Good news: Renney's at my house.
Bad news: we had to tow her to my house.
Worse news: Some tweakers stole my radiator.
Yep.
So, basically, this is taking WAY longer than it should have.
BUT D's no longer working on my car. Instead of D (father of Ll), we have G working on it, and while I haven't talked to him, much, my parents both like him a lot better, and he's fixed my truck before.
So that's good.
And, on the other good news realm, I'm back at school (without a car) where my incredibly talented friend M lives, and she said that she'd like to design some of those silly family decals for my back windshield. We've debated doing little stick figures of the crew of Serenity, or GlaDos and several personality cores, or just one person and like 25 cats.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
ARE YOU RUTTING KIDDING ME?
Number of times we have ordered engine mounts for my car: 3
Number of times they have sent us the correct mounts: 0
SRSLY GUYS WHAT IS GOING ON THERE!?
Number of times they have sent us the correct mounts: 0
SRSLY GUYS WHAT IS GOING ON THERE!?
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Snipe Hunt
Ll decided to mess with me last time that I went up to help.
He handed me a toothbrush and a can of de-greaser and told me to find the VIN number on the transmission.
Now those of you who know more about cars than I do will know that there IS no VIN number on the transmission.
I realized this about ten minutes after I started looking, but I didn't feel like going back inside and listen to Ll and D argue about "We got the right motor mounts!" "No we didn't!" "Yeah, we did!" so I kept looking.
One of the neighbors came up to me and asked what I was doing. I said, "I'm looking for snipes!"
Probably the craziest response I've recently given.
Anyway, that's progress. I mean, there's a lot of progress and it's been eating all of my spare money, but I don't really have anything interesting to say about that.
He handed me a toothbrush and a can of de-greaser and told me to find the VIN number on the transmission.
Now those of you who know more about cars than I do will know that there IS no VIN number on the transmission.
I realized this about ten minutes after I started looking, but I didn't feel like going back inside and listen to Ll and D argue about "We got the right motor mounts!" "No we didn't!" "Yeah, we did!" so I kept looking.
One of the neighbors came up to me and asked what I was doing. I said, "I'm looking for snipes!"
Probably the craziest response I've recently given.
Anyway, that's progress. I mean, there's a lot of progress and it's been eating all of my spare money, but I don't really have anything interesting to say about that.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Stuff is happening rather quickly
Texts that I got from Ll in the past few days:
Me: how goes it today?
Ll: Pretty good workin on it
Me: kay*
Today, at work:
Ll: So we need the mounts for the rabbit, the engine mounts are 18.99 for with 1 year or 90 with lifetime, and the tranny mounts are 14.99 or 24.99 we also need a part for the timing mechanism and its either 22.99 33.99 or 76.99
Me: give me a total price cause the way you worded that i have no idea what that means
Ll: okay with the lower prices it will be around 150 for the mounts and another 50 for the drive belt piece
Ll: 200 is what I'm saying.
Me: okay. what would be the advantage of getting more expensive parts?
Ll: Ummm easier to get some of them have limited lifetime warranties. But that really only covers manufacturer defaults.
Ll: Chief Mechanic says no reason to get the expensive ones unless you live on a road like mine and S's. So do you wanna go pick those up today?
Ll: (...) no rush until this weekend. But good news is these are the last parts we need to buy unless something else comes up. I should be able to stay up at D's all weekend if I get that truck so we may even be able to get the whol thing finished this weeked
Ll: end**
Me: Awesome okay. (...) so it wasn't too damn broken way it?
Ll: Nope. Like I said it wanted to run, honestly most of what we have to do is general maintence tune up stuff that you would have had to do to the motor at 150k+ miles anyways. Its at 170k right now. Basically in short you scored like a person of unspecified gender and race stealing a 60" plasma screen.
Me: haha. xD best metaphor of the day.
Me: no electric problems?
Ll: That has yet to be seen, but so far all the lights work the radio even kinda works so I'll assume no major electrical problems. But that's the easy part in these old cars, our main focus is just getting it started to make it run.
Me: all the interior is just cosmetic stuff?
Ll: Yeah and thats desegnated your job.
Are you squeeing now? I'm squeeing. $200 more and I have a car with a trashed interior!
But if it involves fabric in any way, I can do it, and if I can't, I can learn it (I also have upholstery experience, a small bit of welding experience, and working with fake leather and other problem fabrics. I'm pretty sure I can handle this).
I agree with Ll. I scored like AFGNCAAP stealing a 60" plasma screen from a grue.
___
*See? I'm an interesting person. I send texts like "kay."
Me: how goes it today?
Ll: Pretty good workin on it
Me: kay*
Today, at work:
Ll: So we need the mounts for the rabbit, the engine mounts are 18.99 for with 1 year or 90 with lifetime, and the tranny mounts are 14.99 or 24.99 we also need a part for the timing mechanism and its either 22.99 33.99 or 76.99
Me: give me a total price cause the way you worded that i have no idea what that means
Ll: okay with the lower prices it will be around 150 for the mounts and another 50 for the drive belt piece
Ll: 200 is what I'm saying.
Me: okay. what would be the advantage of getting more expensive parts?
Ll: Ummm easier to get some of them have limited lifetime warranties. But that really only covers manufacturer defaults.
Ll: Chief Mechanic says no reason to get the expensive ones unless you live on a road like mine and S's. So do you wanna go pick those up today?
Ll: (...) no rush until this weekend. But good news is these are the last parts we need to buy unless something else comes up. I should be able to stay up at D's all weekend if I get that truck so we may even be able to get the whol thing finished this weeked
Ll: end**
Me: Awesome okay. (...) so it wasn't too damn broken way it?
Ll: Nope. Like I said it wanted to run, honestly most of what we have to do is general maintence tune up stuff that you would have had to do to the motor at 150k+ miles anyways. Its at 170k right now. Basically in short you scored like a person of unspecified gender and race stealing a 60" plasma screen.
Me: haha. xD best metaphor of the day.
Me: no electric problems?
Ll: That has yet to be seen, but so far all the lights work the radio even kinda works so I'll assume no major electrical problems. But that's the easy part in these old cars, our main focus is just getting it started to make it run.
Me: all the interior is just cosmetic stuff?
Ll: Yeah and thats desegnated your job.
Are you squeeing now? I'm squeeing. $200 more and I have a car with a trashed interior!
But if it involves fabric in any way, I can do it, and if I can't, I can learn it (I also have upholstery experience, a small bit of welding experience, and working with fake leather and other problem fabrics. I'm pretty sure I can handle this).
I agree with Ll. I scored like AFGNCAAP stealing a 60" plasma screen from a grue.
___
*See? I'm an interesting person. I send texts like "kay."
Friday, February 4, 2011
So Stuff's Actually, Like, Happening
Bought the car.
Towed the car.
Broke the car more.
Didn't fix anything.
Spent lots of money.
That was my day.
Okay, so I'm not just going to leave it at that....
How about pictures?!
Something that I might not have mentioned about Renney (Though for now we're calling her Nova. 'Cause 'No va' is Spanish for 'Doesn't go.'): She hasn't moved anywhere in about 5 years.
And yes. I bought this car.
I'm an idiot.
Moving on.
When the winch on the tow cable finally moved the tires from where they've been sitting for the past 8 years, we saw exactly how much stuff falls off of a tree in 8 years:
That would be the little divot that her wheel left in the dirt. Yeah.
So then we get it to D's house (D, for explaining, is Ll's father. Ll is the Friend of Awesome Car Knowledge), and I look at this car that I just bought, and I think to myself, "B, you just made A Very Bad Decision."
At this point, the car looked like this:
So then I'm panicking because it's not like I have a steady income, and I just bought a car that looks like that. It had lichen growing on it. And moss. I bought a fricking ROCK. My brain was like (_ _) and at this point I did the only thing that a girl who knows nothing about cars and was having a major internal freakout could do:
I grabed a bucket of water and a rag*. And I washed the car.
So Renney Nova is currently not running, but is very shiny.
While I was frantically scraping lichen off of my new car, Ll and D were trying to get the engine to turn over. The battery was completely shot (see previous comment regarding living under a tree for 8 years) so we went to the auto parts store and picked up it and some new blinker lightbulbs (at which point we discovered that the blinker light sockets were the real problem. Apparently the blinker light covers had filled with water and corroded them all to hell). After we put in the new battery, she really wanted to start but can't for some reason. It probably has something to do with old fuel and jetpacks or something else. Fuel injectors! That's what they're called. Not jetpacks.
Also, the hood release cable broke. Ll spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to open it from the outside with a wrench and then gave up. I opened it on my first try after he gave me the wrench. Maybe I'm actually better at this car fixin' stuff than I thought...
After we finished work for the day, we picked up S from work because we stole her car to get up to D's house, and then we stopped by the auto parts store and bought supplies for tomorrow (belts, hoses, light sockets, cake, transmission fluid, oil, candy-coated peanut butter pieces shaped like fish, glow plugs). While we were there, J, who works at the auto parts store, showed me the most magical thing I have ever seen: engine paint. PINK engine paint.
The pink engine paint became my Impulse Buy Of The Day. We also learned that vacuum line (I think it's called that...) comes in many colors and costs the same as regular vacuum line.
Yes. Yes indeed.
So after that, I gave Ll $40 to buy other parts that he may need while continuing work on it tomorrow (the rest will have to wait until I get paid on Sunday and cash my paycheck from a few weeks ago), bid farewell to Ll and S, and went home to curl up on the couch in migraine-ated pain for a few hours.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
~B**
_____
*Okay, to be honest, I didn't grab a bucket of water and a rag. I grabbed my pack of Clorox wipes and went through 3 of them before D took pity on me and brought me a bucket of water and a rag.
**As you may have noticed, I refer to everyone by nifty initials in this blog. If you look around the internet, you'll probably find my real name fairly quickly. However, I'm still using codenames because 1) I have friends who don't want me putting their real name on the BLOG, 2) I like consistency, and most importantly, 3) Using code letters makes me feel like I am a secret agent.
Towed the car.
Broke the car more.
Didn't fix anything.
Spent lots of money.
That was my day.
Okay, so I'm not just going to leave it at that....
How about pictures?!
Something that I might not have mentioned about Renney (Though for now we're calling her Nova. 'Cause 'No va' is Spanish for 'Doesn't go.'): She hasn't moved anywhere in about 5 years.
And yes. I bought this car.
I'm an idiot.
Moving on.
When the winch on the tow cable finally moved the tires from where they've been sitting for the past 8 years, we saw exactly how much stuff falls off of a tree in 8 years:
That would be the little divot that her wheel left in the dirt. Yeah.
So then we get it to D's house (D, for explaining, is Ll's father. Ll is the Friend of Awesome Car Knowledge), and I look at this car that I just bought, and I think to myself, "B, you just made A Very Bad Decision."
At this point, the car looked like this:
So then I'm panicking because it's not like I have a steady income, and I just bought a car that looks like that. It had lichen growing on it. And moss. I bought a fricking ROCK. My brain was like (_ _) and at this point I did the only thing that a girl who knows nothing about cars and was having a major internal freakout could do:
I grabed a bucket of water and a rag*. And I washed the car.
So Renney Nova is currently not running, but is very shiny.
While I was frantically scraping lichen off of my new car, Ll and D were trying to get the engine to turn over. The battery was completely shot (see previous comment regarding living under a tree for 8 years) so we went to the auto parts store and picked up it and some new blinker lightbulbs (at which point we discovered that the blinker light sockets were the real problem. Apparently the blinker light covers had filled with water and corroded them all to hell). After we put in the new battery, she really wanted to start but can't for some reason. It probably has something to do with old fuel and jetpacks or something else. Fuel injectors! That's what they're called. Not jetpacks.
Also, the hood release cable broke. Ll spent about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to open it from the outside with a wrench and then gave up. I opened it on my first try after he gave me the wrench. Maybe I'm actually better at this car fixin' stuff than I thought...
After we finished work for the day, we picked up S from work because we stole her car to get up to D's house, and then we stopped by the auto parts store and bought supplies for tomorrow (belts, hoses, light sockets, cake, transmission fluid, oil, candy-coated peanut butter pieces shaped like fish, glow plugs). While we were there, J, who works at the auto parts store, showed me the most magical thing I have ever seen: engine paint. PINK engine paint.
The pink engine paint became my Impulse Buy Of The Day. We also learned that vacuum line (I think it's called that...) comes in many colors and costs the same as regular vacuum line.
Yes. Yes indeed.
So after that, I gave Ll $40 to buy other parts that he may need while continuing work on it tomorrow (the rest will have to wait until I get paid on Sunday and cash my paycheck from a few weeks ago), bid farewell to Ll and S, and went home to curl up on the couch in migraine-ated pain for a few hours.
We'll see what tomorrow brings.
~B**
_____
*Okay, to be honest, I didn't grab a bucket of water and a rag. I grabbed my pack of Clorox wipes and went through 3 of them before D took pity on me and brought me a bucket of water and a rag.
**As you may have noticed, I refer to everyone by nifty initials in this blog. If you look around the internet, you'll probably find my real name fairly quickly. However, I'm still using codenames because 1) I have friends who don't want me putting their real name on the BLOG, 2) I like consistency, and most importantly, 3) Using code letters makes me feel like I am a secret agent.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Updates
Okay, so today I got a friend to look at Renney (as I've been calling her in my mind. Yes. It's a girl car) and see about how much it's going to cost to get her up and running again.
So everyone say goodbye to $2500.
Actually, everyone doesn't need to say goodbye to it. Just me. I need to say goodbye to it.
Anyway, my friend took a look at her, started pulling parts of the engine apart, hooked another battery to it, and tried to turn over the engine.
And it didn't turn.
BUT
BUT
BUT
It tried. It really tried. And my car knowing friend said that it was just that the gas had probably gone bad.
So yay? I don't know.
According to CarKnowingFriendofKnowledge, most of the problems are not in the car itself but are more complications from the car having lived under a pine tree for 8 years.
Original owners of car said that the engine had started running bumpy and out of sync before they banished her to live under a tree. According to CKFoK that's because the timing belt went bad.
You might be able to tell that I have no idea what I'm doing.
BUT
BUT
BUT
I'm learning things.
And while we were working on it, the neighbor helpfully said, "That car hasn't moved in about 12 years." CKFoK said, "Oh. I heard more like 8." Now just imagine that with the intonation that you'd say, "Oh, I don't really care about your input, go to hell," and you'd have it down perfectly.
In other news, yes. It's been an incredibly long time since I've posted anything.
In more news, I don't really have anything to say. Just that progress is happening, though slowly.
Yay progress?
So everyone say goodbye to $2500.
Actually, everyone doesn't need to say goodbye to it. Just me. I need to say goodbye to it.
Anyway, my friend took a look at her, started pulling parts of the engine apart, hooked another battery to it, and tried to turn over the engine.
And it didn't turn.
BUT
BUT
BUT
It tried. It really tried. And my car knowing friend said that it was just that the gas had probably gone bad.
So yay? I don't know.
According to CarKnowingFriendofKnowledge, most of the problems are not in the car itself but are more complications from the car having lived under a pine tree for 8 years.
Original owners of car said that the engine had started running bumpy and out of sync before they banished her to live under a tree. According to CKFoK that's because the timing belt went bad.
You might be able to tell that I have no idea what I'm doing.
BUT
BUT
BUT
I'm learning things.
And while we were working on it, the neighbor helpfully said, "That car hasn't moved in about 12 years." CKFoK said, "Oh. I heard more like 8." Now just imagine that with the intonation that you'd say, "Oh, I don't really care about your input, go to hell," and you'd have it down perfectly.
In other news, yes. It's been an incredibly long time since I've posted anything.
In more news, I don't really have anything to say. Just that progress is happening, though slowly.
Yay progress?
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