all she needs is doing one preventive maintence job that turns a
working whatever into a non functional disaster that costs a fortune
to fix.
i rather imagine most of us have been thru one of those.
Ain't that the truth.
I still err on the side of too much PM because I seem to be one of
those guys who manage to pull off just about every job I actually *do*
without too much hassle, but God forbid that I let any PM slide on
anything, it will bite me in the a$$... There are a few exceptions to
that rule however.
the funniest was, though, my ex-GF had a '69 Plymouth Valiant that I'd
found for her, because her old Monte Carlo was too much of a rusty
roach to pass PA state safety inspection without a new frame. It was
in immaculate shape, and ran and drove well. she took it to a local
garage to get it inspected and the guy failed her for dry-rotted
suspension bushings. So I called up PST, ordered a front end rebuild
kit, and went to town. I figured that it would be pretty easy, and
after all I was a mechanical engineering student so had access to the
school machine shop, what could possibly go wrong? I drove the
control arms down to another shop to have them bead blasted, painted
everything up real nice, went to put the first side back together and
I realize that the strut rod bushings are WAY too thick. Called up
PST, after being on the phone with tech support for quite some while,
figured out that they had the year breaks in their catalog wrong and I
needed the earlier version. Well their bastard people wouldn't trade
me for the ones I needed, wouldn't sell them separately, etc. etc.
etc. Also found out that one tie rod was swapped end for end so I
needed to order a new inner tie rod end as well (basic rebuild kit
only had outer tie rods, and the inspector had flagged outer tie rod
ends for replacement as well.) Car was on jackstands on the street in
front of her house for about 3 weeks while this was all going on (this
was supposed to be about a 3-day project, I had it all planned out...)
finally her annoying neighbor called the city to schedule tree
trimming, I had to throw the car together one evening wrong bushings
and all just to move it so it didn't get towed. By this time I'd
found a guy with a machine shop in his basement to turn down the strut
rod bushings for me to the thickness actually required, but I didn't
have time to R&R the lower control arm on one side.
Somewhere out there there is still a pea soup green '69 Valiant with a
nice polygraphite front end that has one original rubber lower control
arm bushing and one original rubber strut rod bushing... what a
charlie foxtrot.
You would think that I'd learned my lesson but a couple months later
my '67 Dart blew up its transmission on my way to her house, and I
coasted it into the exact same parking place where the Valiant had
been sitting. I borrowed the Valiant, went to the junkyard, got
another transmission, swapped that in at the side of the road in the
snow, and the car moved about 6 feet and never moved again. I sold it
for $50 just to get it the hell out of my sight.
Lesson learned; I don't do any work on cars outside of a garage or
driveway anymore... no job, no matter how simple appearing, is not
going to take about 10x as long as you think it is and if you're in a
hurry you're going to make mistakes.
nate
(you may all laugh at me now)
