Foo - Competition for Ruben's mechanical misadventures.

Lookout Ruben, i managed to turn a half hour oil change into a three hour ordeal yesterday. Complete with the walk to the parts store and creating a major mess. I've only been changing my own oil for about 30 years too, but it was hard to tell I'd ever done that before.

On the plus side, I felt a lot better when I was done and heard the horrendous sounds of rod knock coming out of the mom mobile driving down the street. The lady driving that had gone the other way shortly, and was so concerned about the noise that she finished her cell phone call and was devoting all her attention to driving.

Lookout Ruben, i managed to turn a half hour oil change into a three hour ordeal yesterday. Complete with the walk to the parts store and creating a major mess.
Well, wha hap'n? Such a tease!

First time I changed the oil in my wife's car when we got married it took me all day. The quick change places she had been to before had the drain plug so rounded up I couldn't get anything on it. Vise grips would slide off trying to get it out, i ended up filing it flat enough to get a wrench to get it to turn finally and buying a new bolt. The oil filter was then on so tight the wrench crushed it so I had to rip the can apart and hammer and chisel the rest of it off.

Well, wha hap'n? Such a tease!

Well, it wasn't quite as bad as the three stooges doing plumbing, but it felt like it.

First I made sure the oil was nice and hot by driving back to my condo to get the correct sized wrench to drain the oil. Then I got the filter stuck when I used the cheap oil filter wrench I bought when I thought the better one wouldn't fit, which lead to me walking to the parts store. Which lead to finding out the better wrench should fit, but wouldn't work now because the filter cover was now bent from using the first wrench. Which lead to jacking the right front corner of the car to get more room to drive a screwdriver through the filter, which lead to lowering the car so I could use a big a$$ed pipe wrench on the four way lug wrench when I found out I needed more leverage to get the lugnuts off so I could take the wheel off to find out I really couldn't get at the filter from the other side to continue turning the filter by the screwdriver using the first set of holes I put in it. That lead to making a second set of holes that finally allowed me to spin the filter far enough to take it off by hand.

In the end I found out the oil filter wrench that looked much better actually will fit and should work fine, and that I needed to do more than just think about putting a better wrench in the car in case I ever need to use it, and I did it all in the GFs driveway when I had time to deal with things instead of when it would be a bigger problem. I've now got a breaker bar with the correct size socket, an old fork tube from my first motorcycle and a four way lug wrench that fits into the old fork tube in the trunk. That better hold me for a while!

Breaker bars a good. But I use the poor man's breaker bar which consists of a few inches of half inch pipe, that attach as an extension to any regular wrench. The current pipe I'm using is actually a bicycle seat post. Works like a charm.

Congrats on the oil change.

Thread needs pics of the driveway oil stains.

hehe - not a mortorized thingee but I did manage to leave a good hour multiple, multiple eff-bomb rage as I had problems with mounting my new mtb tires to the disked bike. ooooOOooooOoooOoo that was not a good thing, but I won. And then had to clean up the greasy lube from the apartment carpeting this past weekend. yay :D

best one though was from the ex. I come home from work and find my new/used car - and he's working on it - and he gets out and is all happy and sweaty and exclaims - "LOOK!!! I just bought you a new cassette/radio for your car!!!" Looked in and instead of drilling out a correct portion of the dashboard (this was the late '70's) - he didn't have the correct device - so he hacksawed and drilled (with a huge drill bit btw) out the dashboard so the "wahhhh-hoo" new radio could be installed. unfortunately there was no faceplate, etc - so I had big gaping holes around it.

Wth could I say as my eyes welled up with tears (this was my first car btw) as I looked at hacksaw hank job? "thank you". Man Alive that man was a walking nightmare. But the radio/cassette player worked for a while. :)

hehe - not a mortorized thingee but I did manage to leave a good hour multiple, multiple eff-bomb rage as I had problems with mounting my new mtb tires to the disked bike. ooooOOooooOoooOoo that was not a good thing, but I won. And then had to clean up the greasy lube from the apartment carpeting this past weekend. yay :D

best one though was from the ex. I come home from work and find my new/used car - and he's working on it - and he gets out and is all happy and sweaty and exclaims - "LOOK!!! I just bought you a new cassette/radio for your car!!!" Looked in and instead of drilling out a correct portion of the dashboard (this was the late '70's) - he didn't have the correct device - so he hacksawed and drilled (with a huge drill bit btw) out the dashboard so the "wahhhh-hoo" new radio could be installed. unfortunately there was no faceplate, etc - so I had big gaping holes around it.

Wth could I say as my eyes welled up with tears (this was my first car btw) as I looked at hacksaw hank job? "thank you". Man Alive that man was a walking nightmare. But the radio/cassette player worked for a while. :)

In spite of the way it sounds with Wednesday's misadventures, I've always been pretty mechanically inclined. One day shortly before the ex and I decided we shouldn't be married anymore, she came home to find the windows open and me with my head deep in the oven. She wasn't quite sure what to make of things when I told her I was changing some part in there and needed to lean in that far to reach it.