Hi Peter - So, what's going on?
Happy Sunday. Yea-UH!
I took my truck to get it inspected on Friday. For the last few years, I've had the luxury of a less-than-adequate *cough**illegal**cough** shop that did inspections. Now, I'm not saying I went there intentionally or that I was trying to break the law, but when I drove up, they said "Honk your horn" and the next thing I know, they were putting on a sticker and saying "$10 please". Actually that was two years before last year. Last year I went to the place I went to this year. The guy said "We aren't doing inspections anymore. Well, I'll do yours and you'll be the last one." I left it there and then picked it up later - no problems.
I took it there this year, dropped it off and when I came back it may as well have had the word "Clunker" written across the windshield. I mean, really. Can you find anything else wrong with it, I wondered? He said it was leaking axle grease into the rear brake area (which, may I just say, I've NEVER seen anyone remove the rear brake drum. Normally they just look at the front brakes. I vaguely remember it from the past on other vehicles, but never this one). He said blah, blah, blah $210 to fix it all (just the axle part). That didn't cover of course the broken tail light lenses (lenSES - yes, two are broken. You'd think someone came after the truck with a bat or something. I must be rough). Oh, and the defrost blower isn't blowing. I knew that, I just didn't realize that it wouldn't pass for that. Oh, it was blowing sometimes when it felt like it and I actually looked at it before once but didn't make a lot of headway.
Nathan has been ready since he heard the news. He's like the leader of a pit crew, he had the jack out and the jack stands and everything we'd need to work on it. Friday night didn't pan out. I don't recall Friday night. I don't even know what we did now that I think about it. Saturday we went Geocaching - ALL DAY. Like for miles - we hiked to the point that we can home and I went to sleep for a while. I remember it well because mom had just made fried chicken and apple pie and I was about to dig in when I woke up snoring. NO APPLE PIE FOR YOU!
Sunday we went shopping for Jamie's big thing tomorrow. I actually woke up at 5am because I was worried I wouldn't wake up at 6am which is when Jamie said she wanted to get up. So I laid there patiently and Jamie woke up and said she didn't need to get up at 6 today - that was tomorrow. Oh, well. I managed to get back to sleep and when we woke up it was off to buy food for 100 teacher-types at the Nathan's school. I'm sure she'll probably post about it, so I won't but I'll just say that there are like a million bagels and tons of fresh fruit in our house right now. Oh, and danishes - lots of danishes. I'm staring at them now, or rather, they are staring at me.
Finally after finishing the shopping and watching Eureka - I was finally ready to get started. I called the auto parts place to ask about the lens cover and he suggested a local junk yard (closed today - I have 15 days, so I'm not under the gun, well, kindof because you KNOW my track record). He said "Oh, I own a truck like that" so I picked his brain for a moment and told him about the axle grease leak. He paused for what seemed like a long time and then said "Well, first, you need to take it to a reputable inspection station." He's NEVER heard of that before. Neither have I. It sounded a little fishy. I remember when I was a kid I went with dad to take his old truck to get inspected and he went to this freak guy (a friend of grandmas) and he kept pointing out stuff. He had some weird balance/ruler thing he laid on the hood and said the truck wasn't balanced (yeah(?)) it was leaning. Which caused the headlights to be off. After that he tried to reject it because it didn't have seat belts, but it turns out trucks built before a certain year didn't have them so we had to call the state police to come down and verify - which they did. I enjoyed that, actually. I never liked that guy after that, I'd see him from time to time. I'm sure he didn't know me and I'm glad for him that he never needed help (from me) for anything.
With that in mind, my goal was to just pull the back wheel off and see what it looked like. Yes, there was some dirty oily stuff - could be anything. I set Nathan up with the pressure washer (the NEEDS WORK pressure washer, that doesn't really have any pressure, but still can handle something as simple as that). He sat there for about 15 minutes until all we could see was metal, rust, and brake pads - which actually looked great. Next we blew it all off with the air hose and I thought about painting it in behind the pads but didn't want to hear "Oh, you didn't paint it, did you?" So I opted just to get it all dried off and then put it back together. While Nathan did that, I worked on the blower. I had to take it out. Apparently when they built the truck on the assembly line, the first thing they start with is the blower and then they kind of build the truck around it. That's my guess, at least. I had to take off more panels and covers and glove box parts and ash tray parts and miscellaneous hanging things and lights and finally I made it to the blower which I was able to see and verify that YES, it doesn't turn at all. I hooked my meter up to the power cable and checked and it was working perfectly. I managed to remove the blower but I wasn't able to get the cable out. The cable/cord went through about a 3/4" hole and the connector is like 1 1/2" large so it just got to the back and stopped. Now, who would do that? What sort of engineer would let that happen? Oh, Nathan speculated a LOT about it. That's what he does - he speculates. I didn't mention that earlier. He doesn't just sit there quietly and work, he has a lot of speculation going on. "Oh, they must have fixed that cable like that so in case the screws fell out, the blower wouldn't be able to fall down and hit your feet. The cable will stop it." I nod my head a lot. I wonder if I used to speculate like that? I suppose I did. He's like listening to Andy Taylor talk and after a while it's like a melodious story that just drones on for a while and then you'll hear "Dad. Dad? Dad??" and I'll look over and recall from memory the last few minutes when he speculated that the radio doesn't work because of the recent HD switch over and then I'll explain that it has nothing to do with the HD switch over, but I'll try not to laugh. He's so serious. If I laugh too much, he'll need therapy. Anyway, I cut the blower cable and I'll figure it out later. That was a LOT of work and the mosquitoes were perilous.
Here's the sorry blower with the "Fall on your foot fail-safe disabled":
Hopefully the junk yard will have that. As far as the brakes, we are going to pull the other rear wheel either tomorrow night (unlikely as there is too much going on) or Tuesday night and repeat the procedure. Then it's back to the left wheel. I figure I'll give it two days of driving around to see if it is actually leaking anything. I don't think it is. I think it's just years of gunk on there and no one has every looked at it before. Yeah, that's it.
I took my truck to get it inspected on Friday. For the last few years, I've had the luxury of a less-than-adequate *cough**illegal**cough** shop that did inspections. Now, I'm not saying I went there intentionally or that I was trying to break the law, but when I drove up, they said "Honk your horn" and the next thing I know, they were putting on a sticker and saying "$10 please". Actually that was two years before last year. Last year I went to the place I went to this year. The guy said "We aren't doing inspections anymore. Well, I'll do yours and you'll be the last one." I left it there and then picked it up later - no problems.
I took it there this year, dropped it off and when I came back it may as well have had the word "Clunker" written across the windshield. I mean, really. Can you find anything else wrong with it, I wondered? He said it was leaking axle grease into the rear brake area (which, may I just say, I've NEVER seen anyone remove the rear brake drum. Normally they just look at the front brakes. I vaguely remember it from the past on other vehicles, but never this one). He said blah, blah, blah $210 to fix it all (just the axle part). That didn't cover of course the broken tail light lenses (lenSES - yes, two are broken. You'd think someone came after the truck with a bat or something. I must be rough). Oh, and the defrost blower isn't blowing. I knew that, I just didn't realize that it wouldn't pass for that. Oh, it was blowing sometimes when it felt like it and I actually looked at it before once but didn't make a lot of headway.
Nathan has been ready since he heard the news. He's like the leader of a pit crew, he had the jack out and the jack stands and everything we'd need to work on it. Friday night didn't pan out. I don't recall Friday night. I don't even know what we did now that I think about it. Saturday we went Geocaching - ALL DAY. Like for miles - we hiked to the point that we can home and I went to sleep for a while. I remember it well because mom had just made fried chicken and apple pie and I was about to dig in when I woke up snoring. NO APPLE PIE FOR YOU!
Sunday we went shopping for Jamie's big thing tomorrow. I actually woke up at 5am because I was worried I wouldn't wake up at 6am which is when Jamie said she wanted to get up. So I laid there patiently and Jamie woke up and said she didn't need to get up at 6 today - that was tomorrow. Oh, well. I managed to get back to sleep and when we woke up it was off to buy food for 100 teacher-types at the Nathan's school. I'm sure she'll probably post about it, so I won't but I'll just say that there are like a million bagels and tons of fresh fruit in our house right now. Oh, and danishes - lots of danishes. I'm staring at them now, or rather, they are staring at me.
Finally after finishing the shopping and watching Eureka - I was finally ready to get started. I called the auto parts place to ask about the lens cover and he suggested a local junk yard (closed today - I have 15 days, so I'm not under the gun, well, kindof because you KNOW my track record). He said "Oh, I own a truck like that" so I picked his brain for a moment and told him about the axle grease leak. He paused for what seemed like a long time and then said "Well, first, you need to take it to a reputable inspection station." He's NEVER heard of that before. Neither have I. It sounded a little fishy. I remember when I was a kid I went with dad to take his old truck to get inspected and he went to this freak guy (a friend of grandmas) and he kept pointing out stuff. He had some weird balance/ruler thing he laid on the hood and said the truck wasn't balanced (yeah(?)) it was leaning. Which caused the headlights to be off. After that he tried to reject it because it didn't have seat belts, but it turns out trucks built before a certain year didn't have them so we had to call the state police to come down and verify - which they did. I enjoyed that, actually. I never liked that guy after that, I'd see him from time to time. I'm sure he didn't know me and I'm glad for him that he never needed help (from me) for anything.
With that in mind, my goal was to just pull the back wheel off and see what it looked like. Yes, there was some dirty oily stuff - could be anything. I set Nathan up with the pressure washer (the NEEDS WORK pressure washer, that doesn't really have any pressure, but still can handle something as simple as that). He sat there for about 15 minutes until all we could see was metal, rust, and brake pads - which actually looked great. Next we blew it all off with the air hose and I thought about painting it in behind the pads but didn't want to hear "Oh, you didn't paint it, did you?" So I opted just to get it all dried off and then put it back together. While Nathan did that, I worked on the blower. I had to take it out. Apparently when they built the truck on the assembly line, the first thing they start with is the blower and then they kind of build the truck around it. That's my guess, at least. I had to take off more panels and covers and glove box parts and ash tray parts and miscellaneous hanging things and lights and finally I made it to the blower which I was able to see and verify that YES, it doesn't turn at all. I hooked my meter up to the power cable and checked and it was working perfectly. I managed to remove the blower but I wasn't able to get the cable out. The cable/cord went through about a 3/4" hole and the connector is like 1 1/2" large so it just got to the back and stopped. Now, who would do that? What sort of engineer would let that happen? Oh, Nathan speculated a LOT about it. That's what he does - he speculates. I didn't mention that earlier. He doesn't just sit there quietly and work, he has a lot of speculation going on. "Oh, they must have fixed that cable like that so in case the screws fell out, the blower wouldn't be able to fall down and hit your feet. The cable will stop it." I nod my head a lot. I wonder if I used to speculate like that? I suppose I did. He's like listening to Andy Taylor talk and after a while it's like a melodious story that just drones on for a while and then you'll hear "Dad. Dad? Dad??" and I'll look over and recall from memory the last few minutes when he speculated that the radio doesn't work because of the recent HD switch over and then I'll explain that it has nothing to do with the HD switch over, but I'll try not to laugh. He's so serious. If I laugh too much, he'll need therapy. Anyway, I cut the blower cable and I'll figure it out later. That was a LOT of work and the mosquitoes were perilous.
Here's the sorry blower with the "Fall on your foot fail-safe disabled":
Hopefully the junk yard will have that. As far as the brakes, we are going to pull the other rear wheel either tomorrow night (unlikely as there is too much going on) or Tuesday night and repeat the procedure. Then it's back to the left wheel. I figure I'll give it two days of driving around to see if it is actually leaking anything. I don't think it is. I think it's just years of gunk on there and no one has every looked at it before. Yeah, that's it.
Comments
Who needs feet these days? Have you seen those HovverRound commercials? Sweet!
I just had to get a new tie rod. But, I am always going way too fast on our gravel road!
Lol at Nathan's speculating! It's so awesome when you can watch their brains work. And not laugh! ;)
Mine all turned out so great cuz I didn't laugh! ;) Only when I was supposed to!