Hotspur.us

Tuesday, July 14 was inspection day for both the Toy and my arm. For me it had been 6 weeks since the incident of the horse hoof to my ulna. For the Toy it had been 14 months since obtaining her previous inspection sticker.

With great amounts of trepidation I dropped my car off at the local inspection station and with a sinking feeling in my gut headed to the office. There were various reasons that I was nervous, but I’d poured a decent amount of time and effort (and blood, sweat, tears & anger) into her this past year and hoped for the best.

When my phone rang around 9:15 am I was shocked thrilled to hear the voice on the other end say, “Your car’s ready.” Stunned (I’ve always been stunned in this particular situation) I made some non-committal “Uh…um…er…ok. I’ll get her on my way home”  proclamation, figuring that blurting out, “Seriously? She passed?” was not good form.

One Down, One to Go

One inspection taken care of I waited impatiently for my 2:45 pm check up. You would think by this time I’d be brilliant not stupid smart enough to schedule my own inspection early in the day.  Clearly lacking the foresight to do so, I spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of semi-barfiness.

I arrived at the doctor’s office at promptly 2:30 which was just absolutely brilliant….the waiting room was hopping and it was clear that earliness was not going to do me any good on this day. After signing in I sat down with my knitting and waited and tried not to barf. After an eternity I was thrilled to hear my name called for x-rays! Yay! My happiness was soon quashed when, upon exiting the x-ray room I was informed that I’d be waiting back in the lobby since all the exam rooms were full up. So much for a speedy inspection for me.

After more waiting where I manged to entertain myself by both knitting and sending emails, although not at the same time, I was called again. It was as if I’d won the powerball. I could tell the fellow lobby-waiters were totally jealous that I’d been chosen to move on to the next round. Sweet! (After all, I had a newly inspected car to pick up and the sun was shining.) Making a bee line for the exam room and nearly running over a few lallygaggers in my way I hopped up on the exam table, pulled out my knitting and waited. It was a good thing I had a lot of knitting to do.

Eventually a doctor came in to see me. At long last I could ask my questions. I was so excited I was probably vibrating. But first there was the issue of soreness around my tricep near the elbow. I bent my arm at a 90 degree angle so the good doctor could take a look. He was gently prodding the muscle when I said, “You can poke at it all day long, it doesn’t hurt. It only hurts when I use it.”  AHA! Apparently that was all he needed to hear because he then said something like, “hmmm….it appears you have tendonitis. But we can work with that. You’ll be just fine.”  Seriously?  I played tennis for years and never had tennis elbow or any other form of tendonitis in my arm. And now, after 6 weeks of more or less muscle atrophy I get tendonitis?

THE QUESTION

But whatever, at this point I was more concerned about the pressing issues at hand. Such as what was I now, after 6  of weeks of really good behavior, allowed to do. So when the doctor asked, “Do you have any questions?” I blurted out, “CAN I RIDE MY HORSE?” (ok, I didn’t really shout it, but that took a lot of restraint on my part) I could tell by the look on his face that he thought I was clearly crazy (particularly since this entire stupid situation was caused by a horse to begin with).  And that answer was a resounding NO. Not that I was surprised, but you know, a girl can dream can’t she?

So four more weeks of physical therapy although now I am allowed to start some resistance training and do some load bearing stuff. No riding my boy. No doing anything that would cause my arm to be jerked hard and no putting serious weight into the joint (like riding my mountain bike).

Sigh…it’s been a long summer full of supervision. This is getting old. Fast.

 

One of the joys of being a hands-on owner (or a cheapskate) is that there is always something new that needs worked on. Make that somethings new. I’m not completely insane, so I have my list of repairs organized by priority. I live in Morgantown. That means the emergency brake is at the top of the list. WAY at the top of the list.

And like many other things about my TR4A, the handy shop manual gave copious amounts of directions for all models but my car. For the TR4A (with independent rear suspension) I found the following note, “the TR4A is similar to the other models.” Seriously? What kind of directions are those?

So out I go to purchase a floor jack and 2 more jack stands.  Because I can’t fit under the car unless it is completely off the ground and I had no idea where exactly the adjustment nuts for the emergency brake cables were going to be located.

So up goes the car. I had forgotten what horrible noise that car makes as she leaves the ground. Creek, groan, rattle….and all I kept thinking was “I surely hope I put the jack under something that was structurally sound” (although my words may not have been quite so eloquent as I was muttering under my breath).

Upon up, I scrambled under the car and discovered…..I couldn’t see the brake cables. Which seemed to me rather odd, until I did a further inspection and found they were simply right behind the wheels. Sigh.

Back down she comes because no way was I going to hammer off the spinners with the car up in the air. I mean, I’m not a rocket scientist, but I do have a smidge of common sense.

So after doing the above (ok, true that’s me with the passenger side wheel)

I ended up with this (which is the driver side). Which is when the fun began. Well the fun began after I managed to get the wheel off me and back onto the ground. Note to self, that stuff that makes your tires all shiny…yeah, it’s gross and sticky. Ick.

So, wheels off it was time for my favorite tool – the bottle of PB  Blaster. Oh yeah. (don’t spray it in your eye!) Spray, wait. Spray, wait. Bang on rusted nut with random tool. Spray, wait. Bludgeon rusted nut into submission. Try out emergency brake. Repeat on other side.

In the midst of all this Chad (who is volunteering for Big Brothers Big Sisters) returned with his little brother. Who is seven. And wanted to know what I was doing. Oh yeah. Sometimes I wish I had a nice big garage with proper lighting so I could shut the door and carry on (in secret).

At any rate the emergency brake now works pretty well. I survived with only a few nicks and scratches (mostly due to the wrench slipping in my hand). A fine day’s work. Not to mention I had a legitimate reason to purchase my own floor jack.

[post script: while I was working on the car, the plumber was working on installing a claw foot bathtub in the 2nd floor. At one point the feet fell off the tub. Guess what? A small floor jack works really well on a claw foot bathtub. Yes, yes I did.]

 

It’s Spring. And that means most likely I can be found standing by the Toy, clutching a random tool, sobbing staring numbly.

After running errands all over creation. And finding out that the horse had thrown a shoe (a very new shoe, thanks).  And going to a spa in horse / car / caching clothes to pick up some make up [can we say unwelcomed? You're welcome Mom] . I pulled the Toy out of the garage.

Good Friday’s Mission: figure out what is wrong with the window mechanism in the driver side door.

The part I was assuming would cause me irrational levels of anger be troubling was where I tried to unscrew the rusted screws and hammer out the pins holding both the window handle & the door release handle.  BUT I have learned a few lessons along the way so I got out the ol’ PB Blaster and blasted those rusty, nasty, disgusting screws. Take that! I’m prepared! Know what? It worked!

So screws removed and pins hammered (easily) out of the various handles I began to gentle remove the door panel. Suprisingly enough it came off easily. And the reason my window made such horrible rattling noises? It wasn’t on / in / whatever the track of the lifting mechanism. Yes. For 18 years I’ve driven that car around with the window rattling to wake the dead because it was off the track. Ok, so the dampening material around the opening is threadbare too, and some of the padding inside is pretty much all but gone,  but the big problem was the track <more on this fiasco later>.

HOWEVER, that wasn’t the big discovery. The big discovery was that the inside of the driver’s door panel was baby blue. I had a horrid moment when I thought, “Oh dear lord! My car was blue and the previous owner got wild and crazy and changed the color.”  And then I realized that I was sitting in a car that was nearly stripped down to the metal and all the other metal (floor pans, cabin, even the engine compartment) was black. And that meant one thing  – THAT WAS NOT MY DOOR! No wonder my poor car has always had such an attitude. She’s been running around with a salvaged door. Judging by the giant dent in the inside of the door, it must have seen some tough times. So not only is the door a salvage door, it’s a beaten up salvaged door that was never properly painted.

SATURDAY <because these things never take 1 day>

And back to the door panel itself. The MDF that it consisted of was nasty disgusting barf-inducing. While my sense of cleanliness and order isn’t exactly what I’d call highly developed, I was not keen on putting something  that was A) warped B) busted C) covered in black fuzzy stuff back onto my vehicle.  That left me no choice, I had to make a new door panel.

A brief trip to lowe’s to secure some clean MDF board, a mid-way trip to Walmart to secure staples (how can I own 2 staple guns and be completely out of staples?) a few minor distractions caused by general mayhem and confusion and I had a new door panel. The only problem was (at this time) that I didn’t have any extra marine vinyl laying around. Yes, I know you are shocked. Possibly as shocked as I was. So I did what seemed <at the time> sensible and decided to re-use the old stuff.  You know what? After loads of years and exposure to the elements, vinyl gets brittle fragile annoying on my nerves.

So, to recap.

• New MDF panel taken from old MDF panel for template
• New batting
• Old vinyl
• New springs Jury-rigged for handles because there were none in the driver’s side door.

And now for the big moment. You know, the one where I put it all back together and it fits? Yeah….

After installing the 500 door clips onto the new door panel and making sure all was still secured I attempted to put the panel on the door. And it did not fit. Nope. Maybe 1 out of 5 of the clips corresponded with an opening. **&&#@%$^?!$!! How did that happen? I took the template from the old door panel. As I sat there, on the floor of the garage, trying to not rip the door itself from the car retain my dignity I had to admit defeat. I wasn’t sure where I’d gone wrong, although I suspect the warped nature of the old MDF may have had something to do with it, but I’d gone WRONG again.

So I did what I usually did. I had a moment. And then I got that *(*%!$&^%#)!!_I*&*^% panel back on as best I could until I could make it work properly. Tomorrow is a new day.

REFOCUS

Having worn out my interest in the door issues, I went back to something way more important. That’s right, building the box for my new speakers. Because in the grand scheme of things, nicely paneled doors are fine, but what I really need to make the days ahead more pleasant is music. And I had lots of excess lumber sitting down in the workshop area of the basement.

First off, make a template of the shelf leaving room for the differential hump. And nothing in this car is square or plumb so while my template may look wonky, it fits the car.  From there it was time to make the top piece to which the speakers will actually be mounted.  And before anyone asks; No I did not come up with this brilliant plan myself. I found it online. And if I can make it look half as good as the ones in the photos online, it was be awesome! So after cutting out circles with a jigsaw in a cobbled together work area I was ready to put in the bars that protect the speakers from any parcels I may choose to throw behind the seats.  A little elbow grease later (good thing I had a new blade in my hacksaw) and I was nearly ready to mount the speakers. Sweet!

MONDAY: Because I don’t know how to relax

Having kept my mechanical support team in the loop about the window developments I was somewhat hesitant to just leave the window sitting in the rail without actually being secured. Mostly because when it shook loose again I wouldn’t have anyone to complain too.  So I sucked it up and resolved to go ahead and fix it the right way. Unfortunately the remedy required that I pull the regulator out of the door. Which, thanks to a healthy dose of PB Blaster, wasn’t too difficult to unscrew. The difficult part came when I tried to extricate it from the door without getting decades of goo all over me.

And that’s where I stopped. Because scrubbing that thing off with a toothbrush and Simple Green at 10:00 p.m. didn’t sound like much fun.

More to follow. There’s always more to follow.

 

When Spring starts to show signs of arriving that means two things to me. The one pertinent to this post is: Time to Roll the Toy back out of the garage.

Time for me to sit back, make my list of repairs, consult the check book, take another look at the repair list and dissolve into tears.  Or better yet, dig out some old photos and remember how this all started.

And so for your amusement, I present…..the Toy in my youth (because even then, she was way over the legal drinking age)!