Lots of work on a day off
I don’t want to come across as complaining, but rather just reflect on a day that didn’t turn out anything like I had expected.
I really only had one thing to get done today which was get the oil changed on both cars.
I woke up about 8:30 and noticed I’d missed a text on my phone. It was one of our part timers informing me that they forgot to inform me that they were out of town and were scheduled to work today… well that’s nice. So I’m filling in for that now today.
As I’m checking that message (I haven’t even got out of bed yet) I get another message from another co-worker saying we’re having issues with one of our Saturday morning shows. So the next 45 minutes are spent getting that around. After fixing that I suddenly realize I haven’t made any coffee yet! Better get on that before this day becomes a complete disaster!
I grab a cup of coffee and head down to the computer to make the morning internet rounds. Figure I’ve got quite a bit of time since I don’t have to be to work until 5PM so I decide to fire up some Minecraft and played for a good hour or so.
I embark on the oil change of both cars which goes pretty un-eventful until I realize… I got the wrong filter for my car. I dunno how I did… I’ve been changing the oil on that car for 5 years now. So even an oil change can’t go flawless today!
The good news is, since I went to work, the rest of the day has been pretty smooth! It’s almost over now and the good news is I only have one thing planned to get done tomorrow… oh no.
Special Treatment
The snow came down earlier this week. They were calling for as much as 14 inches at one point in time. We ended up getting around 5 inches. Seems like that’s the way it always goes. Better to freak everyone out and over prepare, than to catch everyone off guard with a foot of snow I guess.
It’s no suprise Andrea’s car get’s the nice dry garage. But that’s okay. The Toronado is tough. I had to head in to work early the next day and I think I was the first person to hit the roads here in Albert. The Toro trudged through the five inches of snow like a champ.
12.4.11Most Stressful Time of the Year
I like to think I’m pretty versatile and can handle just about anything. But the last couple weeks have been mentally tough. I’ve been spending some extra time at work trying to get all my stuff done. Doesn’t help that I haven’t really worked a full week since Thanksgiving. But now that basketball season is here, and we’re following four teams instead of two, it’s more than my brain can handle at times. Plus we had one of our board operators quit, so that’s more stuff that we need to find fill in’s for.
When things are going smoothly, it all goes really well, but lately all it’s taken is one little thing to send my whole world out of whack.
Today was nice though. I didn’t have anything work related to do. I slept in until 8:00am and then got up and eased into the day. Crazy… I remember thinking my 10AM classes at K-State were SO early… and I remember being out and about in the mornings thinking… wow so much goes on while I’m sleeping… haha. Of course I used to stay up until 3am or 4am in those days. Now a days my bedtime is a strict 10:30pm.
Went and saw a radio play version of “It’s a Wonderful Life”. It was pretty good. I found myself somewhat confused as it started though since each actor played several characters. Took me a while to feel out who was who. But the local Community Theater did a really good job, and it was a fun way to spend part of the afternoon.
Then I got to play some Zelda! It’s been several days for sure. And man it is just such a cool game. I could sit and play the game all night, but I wanted to get a short blog written, and get to bed.
So that’s what I did. Onward into next week. I have a new starter coming in for the Toronado tomorrow so I need to get that swapped out. The starter hasn’t been engaging every time, and it’s starting to get less reliable. But $50 for a rebuilt starter isn’t too bad. Should last a few more years. So that’s my project for tomorrow night. Shouldn’t be too bad… and I’ve got a garage to do it in!
09.19.11Bad Ball Joints
We took Andrea’s car in to get an alignment, and they said they couldn’t align it because one of the ball joints were bad. Ball joints aren’t too expensive ($25 each), so I told ’em I’d fix them myself and bring it back. Instead of just doing one, I figure you might as well do ’em all. After all, all four are 24 years old and if one is wore out, you can bet the others are close.
Basically the ball joints are the two points your front wheel pivots on when it turns, but also pivots when the wheel goes up and down over a bump. It’s a lot like your hip or shoulder with a ball and socket design. The job isn’t too hard to do, but it does require some special tools.
[youtube=http://youtu.be/FfKdphaV-uU]
So with all the tools at my disposal I set off to get the job done. I started out by using the pickle fork to pop the ball joint apart from the steering knuckle (the part where the wheel is).
New Shoes
Got new tires for the Cutlass. You know me… I dig whitewalls… but it’s not my car. Haha.
More Colorizing Stuff – Ye Olde Pump
Original
Color-rific!
Touching up the Mustang
Well this car is officially sold. Payment has been recieved and it’s going to our niece Lyssa for her birthday this year. Its going to be a great first car. Heck, it was the only car we had that the AC was working! (More on fixing that in a future post). But I wanted to touch up the bumpers as there were some scuffs from careless driving (mostly by me)!
So I turned to a trusty old friend:
Roll on, Darling.
There are many shortcomings of the Rustoleum roller paint job methods. It’s not quite as nice as a professional paint job, it’s very labor intensive. But one of the benefits is that it’s super easy to mask off a small area and do some touch up work like I’m about to do here.
I'd already sanded the trouble spots and masked it off.
After rolling on one coat its already looking better. (All one color at least).
While that coat was drying I wanted to get the rest of the paint good and polished up. Its been sitting in the sun and the weather too long, and to be honest, just pretty much neglected since Andrea got the Cutlass. That black paint had been baking in the sun and started to get that “chalky” look that you see on a lot of old paint jobs. I was hoping some of my Meguier’s glaze could bring it back to life.
This is the paint even after being thoroughly washed. It still looked really weathered. The darker portion is where the glaze has already been applied.
So the glaze was doing a pretty good job. In person you can still notice some imperfections, but overall it meets my “better than it was” gold standard. After a coat of wax, it was looking almost as good as when we just painted it.
After 3 new coats on the bumper strip and a full wax on everything else. Not too shabby.
Waxing the bumpers will have to wait until the paint is fully cured. I figure a couple more days in the hot sun outta do it.
So there ya go. Not too bad at all. Should be great for a first car! It’s been really nice getting out and working on the cars the past week or two. It can be frustrating, yet therapeutic at the same time.
Lessons learned: Drive more careful. Keep your car waxed regularly (especially if it sits outside all the time). And you’ll have a sweet looking car for years to come!
Taking it back to stock.
Man, I felt dumb. Andrea’s car is a Cutlass Salon. You’ve probably heard of the Cutlass Supreme. That’s the cushy luxury version of the Cutlass. The Salon is the sport version. Comes with the chrome wheels, bucket seats stiffer suspension and blacked out grills. Well since we’ve had the car it’s had Chrome grilles. I figured someone just swapped the Supreme grilles on there.
Chrome Grills - Didn't come on a Cutlass Salon
One day while Andrea was washing the car I noticed the towel pulled off some of the chrome on the grill. Turns out, it was just some stick on chrome that one of the previous owners just stuck on the original grille! Peeled it all off and wha la!
Less chrome. Original look.
Which looks better is a matter of preference I guess.
How the dog and the car almost died
Well last weekend was the big camping weekend at Kanopolis Lake. We got off early, but everyone else had headed out there first thing so we were already going to be the last to arrive. Andrea and I got off at about 2PM and stopped by the post office to pick up the mail before we packed up and hit the road.
As soon as I got back in the car, Andrea said, “Um… its stuck.” Sure enough the damn car was stuck in park! And we were double screwed because we couldn’t even put it in neutral to get a tow home. So we walk back to the house. Luckily nothing is farther than three blocks away from anything else in Albert! We loaded up the tools in the back of the other car and headed back to see if I could figure anything out. I tried several things, but finally just had to unhook the shifter and craw under the car and shift the transmission by hand, which at that time caused the car to start rolling with me under it! Luckily Andrea was quick on the brake.
Next I swallowed some pride and walked over to the local restaurant and got the owner to help push the car into the street and give us a tow home. I told him I’ll stop by his place and rack up a big bill here soon.
So we made it home. And since we weren’t planning on taking Andrea’s car anyway we loaded up the Toronado as planned and got the heck out of town. Figured I’d worry about the Cutlass when we got back.
Camping was great. It’s always awesome seeing the family and the kids, and it was especially fun haning out with my buddy Chris! We just don’t keep in touch the way we should so it was great to spend a little time hanging out.
One of the nights though, Daisy (who loves to bark at anything that moves within 1,500 ft) took off after a truck. Andrea had her on a leash, but the leash slipped out of her hands. So here goes this stupid little wiener dog chasing after a big ol diesel pickup in the middle of the night with a leash flapping behind her. She runs along side yapping and yapping, then all of a sudden we could see Daisy in the headlights of the truck. About half a second later she appears to trip over something and the truck rolls right OVER her. She goes right between the tires and the truck keeps on going and a bewildered wiener dog finally notices Andrea screaming at her, and in a daze, trots straight back over to the campground. Our guess is her leash she was dragging behind her got caught under a tire and tripped her up.
But despite some unnecessary excitement it was a very excellent weekend. We got Andrea’s car fixed that following Monday after work and Daisy is still the same as always.
05.4.11Starting to feel like home
There’s still boxes to be unpacked, and a lot of rooms that could use some more seating (like the room with the TV) but it’s starting to feel a lot more like home now that we have some of our own stuff on the walls and been going through some daily chores it’s definitely starting to feel like our place.
Hasn’t been without some adventure though. Our first run of the dishwasher found that it wouldn’t drain. And it was filling to the point that it would leak out the door onto the kitchen floor. Called the landlord who was great about being over that day to fix it. So the next day we ran our first REAL load of dishes through. Andrea and I were down stairs with her nephew and we both started to smell something funny… I went upstairs to find the whole floor of the house was filled with smoke! Not thick black smoke by any means, but the kind of smoke that fills the house when you burn the bacon (I would know!). Odds were it came from the dishwasher, but after opening it I expected a ton of smoke to come billowing out, which it didn’t. So all of a sudden I wasn’t sure if it was the dishwasher or not, and if it wasn’t… was whatever it was still burning?
We kicked the attic fan on to clear out the atmosphere and paid close attention to see of there was any more smoke anywhere. When I didn’t find any it was safe to assume it WAS the dishwasher and apparently either from being flooded for so long, or a chemical they used to clean it out, the burner was just coated with crud and when the dry cycle kicked in it started smoking. But nothing caught on fire, no damage caused so no harm no foul. We’ve since run a couple smokeless loads through with no problems other than some real hard water.
There’s a couple other little issues that still need addressed. There’s a small leak at the upstairs toilet, and the water softener seems to be out of commission. The bypass for the water softener valve is broken, so I worry that running our water through a non working water softener could actually be making the water HARDER than it already is. We’ll get to it all in time though.
I got out underneath the Toronado last night to address some exhaust issues. I could tell for a while now that the exhaust was leaking pretty good. The tail pipe was getting a little loose so I kinda parked it for a while until the move-in slowed down and I had a chance to look at it. Didn’t want to go over some railroad tracks and have my muffler fly off. After looking at it last night it’s a good thing! The muffler was barely hanging on, so I pulled that and the rusty tail pipe. Everything from the muffler forward was in pretty good shape, so I won’t worry about that too much. But I’m determined to tackle this one by myself. I’ve never done exhaust work before, but there’s a lot of stuff I’d never taken on before I got the Toronado.
So there’s a long update. Looking forward to the upcoming camping trips and will be sure to snap lots of pictures!