I should be in New Orleans, drunk as a monkey, draped in cheap beads and screaming, “Show us your tits!” But nooooo, here I am in Bibleburg, gulping non-alcoholic java and grappling with various calamities on this last day before Lent.
The Devil is very much with us going into this season of prayer, penitence, fasting and almsgiving. The basement remains in disarray two weeks after its dousing in doo, awaiting the arrival of sheetrockers, painters and carpet/vinyl flooring layers. My 2-year-old MacBook gurgled and died in the middle of editing a tech report for VeloNews.com. The dishwasher croaked after a manufacturer-mandated replacement of its wiring harness. And adding insult to these various injuries and fatalities, our sole remaining toilet has developed a hiccup that causes it to run like Niagara if the handle isn’t delicately jiggled.
The dishwasher was the most recent casualty. The tech who replaced the wiring harness returned to examine it, found a blown wash impeller, and said dolefully, “I dunno … I can call ’em and ask if they’ll cover it, but I don’t think they’re gonna.” He didn’t have a dollar figure in his head, but said he’d get back to us in a day or so once he’d settled on the bass boat he wanted to buy.
O woe. A season of almsgiving indeed, to Apple and Maytag and Christ knows who else. Our own local version of the federal bailout. Line up, boys, hold out those golden bowls, plenty of nutritious greenback soup for everyone.
And then the dishwasher dude rang us up, bright and early this morning. I hadn’t had my coffee yet and so eyeballed the whiskey as caller ID tipped me as to who was on the line. Good news, says he. The parts are ordered, he’ll pop ’round in a few days and Maytag is paying the tab.
Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Late update: Even more good news. A tech at the Apple Store confirmed my diagnosis regarding the MacBook: hard drive, RIP. When I mentioned the ‘Book’s longtime, low-level processor buzz (rotten HDs and buzzing ‘Books have been discussed at length on many a Mac forum for three years), he suggested shipping it to the Apple depot, where they will fix anything and everything, from a bum HD to bad RAM to a defunct logic board, for a flat fee of $288. Beats spending a G on a new ‘Book.
Mad Blog Media 
You lucky stiff, thee old washing machine decide to blow an intake valve which I replaced for 70 bucks then the motor went south like canada goose in November another 120 for the parts and the the tech that sold me the parts said, ” Get ready the transmission is getting ready to go for about $175 US”. Time to replace the 25 yr old machine and the significant other wants front load whiz bang whirlpool that the independent tech told her about.
so $1300.00 later we have a new washer and dryer on matching stands and 25 bucks worth of soap we can’t use……… The good times have rolled right fucking past me.
We just donated 480 dead presidents to the Save the Roof Foundation, 100 to the Dying Detroit Steel Society, and I’m off to the doctors to schedule having some large periscope like thing shoved down my throat. God knows what they will find–money to pay the bill, I suppose.
The Valley of the Shadow of Appliance Death is a lonely and expensive place. Herself insisted on one of those stackable, front-loading washer-dryer setups when we moved back to Bibleburg. The dealer wanted our first-born for it, but since we have no kids he settled for cash, and plenty of it. Thing has more buttons, lights and beepers than Sulu’s console on the Enterprise.
Gee, I feel much better about the visiting Lab learning that skunks are not her friends, nor something to eat, the hard way. Some peroxide and baking soda only $4.50.
Oops should have gone with the cartoon themed avatar instead of the reality based picture. Patrick what do you charge for a caricature?
How do the caricatures get picked? Randomly, or do we actually get to blame Patrick for whatever it is next to our names? If I log in from work with a different IP address, wonder if I will get a different little picture.
Khal,
I signed up with gravatar.com. You just link a image file (that is uploaded to the gravatar server) to an e-mail address you control. Patrick has enabled his instance of WordPress to query the gravatar server for a file associated with the e-mail you enter into the ‘Leave a Reply’ form. There is no cost, except possibly to your dignity, to do this.
You can upload more than one image to gravatar for each e-mail, but only one is used at a time until you change it. You can register more than one e-mail as well and use the same or different images for each address.
The same e-mail/gravatar association can be used on other blog software if the software is gavatar aware and the option is turned on.
The avatar you are getting now I think is assigned by Patrick, it doesn’t seem to be random as all your entries have the same image file. My guess is he thinks of you as a purple derailleur idler pulley.
Regardless of the facts I think blaming Patrick is both a rational and oddly comforting thing to do.
I believe the moral of the above story, O’G, is this:
The less stuff you have, the less there is to break.
At least, that’s what I’m taking out of it. That’s my general philosophy as far as material possessions go, even extending to bicycles (which is why I got rid of those full-carbon dual-suspension full-XTR whiz-bikes and built up a single-speed steel hardtail instead).
Now I just need to get rid of my car – hardly ever use the damn thing, and now, after a $2000 head-gasket replacement, it’s leaking both oil and antifreeze. Took it back to the shop, they’re currently figuring it out, and doubtless trying to figure out how to tell me it’s not under their repair warranty. God, I love bicycles.
Best of luck with your personal shitshow. Let me know if I may be of assistance.
Just think, Joey. For 3k, you could have had it mixing oil and antifreeze as well as leaking them. All kidding aside, good luck.
Hey, Joey — bummer about the ride. I have an ’83 Toyota truck in dire need of some front-end repairs, plus tranny work and a timing chain, so I feel your pain.
However, herein lieth the lesson of redundancy systems. While the Toyota sits idle at the curb, I drive the Subaru, which is of more recent vintage and much less of a death trap. As regards the defunct Intel MacBook, if I had only the one, I’d be screwed, forced into a quick purchase that I don’t want to make in order to keep working. But I have two older, still-functional G3 laptops plus a working G4 desktop machine, so I can keep earning without a large capital outlay. Why recycle them when they still work?
I recall that Isaac Asimov used to have three or four IBM Selectrics around at all times just in case he suffered a mechanical in mid-novel. It was a lesson I took to heart. Just ’cause you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.
Our iMac fried — literally, as smoke was coming out the back — at exactly the 37 month mark, which left AppleCare not worth the electronic paper in which it was issued. But instead of my ugly butt taking it in for diagnosis, my much more attractive better half hauled it in, and the dude behind the counter waved his magic stylus and someone snuck it in under the warranty wire. Saved us about $899 in repairs.
This MacBook won’t be so lucky when it’s time is up, so thanks for the tip towards the Apple Depot.
Patrick, did you break a mirror or walk under a ladder? That is some bummer shit you’re dealing with all at once.
Hey Patrick,
The last time, okay, the ONLY time, I did a timing chain on a 22R it took only about 10 hours and very little swearing. It wasn’t all that horrible, just very time consuming. Add one extra hour for every two beers, by the way (it may be an exponential rather than linear function, but I never acquired enough data to find out, at least not that I remember). I did need another week before I could stand up straight, in the meantime I did a great Neaderthal impression (which goes along with auto mechanics in the first place). I gotta tell ya, I was pretty happy when I cranked it over and didn’t get four bent intake valves out of the deal.
As for transmissions, you’re on your own. And the only thing I know about front end work is that you can always use a bigger BFH.
Fixing bikes is way more fun, which is why my bikes work better than my truck.
Enjoy,
John
The last car I felt I could work on was an 85 SAAB 900. The dealer opened the hood and there was a distributor cap. “I can fix this!” Age and increasingly tight engine compartments has driven me to treat my socket set more as mementos than tools.
John has nailed it. Fixing bikes is way more fun and with a workstand there’s no more literal or figurative bending over.
Thought there really isn’t an experience like lying under a car on jacks with a tranny on your chest that has to be muscled into place just so.
“Thought there really isn’t an experience like lying under a car on jacks with a tranny on your chest that has to be muscled into place just so.”
…outside, when it’s 20 degrees, getting dark, tools are f*****g cold, with a trouble light that…damn, you just knocked over and blew the bulb out…with a clutch you’re “pretty sure” you got aligned…and you need the truck running by morning.
As soon as I figured out that bikes can be fixed inside where it’s warm, I was sold!
Yeah, even a complete bicycle teardown is easier than most anything done to a car nowdays save change the oil. Shit, I can’t even see the spark plugs on the Subaru. I figure that someone at Fuji Heavy Industries whose dad died at Okinawa put them in a hard to find space, and next to each plug is a little Japanese soldier with a miniature hand grenade.
Heavy duty car work is either a labor of love, if you love the car, (in which case I have a shrink I can recommend from my cure of that ailment) or simply hard labor. Like others, I swore of the major DIY stuff a while ago, as engine boxes got more cluttered and my back got older.
If I ever am nuts enough to buy a 356 (assuming the country comes out of its Great Debacle), then I will work on it myself. Esp. since few will even know what it is other than a few other nut cases connected via the Internet.
Once upon a time, I removed and replaced the entire engine in my 1977 Chevrolet Nova with nothing more than a few tools, a Haynes manual, the neighbor’s pole barn and engine lift, and some friendly help and advice from said neighbor and my dad. Took a week’s worth of nights to get my teenaged wannabe hot rod self back on the road. This Nova is also the car that I was able to keep together largely with ingenuity and ironworker’s tie wire, the latter of which was in no short supply due to my father’s trade. Now that I’m all grown up and stuff, driving the ubiquitous Subaru (which, when I bought it used back in the midwest, was perhaps the third Subaru I’d ever seen; after my move to Colorado, I can’t find the damn thing in parking lots amid the plethora of clones), I can’t even seem to work up the nerve to change the oil. I do still have a Haynes manual for the Outback, just in case.
So I got a call from the repair shop yesterday. Sure, they said, you DO have an oil leak, whaddayaknow. And sure, they said (surprising the hell out of me), it was their fault and they’re replacing the valve seals for free this time. I’m thankful for that, and hoping that they get it right on this round. Say, O’G, do you suppose the Maytag folks and the local Subaru repair shop are drinking the same goodwill-happy juice?
They replaced the head gasket seals on my wife’s 2002 Outback Sport via a recall notice. It never leaked before, and I’m expecting to start leaking now under the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” paradigm. Never saw one with bad valve seals, though. I watch the plethora of Subarus around here to see any signs of bad things developing as they age. Have not seen a single one smoking out the tailpipe.
Main problem with ours is that it has gone through three timing belt tensioner units in 65k miles. First one was done free under warranty. Second one, on our tab, lasted a month and needed to be replaced on their dime. Looks like a weakness to me, either in the shop’s expertise, or the part design. 2.5 litre four cyl. engine, by the way. Good luck.
I say we plan a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras next year!
Okay, since we seem to be on a roll here, my wife has a 2001 Outback with 115K on it, 4cyl 2.5L motor. What is going to break next? How much will it cost? Will I be stupid enough to try to fix it myself first and make things worse?
We bought it used a year ago for only $4600 since, as the previous owner pointed out, it has a bunch of little cracks in the paint. Hell, we said, we’re going to put lots a big scratches in the paint in the places we’re taking it!
By the way, just to sound like we’re a total clone of the O’Grady household (we’re not, something tells me that he can hold his liquor way better than I), I also have a Toyota 4wd pickup. Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Not really, just a coincidence.
Seems to me, John, that head gasket seals go on Subies more often than anything else I’ve heard about. Mine did. Khal’s did. In a completely informal survey taken unintentionally over several years, it appears that they are somewhat susceptible compared to the rest of the car. That said, my Outback has given me years of trouble-free service. I’d say if there are no major mechanical issues, you got a good deal.
We have a pair of Pontiac Vibes that are, so far, pretty trustworthy. Not that there’s anything I could try to fix on them. i do add Blue juice, tho! As far as working on bikes, I want to attend the how-to seminars at the local Trek shop, but haven’t gotten to a class yet. Need to learn the derailleur thing for sure.
O2 sensors, gents, O2 sensors. The Achilles heel of the Subaru. Gobble ’em like M&Ms.
Herself’s Outback has 110K+ on the clock and just got a metric assload of service, from rear brakes to timing belt and tensioners and pretty much everything in between. My Forester has less than half the mileage but enjoys periodic cooling-system issues; it likes to eat thermostat gaskets. Otherwise, they’ve both been reliable vehicles.
As to wrangling the Toyota’s 22R, now, no thanks. Nuh uh. Ten thumbs and I can hit ’em all with pretty much any size hammer. This is why I work — to get money to pay other people who work to do things I can’t. The guys at Toyota Tech ever need a ‘toon or a concise paragraph, I’m their man.
The Subie has been pretty solid transportation, but compared to that, the bikes have been outstanding. Only thing that ever seems to break on any of my steeds is me.
Actually, I have broken a few spokes on my el Cheapo Nashbar machine built wheels, but even those, now with about six years in service on my commuters, have been rock solid. I replace a broken spoke, retension the wheel (with some appropriate Vedic chants playing in the background) and they are good to go for another year. Compared to leaky head gaskets, bent alloy wheels, lousy timing belts, and Porsche spring centered clutches that break after 60k miles and require dropping the transaxle and exhaust system to fix (944 Turbos are notoriously complex beasts to fix), that’s a pretty good deal.
Land Rover 109 Station wagon 1966 model year. Pried it out of Dad’s hands my junior year in high school. Put 100K on it and besides using it to drive the Fire Island beaches and the hills of western New York I conducted a series of auto mechanics learning exercises on it.
Never underestimate the things a teenager will will do with a set of sockets and the factory shop manual. Tearing down the wheel hubs (all four) in the living room, adjusting the tappets (and two years later discovering I’d adjust the exhaust valve on #3 cylinder closed, never noticed the power loss), adding mechanical overdrive, basically removing and futzing with every part except the gear box and clutch.
It was great! Every part was something you could dismantle. No throwing parts at it, not that you could get any in Fredonia NY. Everything was held together with screws or bolts. A basic High School science education was just enough with time out to think things through to fix most any problem.
Broke the mechanical fuel pump at a rest stop on the NY Thruway in 76. Had to hitchhike to a parts store, of course no Rover parts, and ended up rigging a AC Deloc electric fuel pump in its place. 10 hours in the rest stop and no one ever asked what the hell I was doing with parts, tools and spilled gas all over the place. Did get some odd looks cleaning up in the rest room later.
Fun.
Today, no way.
Hey, Ben, so you too are a Western New Yorker? I cut my teeth on mechanical contrivances growing up in the burbs east of Buffalo (Alden) and going to college in Rochester. I recall an afternoon sitting in Auburn, N.Y. trying and finally succeeding in getting strips of beer can around a worn rear wheel bearing mount on my motorcycle so I could get back home again without the bike wobbling all over U.S. 20.
Khal,
Yup 5 years of college, drinking and then farming (strictly legal grape vines for jelly and vino). Fredonia was as far from Long Island as I could get and still get resident tuition. Summers were great, but 200 plus inches of snow, not so much. Wish I had been as serious about cycling then as I was about four wheeling. Some great hills to climb.
Fredonia is indeed a far cry from Long Island. I did my grad studies at Stony Brook, which is also where I started putting in kilomiles/yr on bicycles. Well, Eastern Long Island was nice. Being a country boy, I never had much desire to spend a lot of time in Nassau County or The City. Except for the occasional play on Broadway when we starved and went on the wagon for a month to afford it.