2002-10-04 - 12:39 p.m.
So I find myself sitting here chomping at the bit. It is Friday, which means that I only have one day to get ready for the weekend demo/event thingy. I don�t have enough stock to make me happy. I don�t have enough steel to make me happy. But then what would make me happy? Well I�ll tell ya, 2 tons of assorted square, round, and flat stock, plus a truck load of �stuff� to sell. Yeah, yeah�I know I am being a bit ridiculous�but that is what would make me happy (well until I had to load and unload all that crap).
This week seems to be the week for co-workers cars to fail on them�and unfortunately none of them know anything about cars. So yup you guessed it�it�s ole Bear to the rescue. Woo hoo�no really�woo ho �bah� So yesterday it was a flat tire. Now this particular co-worker has never in her life had a flat tire�or at least one that she has had to change herself. So this 50ish lady politely asks me if I could come help her. Well ok sure np. I drive her back to her car�jack the thing up, slap on the donut, and that is that. Or so I thought. She thanks me profusely, and then asks me the dumbest question. �Do you think it will be ok to drive on this little tire for a month or so till my son can come and get tires for my car?� OMG!!!! Must control mouth�I smile, and as gently as possible tell her that she is an absolute fucking moron! Ok no I didn�t say that�but I wanted to. Instead I told her �look why don�t we just go do it now�we can get tires on you car today, and this will all be done with.� I can tell that this idea makes her nervous. Not sure why but it does. And then she drops the bomb. Can you go with me? You know how these mechanics are with women�they will do their best to take advantage of me cause I am not a man. You see I really don�t know anything at all about tires, and they will try to sell me the most expensive, wrong tire for my car. Oh dear God�it is just tires�So of course I say ok. I have her follow me over to a tire shop, and she won�t even go inside with me. Sigh. I go in�give the tire size, tell em I want 2 tires for under $125 (the price that she told me she was willing to spend on tires). And with in 2 minutes I am done. How fucking hard was that? 20 minutes later they were done (but I could not leave cause if I did they would put the wrong tires on or something�fuck if I know). And she is all oh thank you thank you thank you�I smile say your welcome and all that crap, and tell her it was no big deal really. Then she say no you don�t understand�I couldn�t have done that myself yadda yadda�and you saved me and all that�and you got your hands all dirty. Can I buy you dinner or something to repay you for this? No that is ok�I just changed your tire. No biggie. Please don�t worry about it�I hope she doesn�t go on about it today as well. I just changed a tire for Gods sake�
Now for Car issue number 2. Yet another co-worker comes in this morning and asks if I could look at her car. She said that her oil light came on and she is not sure why. So I tell her, a loss of oil pressure will cause that, and when did she last check her oil. Turns out she doesn�t know how to check her oil. Sigh�again. So I go out there, open the hood of her Caddie and check the oil�nothing on the dip stick. Hmm not a good sign. But that is ok it is a Caddie v8, so it has at least 6 qts of oil in it. Being more than a qt low won�t kill it. So I tell her to turn the thing on. The very first thing that I notice is that the valve train is chattering like a pissed squirrel. Hmm bad sign�hydraulic lifters auto adjust the valves�no oil/pressure will cause this to happen. So Take a quick look under the car and OMG!!!! The oil is fucking bleeding out of the bottom of the engine. I tell her to shut it off now! She of course is now all in a panic. What�s wrong! What�s wrong! Sigh�I ask how long the oil light has been on and she says about 2 days now�OMG, OH DEAR GOD�do people just not know any better? I then ask her if she has noticed any oil spots where she parks her car, and she said there was a puddle there this morning�but she didn�t know how it got there. So she didn�t worry about it. Great�Now she looks all worried at me and asks if I can fix it.
Blank stare.
I am at work. In nice clothes. With no tools. No jack/lift. And she wants me to fix her fucking car? So what do I say�I say sure cause I am a big ole dork who can�t ever seem to say no to a person in need so I will crawl around your car and at least see if I can find the problem and then perhaps decide if I can fix the GD thing on my lunch break over at the garage�I am SUCH A SUCKER! Sigh�.So I crawl around the car�get oil all over my hands�and determine what the problem is. Her oil pan is cracked. Ok�easy fix. But she needs to get a new oil pan, gasket set, filter, oil�and while I am in there I might as well replace the oil pump pick up screen�Sigh�Why am I doing this? She looks at me with a blank stare and asks me�where do I get all this stuff? No this is not happening�So, I take her back inside and tell her to call the Caddie dealer for the pan and screen�and then tell her to call Advance or something for the rest of the parts. She does this�and 5 minutes later she is standing in front of me, about to burst into tears. I so don�t have time for this. Why me? Turns out that the Caddie folks don�t have an oil pan, they would have ot order it. So I tell he fine�I will find a pan for her�Stupid me. 10 minutes later I have secured one from the local bone yard�And If I am willing to pull it will be half the price. Ok this is becoming a fiasco already I can tell. At this point I decide that I can no longer get this job done in my one hour lunch break. So I break the news to her. She panics�What am I going to do what am I going to do�Now I feel like an ass for not helping. So I do the next best thing. I tell her to call my buddy Brian. And that is where this story leaves off�The branch is opening soon, and she has to get the building ready. I have faith in Brian though�he will get her fixed right up.
Oh and just out of curiosity I asked her how she cracked her pan�She didn�t know. I asked if she had hit anything in the road lately�she stops and thinks�and finally the little light comes on�and she says yeah�there was a cinderblock or a brick or something in the road 3 days ago that she hit�but she figured that everything was ok. I asked if she looked under the car for any damage when she got home�and she no of course not. It was dark�and I didn�t want to get dirty�besides fixing cars is a mans job.
Sigh�that is what I get for asking.
So today I learned that my clutch job is going to cost me a little bit more than I had planned. Did you know that every time you get you clutch replace you should have the flywheel re-surfaced? Nope neither did I. Well I guess this will be a good excuse to upgrade from the 9.25 to the 9.75 flywheel/clutch setup�
What have you learned today?
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