I will be Fifty fucking years old at the end of this month and completely amazed I made it this far.I am tore up and have a fucked up back since I was twenty and arthritis everywhere, especially my fucking hands.
I spent three and a half hours yesterday morning, in the fucking rain, a half mile away from the Weasel Den on a service call.
Three and a half hours to change the belt on a Caterpillar engine on a Vacuum truck. Most of that was spent hanging over the radiator at maximum extension, trying to get the bolts out of a little drive line that comes off of the front of the crankshaft that drives a hydraulic pump.
It is a two man job getting that fucker back together. The water pump belt is a little bit bigger than a pie pan, so is the crank damper.After getting the new belt half way on, it was readily apparent some stupid sonofabitch at the parts store needed a good kick in the balls because it was too fucking short. I sent what was left of the old belt to him with the part number RIGHT ON IT!
No service truck, cheap assed Made in China tools and cussing like you have never heard in your entire life.
I had to take off a serpentine belt, the tensioner, as far as I could and do most of it by Braille.I couldn't see shit.
The fucking assholes put this dinky little belt in the worst place possible and even the tensioner pulley bolts were BEHIND and UNDERNEATH, the Serpentine belt pulley's.
Dirty fucking cocksucker asshole cunt lip motherfucking sonsabitch fuckhead engineers."It looks good on paper".
Put 'em in Hell, right next to Dick Fucking Cheney, taking apart and putting back together again every rotten fucking asshole thing they ever designed, in scorching heat one day and freezing rain the next.
Oh yeah, make sure they have that stupid fuck from NAPA right there too, handing them the wrong parts.
I won't even go into the part about the asshole operator, when the other truck showed up and worked just fine for a half an hour. I could see and hear it, when it quit working to his expectations and he came over throwing a fit and called me everything but white, threatened to call the boss, did call some other asshole and come to find out, when I threw down my tools and walked over there to look at it, he had a fucking big assed rock stuck in the pipe.
Dumb ass.
Not a good day.
I will deal with that motherfucker later.
By the way, Happy Birthday Nasty Girl.
I curse automotive engineers all day, in German when I'm working on a Volkswagen (Du bist ein sheiss auto!). Why is it these dumb sonsabitchez put stuff you have to service regularly in the most out o the way places? Just try and find the oil filter on an Audi.
ReplyDeleteI feel ya If I knew I'd lived this long might of took better care.Now bout em cheap tools,whats yer header say?
ReplyDeleteSome of the design stupidity is done on purpose but it does not excuse the obvious really dumb shit these engineers incorporate into the real thing. It's called common sense. Probably city boys doing it.
ReplyDeleteAh my man....just think how you will feel at 75. Lets see 50? Only 25 more years to work. Suck it up.
ReplyDeleteSee Ya
Hi Ornery,
ReplyDelete"cussing like you have never heard in your entire life"? Have you been holding out on us? It's time to tell us how you really feel.
We have a saying in construction--If it was easy, they'd hire pretty girls. You should be thankful that your work is so miserably difficult that people would rather hire you than learn your complicated list of expletives.
I despise wrenching. If my car gets so much as a flat tire, I trade it in.
Dave
I used to repair copy machines back in the day. Chinese metal frames with Taiwanese electronics and Japanese (or American) design. A recipe for disgust if ever there was one.
ReplyDeleteThe corncobs who design this shit never have to repair it and those who repair it usually don't have to operate it (unlike autos).
I would take a service call at my only account (a large local aircraft manufacturer that might rhyme with GOING!) The metal frames were sharp as a razor blade, eighty screws holding a 4in plate when two would do and the parts that wore out the most were the hardest to get out of the goddamn machine.
Xerox implemented a short-lived process in the 90's: the designers would come to the repair training and see how it all works. They would then go back to the drawing boards and correct any missteps. They stopped the program when they realized nothing would ever get out to the showroom.
Speaking of repair... The worst customers in the fucking world are those who don't own the equipment they run. I've never seen more fucked up shit then the bullshit I had to fix at the Lazy B. I found sandwiches, lots of hairpins, a watch and various dead forest creatures in some of the copiers I worked on.
And I replaced my share of broken platen glass. I always asked the office manager if there was anyone out sick with stitches to their ass!
Sorry you had a bad day baby. Hang in there and momma will make it all better. Thanks for the birthday wishes. It was a pretty good birthday, except for the fact that you weren't with me and I'm old...er. Love ya babe, see ya soon.
ReplyDeleteTry working on yachts. Ya gotta be an anorexic pygmie contortionist to get at half that shit they cram aboard those things....
ReplyDeleteMan, I feel you. I think the engineering goes this way on purpose to tight customer to dealer or in worst case to some auto repair shop. I just drug my (German) car to the dealer with service recall and boy.... They have a department, team of paperpuchers with so important and high-up ranking asholes view - its unbeliavable. They make this simple in and out call so important and start talking you into another 3-5 grands of shit that they'd like to replace/repair. Fucking snoops. Some of the shit they do amplify to almost "dead must change" emergency talking.
ReplyDeleteY'know, one of the things I like about my Jeep is that it's ridiculously, ludicrously easy to work on. Everything's just kinda out there in the open, or if it's not, you don't have to pull a buncha shit to get to it. Somethin' to be said about a vehicle that was engineered during the Paleolithic and then spent 40 years getting minor improvements from time to time. I pity the folks with the new ones that have all that electronic crap and the minivan V6 engine in it, the old one was built around that inline engine that was designed just for that Jeep and it showed.
ReplyDeleteWhich brings up a point about parts bin vehicles. Volkswagen crams the same damned engine into half the vehicles they make. What's the chances that everything's going to be accessible on *all* those vehicles? Not a chance in hell, compadre!
- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin
Speaking of YACHTS, Mayberry, after too many years of crawling under all sortsa equipment on barges in Alaska I ended up as HEAD RIGGER in a yacht repair outfit. These weenie "mechanics" were fiddle-fucking around for HOURS doing shit like shaft alignments on NEW boats. I says "get the fuck outta my way, and let the old man show ya how it's done". I jams it one way with the big ol johnson bar then eyeballs it then sits next to it and KICK the motherfucker the other way. THEN I measure. In ten minutes I am down to the feeler guage and done.
ReplyDeleteThey didn't enjoy me dealing with Muffy and Biff when they came to check out their fancy new rig, but it WAS an interesting break.
BUSTED, I always figured if they QUIT PAYING me, I'd quit showing up.
What DID get me to quit showing up was some huge piles of really world class fucked up equipment in the dead of Winter in Kodiak. I called the hall and told em to get my relief on a plane cuz I was starting the long walk to the airport. The union dink says "but wait, you are gonna fuck up your career". I says "you don't GET IT, I am vested and I am ending my fucking career".
Hang in there son, it gets worser before it gets better...