Junk Yard Find

I went to a junk yard Tuesday to pick up a spare tire and wheel for The RatMoblie.
Not having a spare isn't too cool.

While I was there I saw what I thought was a pretty decent looking mid 80's El Camino they had up front for sale as a "builder".

I didn't pay a lot of attention to it because it was raining and hailing and shit. I got caught in a hail storm while I was out there and had to take shelter in the nearest junker that turned out to be full of green mold but it didn't last long.

I also saw a station wagon that had the instrument cluster I wanted but didn't have the right tools so I wound up going back later.
I took a longer look at the El Camino that turned out to be an 83 GMC Caballero.


Damn was it clean. Good paint, nice interior and completely original. It even had brand new tires on it.
Of course it only had a V6 in it.
It had a price of $1999.00 on the windshield.

After I got back home I called them up and asked about it.
The guy didn't know anything about it because it had just came in but said it ran and drove and they would sell it for $1600.

That started it.
I started telling the wife about it.
She , of course, wanted nothing to do with it.
I told her whatever was wrong with it was worth fixing because this thing was nice!

Yeah, yeah.
Being the persistent little fucker I am, I wasn't dropping it.
Yeah, we could come up with the money.
I wheedled, begged, cajoled and generally turned into a pest but she finally relented.
I went down and looked at it again to make sure everything worked.
I noticed the lid to a quart bottle of transmission fluid under the hood and that gave me a serious pause but when I started it up it went right into gear.
This thing had the original radio in it and everything.
Completely bone stock.
Somebody took good care of it.
I gambled and paid the money.


I had to go to work so I asked them to store it for me one day.
I went back with my dad to pick it up and sure as shit as the guy is trying to back it up to pull it up front I hear the engine revving and it not moving.

Fuck, the tranny is messed up.
He gets it out and I thank him. He tells me they put a little fluid in the transmission but not much.

I get it around the corner to a gas station and have Dad go to Freddy's and pick up 3 quarts and a funnel.
He comes back and I dump in 2 quarts and it goes right into gear.
I tell him to follow me and I went straight to my buddy who has a transmission shop.
The thing is trailing blue smoke the whole way and I can hear my wife bitching every inch of it.

It runs like a top though. It was so quiet I could hear the clock on the dashboard ticking when I was sitting at a light!
I get to the transmission shop and my buddy puts it on the hoist and there is fluid dripping on the floor. We thought maybe just the pan bolts were loose but no dice.
He cleans it up and runs it for a bit then picks it back up and finds a pressure switch puking. The blue smoke was from the switch puking fluid right onto the catalytic converter.
He says it is probably for the back up lights. He pulled it out, stuck a plug in it and charged me $20.
I love that guy.
Filled it back up and off I went.

While I was under it it I took a look around.
New tires, new shocks all the way around, new exhaust from from to back.
This thing looks like it's brand new underneath.
Runs like a champ, everything but the A/C works.

I have to take it to the State Police to have it inspected because it came out of a wrecking yard but I scored big time with this thing.
The guy at the wrecking yard said it was a one owner rig and had a huge stack of receipts going way back for all the maintenance and I believe him.
I even got the window sticker that has the estimated mileage on it from when it was new.

That picture up top?
That is the cover of the brochure from the dealer. I even got that with it!


It looks just like this.


Notice the price in the windshield.......
Same color and everything. I do have to put a windshield in it eventually because it has a crack in it.
BFD.

I went from driving a POS looking like this,

with no carpets, bad wiring, water oil and noisy exhaust leaks, to a cream puff like this.

Do I have an awesome wife or what?
The fact that she puts up with my ass alone should give you a pretty good idea.

Another Battle Won.

HA! dirty motherfucker.

I want to hunt down and strangle the idiot cock sucker who had this fucking car before me.
Gotta, and I do mean gotta, be a fucking Crack head.

I have been fighting a severe oil leak since I got the damn thing.
Severe as in puddles under the front of the car, in my parents garage.

That shit don't fly.

I took it to my friends transmission repair shop to have a new starter put in it, that I fucked up and to chase down two leaks, one was transmission fluid and the other one was that nasty fucking oil leak.

He put it on the hoist and cleaned everything up, then had to use a crows foot socket wrench to get the transmission cooler lines off to remove the starter.
he also changed a little seal on the side of tranny where the shift linkage hooks up.

Starter in, good, fucked up ring gear, bad.

Dude only charged me forty bucks and wouldn't take the extra twenty I wanted to give him.

There will be some drinks bought later.

It works and sometime down the road, I will have him yank the transmission, this guy is GOOD he can haul that thing out in a half hour, have him throw another flex plate at it and call it good.

In the mean time, he fired it up after climbing a ladder because it was on the hoist and leak hunting we went.

I know it is at the front of the motor somewhere.
Got the flashlight out and started watching.
After about a minute, I see smoke coming out of the left front of the engine!!

Looking a little closer and being mindful of the fan spinning at a high rate of speed real near to where I am looking and I see smoke coming out of a empty bolt hole.
An empty bolt hole?
Sure as shit.
There is a bolt that is supposed to go in that hole hole on Chevy 350's that when changing the fuel pump, which is operated by a large push rod off the cam, that you can remove and thread in a two inch long bolt to hold that push rod in place so it doesn't fall out on the fucking floor, which they are prone to do. I learned this the hard way after pushing a 66 Chevy pick up across two lanes of traffic and half way up a driveway by myself in a hundred and four degree weather, by myself, at a whopping one hundred twenty five pounds.

That bolt was missing and oil was flowing out of it like an Arabian Princes dream.
One new starter, one used bolt and some skookem' putty to make double sure the motherfucker doesn't leak any more and life is good.
Two down, several more issues to deal with but I AM kicking this things ass, finally.
Stay tuned and,

Thanks fer stopping by.

I Won This Battle

The war is far from over but I finally kicked that Chevy in the nuts and Fordified it.

I got on the internets and found a few cheats from other guys who had gotten tired of fucking around and figured out how to re wire a Chevy starter and the Alternator too.

A few copy paste, send it to the wife so she could print out the schematics, five trips to the parts house because I couldn't get a grip on all the little fucking electrical connectors I needed and game on.

The inside of the engine compartment looks like a nightmare but it works and I can go back and redo a bit here and there at my leisure to make it pretty again.

At least I know what goes where now.

WTF, it starts, runs and drives again and if I ever, ever, find the crack head that butchered that wiring harness, I am going to beat him senseless with his liver and string him up and choke him to death with his intestines.

The fucking shit I ran into would make a mechanic drink until he was blind.

Two, 10 gauge heavy duty wires coming from the alternator back to the starter, wrapped together and connected to a 14 gauge wire, with electrical tape.

Think of two ropes connected to a shoe string trying to pick up a rock the size of your car.

That kind of shit everywhere.
EVERYWHERE!

Everywhere I started hunting down wires, I ran into bizarre shit like that and would have to go get more wire and the correct connectors.

I got it to start and run but I am going to spending a long time going through a bunch of wiring harness'es and a ton of new wires, new connectors, harness covers, tie straps and beer until I get this fucker straightened out and looking pretty again.

It is a testament to my mechanical ability I got the fucker running at all.

Run it does though.

BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!


Kiss my fucking ass.

I do have to admit, right now under the hood it looks like a spider on acid had a field day....

GRRRRR

Here is to the three fucking guys on this planet who need a swift kick in the fucking balls.
Number one, the brilliant mother fucker who invented theft proof lug nuts.

Two, the dickhead motherfucker who put them on with an impact gun and least and fucking last, the ignorant dumbass who loses the key, that the dickhead with the impact gun put them on with..
I have dealt with this before but of course, I had to find the aftermath of the dumbass who decide they should never come off again and the stupid fucking dickhead who lost the key, that fits the locking lugnut and the idiots impact gun who tighten a steel lug nut to two million foot pounds into an aluminum wheel.


I just spent two hours trying to get said anti theft lugnut off of a VERY expensive Aluminum wheel with all of my considerable mechanical skill and ended up fucking up the wheel, completely melting the hard to find center cap and using a cutting torch to melt the fucking wheel stud down far enough to yank the wheel off while it was still semi liquid at over fifteen hundred degrees.

This is all so I could get under my car to fix some melted wires going to the starter, that some other ignorant fuck didn't protect from the red hot heat of the exhaust manifold when they swapped engines.

I used  a lug nut wrench, a lugnut socket, a ten pound sledge hammer trying to drive the socket on hard enough to break it loose, the torch to get it red hot so I could get a bite into it with an air chisel, for forty five minutes and finally got pissed off and said, you will come off mother fucker.

That's when I went full mental and just cut the fucking thing off with the torch. Problem being, Aluminum wheel melts much easier than steel wheel stud and the smoke from the torch turned half of it soot black.

One down, just to fix the starter.

If and when I get the cocksucker fixed enough to run and drive, there are tire stores that have master keys for these fucking things and I will stop by on my way to get the fucking transmission leak fixed, so I can find out where the fucking oil leak is coming from.

THEN, I will deal with this half black wheel.

And before my buddy who I traded for this thing for has another hissy fit about how he should never done it, dude, I knew this thing was going to be a pain in the ass and I asked for every bit of it.
That does not preclude my privilige of griping like a butt sore monkey about all the fun I am having.

Fucking Chevy.

I need a bigger air compressor.

Shit will start flying then.

They still make lots of Chevy parts, for an apparently good reason.

I am going to thrash on this thing like a left handed, red headed step child, who stutters,with a hairlip.

Then I am going to get the BIG hammer.

I am going to win, you sonofabitch.

Just wait.


By the way, I never even bothered to look at the fucking wires.

After all that fun it was dinner time and yes maam, I was all done for the evening after working all day.

Ya Gotta Love The Internet

I finally got around to changing the belt on my Moms Kirby vacuum cleaner.

I got in the closet and drug the sonofabitch out, sat down and realized there were some parts missing.
I got back in the closet and drug out anything remotely looking like vacuum cleaner parts and sat back down.
I sat and stared at the fucking thing for a good full minute, trying to figure out what I was going to have to get to put it back together..
I mean, I know there were pieces but it wasn't real obvious how it went back together.

I kinda figured it out but wasn't quite sure how to proceed..
Enter Google.

I typed in Kirby Belt Replacement Procedure and Viola!

The fourth line down hooked me up with a Youtube
In less than three minutes it was back up and running with ZERO tools involved.

Ya gotta fucking love that shit.

Even better, there was some strangely compelling weird tune in the back ground;



This isn't the first time I have hit the web looking for instructions by any means either.
There is the compilation of the total of humanities knowledge on the web, ya just gotta know how to find it.

32 Screws

I shit you not, I found 32 motherfucking screws trying to get my heater core out and they were all under the hood.

The best part is, after I spent two fucking hours finding all those hidden sonsabitches, the fucking lid still wouldn't come off the heater core.

At least the fucking thing wasn't under the dash.

It was under the hood and I now have thirty two new reasons to kill every fucking automobile engineer on this planet.

Out of those 32 fucking screws that were hidden all over on a piece of plastic the size of a large pizza pan, there were ten fucking different sockets involved,.

Want to see just how much I want to eat the gizzard out of said asshole engineers?

Half were metric and the other half were a combination of what the fuck standard sockets.

Now, the best part.

While I was finding and cursing and taking out these screws, I was gently prying on said plastic part, that's how I kept finding these fucking screws.
After careful observation that there were no more screws, the fucking still wouldn't come loose with gentle persuation.

Oh, fuck, no.
The fucker came out in little pieces because the glue they used must be some awesome shit.

Now it is going to be back to a wrecking yard to the tune of a couple hundred bucks because they won't want to sell me just the lid that wouldn't come off.
Oh, fuck no.

This damn thing had A/C and they are going to want serious money for the whole heater/ A/C box and I will be lucky to find one.

Ahh well, shit happens.

I still have to yank the radiator , the fan and the crank pulley to fuck with that seal yet also.

Not bitching, just, wait, yes, I am bitching, you stupid fucking idiots that used 32 fucking screws with different head sizes and the same diameter thread size to hold down a piece of plastic that weighs five fucking ounces.

Hidden under shit I had to take off to find yet another useless fucking screw.

Y'all just line up over here and bend over so I can take three steps and kick you right in the nuts, until yer lips turn blue.

Making Some Progress

I finally got off my dead ass and put the new to me instrument cluster in the also new to me Rat Mobile, the eighty El Camino that caused so much marital strife a ways back.

What a mess.

No gas gauge, not one dash light and all because some rookie took it out some time ago and completely destroyed a flexible printed circuit board behind it.
There are wires hanging out from under that fucker all over the fucking place.

I had to completely disassemble both of the fucking things and swap gauges, the circuit board and about forty screws and fifteen light bulbs.

I finally got the sonofabitch in and really weird shit was happening.
About six lights come on and stay on when ya turn the key on.

I don't have the faceplate and the lens in yet so I can mess with it.

I took it down to the gas station and put 32 bucks worth of gas in it until it was topped off and the fucking gas gauge still only registered 3/8ths of a tank, which disappointed me, I absolutely hate not having a gas gauge that works.

I brought the fucking thing back home and crawled under the dash again, looking at a multi colored plate of spaghetti hanging down and saw a big black one with a big brass eye on the end.

Black generally being the ground on American cars, I turned the key and touched the end to an exposed bolt and viola!,
The dash lights suddenly got really bright and the gas gauge went straight to full.

Like I said, some progress.
I bolted that wire down and will deal with the rest of the electrical problems at a later date.

My biggest concerns now are no fucking license plate light still and I keep hearing I have a brake light that ain't working.

The front seal on the crank is leaking pretty good and the first damn thing I did when I got home was to tighten an oil soaked alternator belt that squealed like a bitch all the way to work this morning.

That shit is just embarassing.

Just for fun, it got cold enough for the windshield to ice over and the heater fan has it's own schedule.

That won't be a problem after next week as the folks will be gone and I will be parking it inside a garage, right after I move my wife and kids from 85 miles away and fix that leaking seal so there isn't oil all over the floor.


Understand, I am not really bitching here, I knew this thing had issues but it starts right up and drives good.

It's a typical old Chevy and I like it.

Just for a giggle, it currently has a two tone paint job, primer grey and mostly primer black with Center Line wheels and a guy I work with has a six year old girl who loves old Hot Rods and he stopped me on the way by at work and told me that his little girl said she likes my car.

Ya gotta love it.

Damn I'm Tired

My first full day out in the production room.

Like I said in the last post, I have been having a hell of a time sleeping all night lately.
This morning I woke up at Oh dark fucking thirty again, 4:00 AM.

I was going to go back to sleep but the low battery warning on my cell phone started beeping and when it does that, I don't trust that little fucker as far as I can throw it.
Usually it will beep once and die.
Soooo, I laid there trying to stay awake, of course, I dozed off but my mind must have been aware of my anxiousness not to be late for a job that I just started Monday and that I am on double secret probation for the next six fucking months, so I woke the fuck back up and turned the lights on.
Fucked around on the computer trying to catch up with some of my favorite sites for a while and bailed out.

There is a reason I have left those butt munchers in D.C. alone for a while, I don't need the added aggravation right now, I have a lot on my plate as it is.

Got to work, this time only twenty minutes early instead of eleven fucking hours like yesterday, and started in.

Basically, now I am a Millwright.

It's still turning wrenches, you know, Lefty loosie, Righty tighty, but it is all on things I have never seen before so there is a steep learning curve.

Mostly, figuring out where the hell what I am supposed to be working on is because all of their machinery has a number and I have no fucking clue where that certain machine is yet and I just saw the insides of the place for the first time yesterday afternoon.

I had to take a test for confined space entry ( thank you, Demeur) and Lock out tag out protocol.

Wouldn't ya know it, first thing this morning I had to do a lock out tag out and go get an oxygen meter to go down where the machine was we were going to take out with an over head crane.

This place uses Argon gas like crazy and that shit is odorless, tasteless yet non toxic, but it is heavier than air and will collect like water in the under ground pits with grates over head.
It will fucking keeel you if it fills up the pit and displaces the oxygen and without this oxygen sensor with alarms, you won't have a clue of what is happening to you except you just feel real sick, right before you die.

Anyway's, this is getting long.
My feet are killing me from the new steel toe'd boots I have to wear and I am beat from lack of sleep.

Come to me my pretty little pint of whiskey, Daddy needs a good nights sleep.

Speaking of Daddy, today is my Dads Birthday.

I need to make a phone call.

Thanks fer stopping by.

Not My Personal Best

Gotta give me credit for trying.
Today was not one of my best.
The truck I tried to fix fucked up less than twenty four hours after I shut the hood.
The guy had some tire store put a winch on the nose of an F-250 and they had to move the power steering cooler, which is what caused the problem with his A/C condenser, the PS tubes rubbed a hole in the side of it because where the winch went was where the cooler was originally and it has some seriously fucked up molded in brackets, which only fit where the winch went in.

They tried to jerry rig it with some tie straps and I tried to re rig it but the new condenser has screws going up both sides and I tried to do it in the truck.
I couldn't see the fucking screws and it kicked the damn thing off at an angle and rubbed a hole in the brand new condenser in less than twenty four hours.

So, after having a couple of smokes and a beer, I dove under the prick on the side of the road and spent two and a half hours and several bucks out of my own pocket , two trips back to the Weasel Den for tools and two trips to the hardware store to re rig it yet again just to get him by until after the wedding.

Nothing like laying on the side of the road in direct sunlight and eighty degree weather, with hot transmission fluid running down your arm, trying to figure out how to fuck some other mechanic to make ya hot, tired, pissed off and thirsty.
I made some changes, had to buy some tubing and clamps, rig up some rubber mounts and curse like a sailor but I am sure he will be able to drive the jacked up thing until after I get married and then I will fix the thing the way it should have been done the first, and second time.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I opened the hood because they have those cute little rubber covers over the front of the truck covering everything up.

I will make it right, at no charge to the guy.
I figure another six hours for a job that should have taken about one.

Live and learn when working on four wheel drives.

Ya can't say I have no morals, at least some anyway.

In the mean time, that whole not smoking thing went away at light speed and for fucks sake, at eighty degrees and already pissed off, you bet yer ass I had a couple of beers.
I had to wrap a towel around my bald assed head to keep the sweat from blinding me every twenty seconds.

I told The Wife I would be sober at the wedding, she had better fucking hope I don't have to work on any God damned rigs on the way there, we will both be late because I will walk first.

Yo, Eh, Fixer, Gordon,Bob,Get a Load Of This Ignorant Fucking DoucheBag.

,This is just so fucking typical.
 Get the fuck away from me you ignorant sonofabitch, before I open the drawer with all the pretty hammers.

Ya wonder why I am all done with this after thirty fucking years.

If you think for one second that this is a parody, I can absolutely tell you for a fact, I have had quite a few, very short, conversations exactly like this in the past..
 Back in the day, I was just as ignorant about vehicles. I can remember the day someone asked me to hand them a grease gun and I had no Idea what the fuck he was talking about.
I certainly could not afford to pay anyone to fix my broke down fucked up pieces of shit cars that I was buying for a hundred bucks.

Ya wanna know what?
I went and bought Chiltons manuals, bought a ton eighty of beerto pay for badly needed help  and begged some of the best for advice and to borrow a tool here and there.I don't call myself Bustednuckles for any small reason, I learned the fucking hard way. I also went to the school of hard knocks and over the last thirty years spent about eighty fucking grand on tools and roll away tool boxes.
I have seen what lies underneath the skin more than some doctors and bled a lot of of my precious blood,sometimes to excess.

I have worked with  broken arms, wrists, thumbs and ankles.
Doctors some time they think they are pretty smart. When I come in for stitches on my thumb or other digit an you put in three and tell me to go home?
I tell you to put in six because I am going to work in the morning.
This is a true story.


They get pissed off at ya! Excuse the shit out of me, I got a living to make here, and a fucking Snap On payment, every. mother. fucking. week. Oh, by the fucking way, now I gotta pay you too.
At one time, I was paying more for tools than I was for a fucking house payment.
I was damn humble when I needed help and I had been wrenching on things since before I hit puberty.

You come into a shop like the  arrogant cocksucker below and you will be damn lucky the guys from the tow company will show up to pull it out of the lot next week.
Ya see, like you have heard your whole life, it's who ya know.
Shoot, someone parked four damn cars in front of yours and we can't find the keys.
Called in sick today too.

Let me give you a piece of advice you would be wise to pass on to your children;
Don't piss off your mechanic, your doctor, your girlfriend,your carpenter,electrician, plumber  your Mom or your fucking Lawyer. as  a matter of fact, don't be rude to anyone who performs any kind of service for you.
  I will give bonus points to the next person that tips the gas station attendant that stands out in the weather all day and night like you do that big titted bar maid, I do. Been there, done that, in a Blizzard, on Christmas Day.I know, hard to find a big titted bar maid pumping gas in a blizzard on Christmas, you get my point
I have fixed more fucked up shit for free than I can remember, I can also remember shit like this that got you to call a cab than I give a rat fuck about.

 Now, to see what inspired this little rant;


Yeah, right at the end there, I would be showing that fucking dumbass where the chrome muffler bearing fits with the high flow squeegie sharpener.
That and the door, I like my hammers too much to waste them on something like that.
Ignorance and humility will be miles ahead of stupidity and arrogance in my book, every fucking time.

I know of what I speak, ten fucking years at a Lincoln dealer. There are some arrogant mother fuckers in those places.

Sorry, your parts are on back order Maam.

That Was Fun

I managed to get the transmission back in the Beast. I see I need to do a little fine tuning on the clutch adjustment. I fixed the fucking floor board too.

Had the kid who does the metal work cut me out a piece of sheet metal from a fucked up door skin on a Semi truck Friday before he left.
I drilled a bunch of holes and pop riveted it in in after I did some rust treatment.
The Fred Flintstone floor board is not conducive to comfortable driving, I hate it when my feet are dangling through the fucking floor boards.

I kind of knew there was something going on there but the floor mat was hiding it really well, I wasn't going to even look until I knew I was going to tear into the clutch. It was ugly but what the hell does one expect from a forty two year old four wheel drive in the Pacific North West?

I pretty much fucked off today but I still managed to get a few things done at the Weasel Den.
Tomorrow is Monday and I am going to go out of my way to stay in bed for an obscene amount of time.
I tried to do it today and I still got woke the fuck up by my cell phone.
That will not happen tomorrow.

Update;
Well, it wasn't my cell phone this time, I got woke up by the house phone and one of those automated messages.
Motherfuckers, I didn't even get the pleasure of telling someone to fuck off.
So now I am awake and have a hangover that would outright kill a lesser mortal.
Fuck.

Time for a beer, I'm on vacation dammit.

Some Awesome Good News !!

I scored Big Time today!!

If ya have been following my exploits for any time, you know I have been living in a POS 26ft Travel Trailer I call the Rat Hole.
It's a beat up 1981 trailer that basically half the shit inside either wasn't there, or if it was, it didn't work.
Dents, fucked up doors, no stove, you name it.

I have to get a picture of this for the Red Neck hall of fame.

By the way though, I was very happy to get this trailer at the time and it has served me well., It was a big step up from what I was in before and I seriously want to give a shout out to my friends Steve and Tim for looking out for my narrow ass and getting it for me when I really needed something that didn't fucking leak water all over my bed, no matter which end of the motorhome I tried putting it on, Thanks Guys!

Anyways, Someone upstairs smiled on me today.A big, beautiful smile and I am very thankful.

I have been checking out the local Craigs List for months, dreaming of finding a deal out there and I have seen several but I never had the money.
Today made up for all of those in spades.
I spotted an impossible deal and got lucky.
I found a 1985, 35 foot long Fifth wheel for.....
$1095!!!

I about shit a ring around myself before I could get on the phone and call the guy.

The ad had been up since Sunday after noon and I figured it would probably be long gone, but NO!!

Better yet, it is only a couple of miles from the trailer park.

I hauled ass getting over there after work, but I was nervous because I didn't have all the money, my tax refund is due on Friday.
I stopped at the ATM and cleaned out my checking account and went over there with two hundred bucks and a case of nerves, hoping I could talk the guy into a down payment until Friday and IT WORKED!!


WHOO HOO!!!

Of course the thing needs some work here and there, some minor water leaks, a hot water heater (nothing wrong with the one in the Rat Hole, that was the first thing I had to fix in that thing.)
The landing gear is busted and it is sitting on some four by fours, I will graciously offer to clean up after myself and if he doesn't want them, what the hell?

The tires look good and did I mention it is THIRTY FIVE FEET LONG?!!

This thing is like the Taj Mahal compared to what I have now!

Can ya tell I am just a little stoked?


WOOO HOO!!

The best part is that he needs to clean it out of some stuff but he has to go out of town next week so I have TWO weeks to get shit situated and stuff moved around where mine is now and hopefully the neighbor who has been telling me he is going to leave since last September should be gone by then and I can just back it in and start moving.

After I am done, I am going to talk to my boss about dragging the Rat Hole to work, parking it next to a twenty yard dumpster and taking it apart with a back hoe and carting the carcass off to the dump and the scrap yard.

I am just beside myself and am very, very grateful.

Wish me luck and I will keep ya updated.

It just goes to show, sometimes ya just get lucky and this was almost scary how lucky I got on this deal.

Winter Vehicle Maintenance

Winter is here, we just got blasted for two weeks with snow and ice and now flooding.
The ice on your windshield can shred your windshield wipers.
If you have not changed your wiper blades in a while, now would be an excellent time to do so.
Get GOOD ones. Cheap wiper blades are a waste of time to change.

Check the protection level of your antifreeze. You can't believe what can happen to an engine block that freezes with water in it.
I have seen it a few times and it is ugly. The block literally splits wide open.
I actually drove a truck one time about a mile round trip that had frozen and I did not realize it until I parked almost exactly in the same spot when I got back.
I noticed a bunch of little metal disks laying on the ground, they were the freeze plugs that had been pushed out of the engine when the ice expanded.
I opened the hood and could not believe that that thing had even run!
The intake manifold had split, the heads had split and the block had split down both sides!

Yeah, check your antifreeze.

Top off the washer fluid, check the oil, belts and hoses.
Check all of your lights and just how soon are you going to be needing new tires?

Now is the time to get on top of the maintenance of your vehicle so it doesn't unexpectedly strand you in the middle of a snowstorm, at night.

Also make sure you have a blanket, some food and water just for emergencies.
A flashlight is a must have also.

A little preventive maintenance goes a long way.

A Winter Wonderland

You can have it.

People get all oogly googly when it starts to snow, it's so pretty.

Yeah, unless it doesn't fucking stop for two damn weeks.

It's 17 degrees outside, there is six inches of snow and a half inch of solid ice on top of that. The wind finally quit howling, it was shaking my trailer hard last night.

Not my idea of romantic, more like deadly serious shit if for some reason you have to be out in it, which I was yesterday.

My brother called me at ten in the morning, his truck wouldn't start at the joint he was singing Kareoke at the night before and wanted me to go pick him up and see if we could jump start it, by the way, it is a diesel with two batteries.

He has been having trouble with it for a couple of weeks and keeps taking it in to the fucking idiots who keep stroking him and not fixing the damn problem.


I got out the insulated coveralls and the rest of my winter gear and went and started The Beast and off I went. Of course, he lives on the side of a freaking mountain and there was snow all over the roads. I finally got there and collected him and took off back down the hill at a crawl in 4 wheel drive. Long story short, because it is the usual fucking nightmare scenario, I wound up under his truck replacing the starter and hauling him off to Napa for a new one.
Luckily, we were across the street from a bar, I could go in and thaw out my freezing hands.
I finally got the starter back in it at two thirty and it didn't work.

It wouldn't engage the flywheel. At this point, I am all done. Call the asshole who has been working on this thing and have him drag it in and fix it.

Oh no, my brother is going to pull it out and get another one, my cousin had showed up so he could haul his ass around. I leave him the tools, he saw me do it and now knows what to do, I go find a warm seat and play some poker.

He calls me up about an hour and a half later and the truck is running again.

He took that starter back to Napa and had it tested and it started working. He went back and put it in and away he went.

Go figure, I have no clue why that damn thing wouldn't engage after I put it in, I triple checked it!

I am here to tell you though, you know those guys that go out in ice storms and fix downed power lines?
They have huge balls.

I came home and I have stayed here since yesterday.
I just stuck my nose out of the Rat Hole and I am not going anywhere.

The forecast is for snow at least through Wednesday.

Getting to work tomorrow should be easy enough if the majority of the idiots stay home, they plow the main roads around here and The Beast works beautiful.

Best of luck to anyone else out there in this mess.

Ha! My brother just called me, his pipes are frozen.

I done been through that fun.

Stay warm y'all.

The Frozen Turd Tube Fiasco

Y'all will please excuse my recent absence, I was kinda busy.
My last post mentioned the cold weather that has descended on the area and has refused to let up, well it bit me finally.

I knew it was going to freeze around here so being the real fart smeller I am, I turned the water on to run in the bathroom so my pipes wouldn't freeze. All well and good says I.

Not.

I woke up to a half inch of standing water all over the whole trailer, basically from one end to the other, again.

I went through this little scenario a while back. So my first thoughts are that the damn pipe I fixed must have let go but I don't hear water running.
I stick my head in the bathroom and there is still a slow drip coming out of the faucet but the other thing I see is a whole bunch of standing water in the tub.

Strange.

Then it dawns on me, oh fuck, the sewer hose is frozen.
I rush outside to turn off the water and sure as shit the flexible sewer line is frozen solid.

Fuck me, that ain't good.
I go back into my soggy lair, I had a bunch of shit sitting on the floor, including a big pile of dirty clothes I had been sorting out to wash, everything was soaked.

I drug out the multiple laundry baskets I had stacked up in the corner and started filling them up. Then every towel I own and a couple of blankets got tossed on the floor to start soaking up all the water.

I opened up a cabinet and got out a bottle of water from my emergency stash, (SEE! I keep telling you!) and made a pot of coffee while I figured out just what the hell I was going to do here.

I called work and told them I wasn't coming and started in.
I drug the Propane Heater From Hell outside and fired it up, then I scrounged a sheet of plywood from the neighbor and leaned it up against the side of The Rat Hole and then some other miscellaneous boards and shit and made a little lean to so the heat wouldn't just go straight up into the air.

Then I went inside and started boiling pots of water.

Many trips back and forth later, I finally got one end of the hose undone from where it goes into the ground.
Many more trips and I got the valve thawed out for the black water tank to close. The sewer hose had a couple of holes in it and water was just pouring on the ground until this point.

One thing I was SO grateful for, I had recently dumped the holding tank and flushed it out several times so there were no human waste products involved in this whole fiasco. I was afraid of the damn thing freezing and splitting wide open, I have seen the results of that, not good. This could have been a real disaster otherwise, like throw everything away and find a place to live while decontaminating everything. All the water everywhere was Fresh water, Thank God!

Long story short, I spent all day getting the situation straightend out.

Three trips to the Hardware store, it never, ever takes less than three trips, ever.

I finally replaced the Turd Tube, mounted it up on a board and wrapped heat tape around it and plugged it in.
All set, right?

Wrong.

While I was dicking around with that, the fucking water line going into the trailer froze because I had shut it off.
It broke a plastic 'T' I had on it so I could hook up a garden hose too.
Off that came, took the hose inside and thawed it out, boiled more water and thawed out the pipe where it comes out of the ground and reinstalled the hose going to the trailer.
This time, I was ahead of the game because I had bought insulation to cover all this stuff up,on the last trip to the Hardware store.

I worked on that mess until three thirty in the afternoon. Lucky for me it was a beautiful day. Cold but no wind and not a cloud in the sky.

I took all the wet clothes and threw them in the bathtub and went and had SEVERAL cocktails.

I still have a mess to clean but the big project is fixing where all that water came from in the first place, the seal under the fucking toilet must be shot, that is where it all came from.

The first order of business is doing all that laundry.
Then I am going to mop the floor with bleach, then I am going to tackle the toilet.
No fun job that, it isn't your typical porcelain model with the nice handle on the tank. Oh no, this is a RV model with the foot controls and is plastic and very expensive and a real bitch to access the bolts holding it down because it is literally boxed in between the linen closet and the sink cabinet.

No rest for the wicked.

I am going to very busy for a couple of days.

Oh, by the way, I was not the only one this happened to, I saw several familiar faces in the plumbing section at the Hardware store, all with the same problem, frozen turd tubes.

The joys of living in a trailer. The learning curve continues.

Update:

Snow and freezing rain being predicted off and on for the next couple of days, things are going to get ugly around here.

I'm Whupped

Dang, back to back transmission jobs. Identical 95 Ford half ton pickups.The shifter mechanism broke in my work truck last week and I finally got it back together Thursday.I had to take it out and take the top off and send the shift lever mechanism out and have it overhauled by my buddy.
No sooner did I get that done and then the old man that fetches parts for me had his clutch quit working Friday. The slave cylinder went bad and the dang thing is inside the bell housing so ya gotta pull the transmission to get to it. Ford is a four letter word.
I worked for Ford for ten years at a Lincoln Mercury dealership and now I remember why I hate working on cars.

At least the shop at the dealer had hoists, you could pick up a car or a truck, I even worked on limo's, and stand up while you were working.
This place? Oh hell no.


It's all about floor jacks and jack stands and rolling around on creepers when ya can, sliding around on a concrete floor on yer back when ya can't.

Both times I had to roll the transmission off the tranny jack onto the floor and drag it out because I couldn't get the truck off the ground high enough.

Then it took three of us to get it back on the jack when it was under the truck again and then fight the dirty bastard to get it stuck back into place.

I will be 49 years old at the end of next month and I have been wrenching for thirty years.
This shit is getting real old.
I am supposed to be a supervisor but I am ridiculously under manned.

It's nice to be able to point at something and tell someone that "You need to fix that", but in the mean time here I am.

Oh, I forgot to mention that generally,I am lucky to be able to work on anything for more than five or ten minutes at a time.
I am either being paged to answer the damn phone, my boss is telling me the next ten things he wants done before tomorrow , I am ordering parts or I am dealing with a moron who just broke a hundred thousand dollar truck out on the road somewhere, sometimes several states away.

I can't tell you how many times I have had to slide out from underneath a Big Rig and go take care of something and then come back and try to remember where the hell I was at trying to fix something, that ain't a good thing when you are dealing with vehicles that weigh a hundred thousand pounds fully loaded.

I love my job.

I actually consider myself fortunate I have one and this is a pretty good outfit to work for, I just need some competent help that they don't steal to do other jobs three out of five days a week.

I am tired.

I'll see if I can't find something more interesting to bitch about tomorrow.

Bottoms up.