two hours — quickest damn job I’ve ever done. It’s a vast difference than it is trying to replace the water pump on a V6 or a V8 — those take hours, if not days.

I noticed my timing belt is starting to get kinda old in there, too, unfortunately.

Fortunately, I seriously don’t think it’s going to be that hard to do even that kinda job anymore — I’m starting to get to the point (in automotive maintenance) where the only thing holding me back is the availability of certain types of tools for the job, otherwise I’m thinking I could do damn near anything, car-wise.

About to start fixing my cars — both my white mustang and my blue (ha!) one. Don’t know what’s exactly wrong with either one, but I’ve a pretty good guess, so here’s to hoping!

I got a flat tire going home on Friday of last week (well, it was more like I had a tire explode on me…), and had to put on my little wimpy space-saver spare in a parking lot. (It was a church parking lot, too!)

So, I get online and order up some tires real quick from TireRack.com, get ‘em shipped to my house, and wait until today to put them on my rims — I just take the rims off the car and bring them up to the tire shop directly, since I hate anyone else driving my car.

Well, they were real busy there, so the guy just told me to leave my rims and the new tires there, and I could come back in about an hour and pick them up. Well, I come back and they’re not done with them yet, so I wait around for about another hour or so (it’s a Saturday, so they were real busy, and I overheard the manager guy saying he had someone quit just that morning), and then the guy tells me to pull my car around so he can give me the the newly mounted tires.

Well, to make a long story short, he didn’t make me pay anything! Yay! Said he felt bad that it took so long — it’s not a tiny gesture, either, since it’s like $40 to mount two tires at this particular place (they do a good job, usually).

I won’t say what the guy’s name was, so he won’t get in trouble or anything, but it makes me feel good to know that there’s still people like that around — lets me know that I can bring my car there in the future and not feel bad about it. Repeat business, and all that.

Taking a big trip soon — I’m not too worried, though. Got a good car that gets great gas mileage and is dependable as hell, though the exhaust is being extra loud for some damn reason lately.

Either way, I got AutoZone to talk with the engine’s computer, and it said everything was A-OK, except for a tiny glow plug problem, which doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in this heat…

Traveling 2000 miles in 4 days is sure to be a hell of a trip, but it’s nothing I haven’t done several times before. It’ll suck having to go to work only a day after I get back, though (if I get back when I planned — the return trip always seems to take a lot longer!).

Not really sad, just didn’t have anything to title this entry as.

Nothing much going on now — I’m firmly convinced now that the loud vibrations present in our Beetle Bug is because of old tires… I had checked them, and the tread seemed fine, but I was only paying attention to the middle. I neglected to really look at the _entire_ tire — had I done so, I would’ve noticed that the outsides of the tires that had been on the front of the car (before I rotated them) were almost completely worn out.

Yeah, I think I found the problem. Though, it’s not bad, considering they’ve been on the car since its inception.

I’ve lucked out, however — in the back of the bug is a *full-size* spare! Yep — it’s basically like getting a tire for free! All I have to do is use that one with another that I’ll buy from “Tirerack.com”:http://tirerack.com and we’re all set.

Well, my weekend is gone, but at least I have something to show for it. I finally fixed my Blue Mustang, which had been sitting around for about two months.

What was wrong with it, you ask? Well, look for yourself:

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/389741729_9e9a158e17_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/389741729_9e9a158e17.jpg
The thing on the left is a fucked up harmonic balancer. The thing on the right is a brand new, shiny (figuratively speaking) harmonic balancer from “Ford Racing”:http://fordracing.com. (Try to ignore the NASCAR stuff — I couldn’t care less.)

*What happens to your car when this part goes wrong?*

Well, when your engine is running, your entire car is shaking around like it’s about to fly apart. It’s kinda scary.

*How do you fix it?*

Well, wait for a weekend where you don’t have to do anything important. You’re going to need it. Then you have to take this thing off of your engine’s crankshaft.

*How is it on there?*

It’s bolted on there.

*Is it hard to remove the bolt?*

It’s hard to remove the lugnuts from your tires if you have to take them off.

This bolt — the one holding the harmonic balancer to the crankshaft — is _impossible_ to remove. (I still can’t remember how I got mine off.) I swear to G-d, whoever designed this thing was the most evil sadist to ever live.

Did I mention that when you try and turn the bolt to loosen it, the entire engine tries to crank? Yeah. Try and figure that one out.

*Why don’t you get someone else to do it?*

Because I’d rather not pay hundreds of dollars to someone for a job that I can probably do myself.

And to tell you the truth… I _like_ doing this stuff. It’s dirty, it’s hot, your hands get banged up and bruised, you get frustrated as hell after spending hours trying to remove _one_ freakin’ bolt… but I like it.

*What’s the end result?*

You get to drive a cool car!

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/343618568_40f357ad31_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/157/343618568_40f357ad31.jpg
Oh, well — you can’t drive that, now can you.

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/343618570_58a4f885c0_m.jpg!:http://farm1.static.flickr.com/132/343618570_58a4f885c0.jpg
There, that’s better. Vroom vroom!